[LE] Questions on Editing Meshes in Blender

[AtrayusRuhn]

Hey everyone. I'm currently working on a custom armor which, among other things, merges the cross-belt harness from Studded Armor with the leather vest from Imperial Light Armor. This is what I've got at the moment:

 

 

I have zero experience with Blender so I'm trying to figure out how to get the vest to fit under the harness without distorting either's shape too badly (I tried applying the Shrinkwrap modifier to the vest and wrapping it around the body's torso, but it didn't come out too well). I think I might need to reposition individual vertices on the vest and somehow snap them just above the body's surface, so that only certain parts of the vest get shrinkwrapped while other parts remain unaltered (or shrunk to differing degrees, as needed). Does anyone know how to do that? Is there a better way? Any advice would be much appreciated.

[M48A5]

In "Object" mode, select the vest and change to "Edit". This will bring up all the vertices for the vest. You can now left mouse click on the juncture of a vertice and then press "Delete" on your keyboard. A dialog box will apper and chose to delete the vertice. It takes some practice so be patient. You have to be careful not to delete the wrong vertices as it is hard to tell which is on top and which is underneath. On the parts you can't delete, left mouse click the vertice and then left click on the directional arrows to move the vertice. Again, it takes some experimentation to get the right movement. You can always go back by using "Ctrl"+ "Z".

 

By using "Ctrl" + "B", a circle will replace your coursor. By using the scroll wheel on the mouse you can control the size of the circle and use it to choose multiple vertices for deletion or movement. Make sure you right mouse click on a vacant to remove the circle and return to using the normal controls.

[Perraine]

You could also try shrinkwrapping the vest to the body, then shrinkwrapping the harness to the vest. Secondly, make sure the vest and harness are separate items while working on them, you can always re-combine the parts when you're done editing (reason = Shrinkwrap works on the entire object, not just on selected vertices)

 

You can also use 'Ctrl +L" to select all "linked" vertices and select "UV" in the constraints window - that way you can select only certain parts of a mesh that share the same UV island, and help to separate mesh parts.

 

Finally, the "remove doubles" button can be handy as some meshes can have dozens of overlapping vertices, because Bugthesda has never heard of vertex welding.

[AtrayusRuhn]

In "Object" mode, select the vest and change to "Edit". This will bring up all the vertices for the vest. You can now left mouse click on the juncture of a vertice and then press "Delete" on your keyboard. A dialog box will apper and chose to delete the vertice. It takes some practice so be patient. You have to be careful not to delete the wrong vertices as it is hard to tell which is on top and which is underneath. On the parts you can't delete, left mouse click the vertice and then left click on the directional arrows to move the vertice. Again, it takes some experimentation to get the right movement. You can always go back by using "Ctrl"+ "Z".

 

By using "Ctrl" + "B", a circle will replace your coursor. By using the scroll wheel on the mouse you can control the size of the circle and use it to choose multiple vertices for deletion or movement. Make sure you right mouse click on a vacant to remove the circle and return to using the normal controls.

 

Thanks, M48A5. I've had some success with manually adjusting the positions of individual vertices on the vest, and entering specific coordinates to get them closer to the body mesh's edges. I also figured out how to snap vertices to the positions of other vertices, which is useful for things like compressing extruded geometry and shrinking specific parts of the vest down to the body mesh's surfaces. It's still a very slow and tedious process, though. Something tells me there must be a more efficient method of doing this sort of thing.

 

You could also try shrinkwrapping the vest to the body, then shrinkwrapping the harness to the vest. Secondly, make sure the vest and harness are separate items while working on them, you can always re-combine the parts when you're done editing (reason = Shrinkwrap works on the entire object, not just on selected vertices)

 

You can also use 'Ctrl +L" to select all "linked" vertices and select "UV" in the constraints window - that way you can select only certain parts of a mesh that share the same UV island, and help to separate mesh parts.

 

Finally, the "remove doubles" button can be handy as some meshes can have dozens of overlapping vertices, because Bugthesda has never heard of vertex welding.

 

Thanks, Perraine. Shrinkwrapping the vest to the body was actually my first idea, but unfortunately that didn't produce very good results. Part of the problem is there is a pretty glaring difference between the vest's and the body's geometries, which causes a great deal of clipping after shrinkwrapping the vest (this is even more pronounced when shrinkwrapping the harness to the vest). Also, taking that approach causes the texture mapping on the vest to warp in a very awkward way.

 

Is there some way to shrinkwrap only specific sections of one object around another object?