My character was originally imported from maklehuman, so the armature and rigging were done for me, although i’ve been tweaking it plenty.
What’s confusing me here is, there are a lot more bones shown in the outliner, and a lot more vertex groups on the model, than i’m actually seeing in the 3D view
See attached picture. Starting from the middle of the chest, we can see the clavicle, deltoid, upperarm, lowerarm, hand, and then all the finger bones.
But what’s not shown in the 3D view, and yet apparently still exist and are affecting things, is the latissimus dorsi, scapula, and trapezius bones. i apparently can’t manipulate them directly but they exist and have some effect. There are bones in the outliner, and vertex groups on the model, for all of those, and quite a few more.
I don’t understand how this is done. And perhaps more importantly, how/if it will transfer over to unity.
Generally riggers put bones they don’t want an animator to touch on separate layers, and ‘protect’ them from being manipulated except indirectly by moving other bones. Armatures have their own set of ‘layers’ and bones can be made invisible using these layers. Bones can also be hidden with alt-h. Check out the wiki on Armature Layers.
I have no idea how armature layers affect exporting to Unity.
i’m thinking of porting everything over to the rigify armature for simplicity and compatbility, but a lot of stuff is likely to be lost. any idea on how to preserve/merge the weightings ?
I’m afraid clockmender speaks sooth. You can lose some simplicity and retain compatibility, though, by leaving the rigging with it’s assigned weights in place, and add a rigify rig to move the makehuman bones, using constraints. It’s adding another layer of complexity, but if someone is a wiz at animating a rigify rig, it might be the way to go.
