Adding new items to a mesh

I got a character i finished. It`s all rigged etc.
Now i made a new item for the character like a pistol holster, ammo pouch, back item.

What is the best way to parent it, weight paint the new item to the current mesh.
I tried parenting it to the mesh with keep transform and it does not follow the mesh properly.

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

You can probably do this a number of ways. Try just parenting it directly to an appropriate bone in the armature for example, like the pelvis. Or you could parent it to 3 vertices on the body mesh… just 2 ideas.

Parenting it to a bone is very tedious because i have loads of animations, so i would have too check every frame :frowning: but there has to be another way.
I tried parenting to 3 verts, but the object goes to the parent origin when i press P :s

There’s a few way to do this. What I would do:

Just weight paint (well, add vertex groups.) For the item, make a new vertex group and call it something, like socket_ammo. In edit mode assign the weight 1.000 to all vertices. Add an armature modifier and set it to use the rig.

Then in the rig make a new bone where the item should be positioned (snap the 3d cursor to the selected item, and make a new bone there) and call that bone socket_ammo.

Now you should be able to move the item with your new bone (assuming deform on the bone is enabled). Then in edit mode for the socket_ammo bone, change the parent to something reasonable. If it’s on the back, to the chest/torso/spine bone depending on how your rig is set up. If it’s a holster or something parent it to the hip bone.

After you added the parent to the socket_ammo bone the item should move with your rig in your animations that already exist. Also if you want you can animate the new bone too if you want to drop the ammo or have it jiggle on the back or something.

edit: for bonus points you can use https://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/constraints/relationship/child_of.html to pick up/interact with the items you made.

Thank you for all the help. I will try that method :slight_smile:

I tried that method @Cyaoeu and it works, but the item i have is on the right shoulder like a shoulder pad.
It seems a bit jumpy still, i want it too be solid on the character. so would i have to do it frame by
frame on the animation ?

or

Add more vert groups to the object.

For something like a shoulder pad you’d normally assign it to the clavicle bone… but it’s really difficult to tell you exactly what you need to do without seeing what your setup looks like. Shoulder pads come in many different shapes and sizes…

So, could you upload the .blend?

Remember that you can parent an object to an indivdual bone using the CTRL+P and pick the option ‘bone’ …
this can work well for non organic objects that simply ‘attach’ to an organic Mesh…

Often adding an extra bone into your Armature just for that individual Hard Object is the best method…
this way you can adjust the Object as needed… if needed… in your animations…