de-link mesh from the rig in 2.5

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi,
My characters were rigged in 2.49 and there if I Clear Parent (Alt+P) the mesh looses the influence of the bones.

This is different in 2.5: I can Clear Parent, but the mesh still deforms with the armature. How do I clear that influence?
I re-use the same rig for many characters, so I need to de-link the mesh from the rig, then use another one with the same rig.

Thanks,

2

remove the armature modifier

3

Oh, that was easy! thanks!

4

You need to clear the armature modifier. The modifier works with or without parenting… parenting is “best practice” tho imo.

I may have misunderstood you when you say “same rig”… Can i suggest you just copy the rig and have a separate rig for each character. (albeit just a copy of your rig)… or perhaps better still just copy the file and change character in the file. Any actions that you have set up for the rig can also be used by the copied rig by attaching that action to the rig. This will save you the trouble of “de-linking” the rig each time. This way you can have multiple characters in the same scene.

5

batFINGER,
thanks,
removing the armature modifier did it. I do have multiple characters in the scene, and as you suggested, I copy/duplicate the armature then make it a parent of another mesh.
I actually needed to de-link the mesh because it wasn’t skinned correctly, then realized that’s something I need to know how to do in general.

6

Cool,

yeah i know what you mean… i barged ahead to have a go at everything … fluids, cloth hair smoke particles… etc etc… Then i read the poles and loops sticky on the modelling forum and realised how crap my models were… well the topo especially… so i’ve been chasing triangles around my characters ever since.

The “assign automatic from bones” weight painting works a treat in 2.55 in my experience. I like to do it in weight painting mode… it only applies vertex groups to the bones of the armature that are selected in pose mode which i think is less complicated than assigning them all in one hit (including non-deform bones that haven’t been marked as non-deform) when parenting the mesh to the rig.