Hey guys, this might be a little bit hard for me to explain but you should get it 
Anyway, I’ve got this mesh that is all joined together which is a character with armour plates, and when I go into edit mode and click on a vertex on the body and press ctrl-L, it selects the body only, but not the armour plates. I understand most people would want this but I don’t… Because I have an armature that can’t parent itself to the mesh when I use automatic weights. It gives me an error, and I know why. So, is there a way I could link all vertices together, so that when I select the body and press ctrl-L it selects the armour plates as well? Keep in mind this mesh in object mode is one solid mesh, no separate parts.
I’m tired, so if you need me to explain it better I’ll do it tomorrow Thanks!
If you want l (hover-select-linked) or Ctrl+l (expand-selection-linked) to pick up on a submesh that it currently considers a separate island, you’ll simply have to add an edge as a bridge. If you make them prominent enough you can easily find them for deletion when you’re finished.
I wonder, though, if you could solve the problem better with Vertex Groups.
Or maybe I don’t understand the context well enough.
-rking
@rking Here we go! I’ll explain it a bit better. I’m using rigify, which is working fine, but this mesh isn’t working using auto weights because there are so many separate pieces the automatic weights seems to be getting confused. I could upload the blend file for you. It has both the rig and the mesh.
I did try selecting all the vertices in the mesh, and hit P, and that separated them by all loose parts, parented them all to the armature, but it just lagged and didn’t work out that well. So, how would I add an edge as a bridge?
I’m with rking…just create a vertex group for it so you can select all the vertices at once (like “L”) from the vertex group.
So, when you mean I just need to put it in a vertex group, I have to select all the verts and assign a new vertex group?? Is that how? I’m not sure 
Would you mind telling me what I should do?
yep, that’s all there is to it…it’s nice when you need to select disconnected and unrelated pieces. Another trick is you can assign a certain material to those pieces in your mesh (something transparent if needed), then you can select the material to select the pieces. That may not work for what you are doing here though. Try the vertex group first. Just a sec, I will pull up Blender and give you better instructions.
Ahh, nvm I read up on it and to assign verts you press ctrl-G. But I think I’ve forgotten where the ‘vertex group’ panel is located in Blender 2.62…
Ok, select the vertices you want, then go to the object data icon (looks like a triangle with 3 vertices if you are not sure), then go down to vertex groups, create new group and click “assign”. Then you can select and deselect to test it out.
hmmm, I assigned all the verts to a new group, and when I selected the body with ctr-L again, it still only selected the body… Is there anything else I could try? I should also mention after I added all the verts to the group I tried parenting the rig to the mesh, but it still failed.
If I’ve got you correct, it sounds like you want Mesh->Vertices->Remove Doubles.
@dvnobles There we go! It selects them all once I’ve assigned them and then press ‘select’. But it’s still not parenting to the armature
The normals have to be facing the same direction, and the verts need to be snapped to each other. The edges on each side simply will not be “linked” until “Remove Doubles” has deleted one of the verts.
Edit: I should have kept my mouth shut. I looked at your model and “Remove Doubles” isn’t going to fix it. I’ll go away now. 
Well, I recalculated the normals and I just noticed - none of the armour pieces are actually joined with other verts, they’re on their own. So, should I increase the ‘remove doubles’ threshold? And maybe that will snap them into place?
EDIT: I won’t increase the doubles threshold, it’s just distorting the whole mesh!
I just want the automatic weights to work…
No. Remove doubles will join 6 faces to make a cube, but won’t join too cubes together. You’ve got so many separate pieces going on that trying to join them all into a single mesh would be a big project. I hope the Vertex Groups thing works for you.
@BentFX Well, I’ve actually already tried the vertex groups… I assigned all the verts, then tried the automatic weights - it still says it failed I mean, once it gives me the error, there are all the bone vertex groups, but it’s not weighting them to the mesh.
errr… Maybe I’ll have to weight paint everything manually:spin:
Nevermind, I deleted the mesh, I’ll probably just weight it myself…
:sigh: I know, I won’t give up!! Does any one else have any suggestions?