GeoNodes Parent (many) Instances to Closest Bones

Hello everyone,

I have a human mesh and instanced simple objects on the surface all around (50-100 Instances).
How can I parent those individually to the closest bone?
I want to animate the human with a rig and =>
I need to keep the instances in GN (can’t just apply), because I want to have additionally/parallely a scene-time GeoNodes animation available.
(It’s kind of an armor that has slight extra movements in each part)

Greetings, Mech

I might not understand this… if this is instanced on the surface mesh and you animate the surface… then this should animate too… since your geometry node setup is based on this geometry and so it’s animation… :person_shrugging:

You may have to elaborate this to get a more suited answer.

Is the GN modifier before of after the armature?

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The problem is, that my instances are spread all over the body, but are not connected individually to a point on the surface.

Ohh… you did the instancing manually and not controlled by GN… ?

If you want this work correctly, use Musgrave or Noise textures for distributing instances (not random value) and use UV Map of model as a vector. So when your model will move, the instances could “sit” on it’s places without changing. Try.
Another way, if you want instances in specific places, not just randomly - make isolated points, or even meshes (you can do it like in case of clothes) on your model in places you need, assign them to it’s one vertex group and after this, assign your model to the rig. So in Geonodes you use this vertex group for selection and just instances on points.

I get points from the surface, but use them as hard points, so they would not be following a rig-animation. Your approach seems the be the easiert solution: To just use instance-points that are still “connected” to the main mesh.