there are many videos of animations which are just in an early stage. often the meshes are quite rough and without textures.
now my question is: if you animate a character with just a simple character mesh, and afterwards want to improve the character (for example in case you work on the animation and a friend works on the charcter at the same time), do you just hide the armature and work on the mesh? or do you make a new object and then replace the objects? because i think in both ways you would always have to readjust the vertex groups after adding vertices to the mesh, wouldn’t you?
as far as I know you would always have to re-weight paint the newer mesh depending on how severe the changes you’ve made. but that is all you would have to unless you’re adding extra bones to the armature.
I believe it depends where your new vertex reside on your model. If your new vertex live in the middle of a vertex group that is already 100% weighted, no adjustments should be necessary. On the other hannd if you have a 60/ 40 relationship between two groups you may have to adjust. Most projects would have development happening in unison , so its not inconcievable for an animator to have a good rig ready for the model when he gets it. Any adjustments would be less exstensive than starting from scratch.