Sorry to interrupt people’s usual browsing experience with probably a very easy to fix problem but;
I have a ( likely very dime-a-dozen ) issue with armatures and meshes
so I got a trex model, rigged it with bones, parented it inside of the mesh, what you’d expect really.
what’d I do wrong here?
project file: trexbonefinish.blend (1.4 MB)
Hello and welcome!
First of all, the Mesh is supposed to be the child of an Armature, not the other way around. The armature controls the mesh, so it makes sense that it should be the parent.
Though when you’ll try to parent mesh to the armature there will be a “Bone Heat failure” error, because the mesh has a lot of double vertices. All the faces appear to be disconnected. You can fix it by Merging by Distance.
Couple of issues:
Which brings us to the second and third issue:
Parenting is backwards. You need to parent the figure to the armature. Sounds backwards until you think about it: the armature moves the figure, so the figure is parented to the armature.
There is no armature modifier. Without an armature modifier, the armature can’t deform the mesh (the armature modifier will be added automatically when you parent the figure to the armature with one of the armature deform options, such as automatic weights)
Solution: Unparent the armature (alt+p) then parent the figure to the armature (ctrl+P, selecting them in the correct order)
Ended up with a bone heating issue when I tried though, so it still didn’t work.
Next step: follow along with tutorials on youtube.
alright I’ll give this and the post above a shot, I’ll reply with any updates, thanks for the help as of now.
after messing around a bit I can’t seem to find a solution still.
I parented the objects the correct way around so that problem is sorted.
I never saw any instance of the supposed “Bone Heat Weighting” error so either I was missing the error message or I didn’t get it somehow??
The mesh itself didn’t appear to be improved vertices-wise using Merge by Distance or Decimate Geometry, it just kept saying “Removed 0 vertices”. Decimate Geometry in particular showed no result at all without absolutely butchering the model.
current project file: trexbonefinish.blend (1.5 MB)
Something tells me that maybe the problem has to do with the fact that the model is effectively hollow.
Edit: I did notice that I accidentally put two armature modifiers onto the model lol, though that probably won’t effect it too much I hope.
It will, sorry to say. Check out one of these resources:
The message is still there for me. It should flash yellow/orange for a moment in the status bar at the bottom of the screen (at the moment of attempting to parent with Autoweights).
Have you selected all the vertices before merging? It says it removes 5243 vertices for me.
I corrected my dumb double armature mistake from the above post, but also yeah I was being an idiot and wasn’t even selecting the vertices to begin with. whoops.
after some more fiddling it’s finally a proper working rig, thanks for the help on that fellas.
unfortunately though the model itself is still experiencing some slight oddities
I’m not really sure why they are disconnected nor how to fix them onto the mouth there, additionally the eyes can also deviate from their sockets if the upper head is moved too much.
additionally the bones here are having a weird result
I expected them to just move the back of the mouth around but instead they end up deforming parts of the head itself too
project file: trexbonefinish.blend (1.4 MB)
While parenting with Auto Weights is a good way to quickly get some initial weights on your model, it is not perfect.
You’d need to do some manual Weight Painting now to fix the issues:
I suggest looking at some tutorials for that.
I fixed the issues with the eyes but for some reason the teeth that aren’t working are connected to this leg???
but uh yeah how do I fix this
Must have painted by accident.
Paint weight = 0 on those vertices for leg bones.
Or paint weight = 1 for appropriate jaw bone.
Or select teeth and remove them from leg Vertex Groups.
In other words, learn weight painting - it’s a real pain! 
(And I’m not good enough to even try to explain it, sorry)
no leg weight, paint on the effected teeth and the teeth are part of the entire mesh so they shouldn’t be disconnected nor part of the vertex group, the only things in the vertex group are the bones.
I’m a bit lost now.
trexbonefinish.blend (1.4 MB)
See, there is paint on the head and teeth in Vertex Group “Bone.024.R”, which is this toe bone here:
Simple solution: re-parent mesh with Auto-weights and try again. This time make sure you’re choosing the right Vertex Groups / Bones. You can lock those groups you don’t want to accidently edit with a lock icon just to make sure.
PS. Naming bones with meaningful words (like “forearm.R” etc) can help you navigate the groups easier.
PPS. To be able to select (and pose) bones while painting: select Armature, then Mesh, and enter Weight Paint mode with both. This way bones can be selected while holding Ctrl and you’ll immediately switch to appropriate Vertex Group.
with more tinkering it got fixed, thanks for all of the help you’ve provided.
