Rigging - One mesh object or multiple?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hello everyone,
I’m just starting out on my second modeling project, and I wanted to know whether it is possible to rig a model that is composed out of multiple mesh objects. So far in all the tutorials I’ve seen [well haven’t seen much :o], the models are always one single mesh.

Now, I want to try out making a model that will be composed of different mesh objects and rigged by a single armature. For my first model, I boolean joined the separate meshes, and that resulted in weird/missing faces that I’d to patch up afterwards, as well as an exponential increase in polycount on an otherwise smooth surface [think boolean join of a cube and a sphere. Messy stuff.]. So I reckon if they were separate objects, there won’t be the trouble of those extra polycount.

Does anyone have a link to any rigging tutorial that features multiple mesh rigging? I still don’t have much of an idea how to do it, what to parent, how to weight paint it, etc. Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

2

Have you tried adding armature modifiers to the different objects, using the same armature in each modifier?

3

Use Ctrl-J to join Meshes, not booleans. But, for mechs and robots and such you can Parent a single Mesh to a single Bone in Pose mode by selecting the Bone, Shft-Selecting the Mesh, Ctrl-P >> Bone. Humanoids and such work better with one Mesh using a single Armature as Modifier.

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4

Thanks for all the advice thus far.

@fligh
I didn’t want to use join because i would end up with confusing overlapping faces, but i guess i could always use vertex groups to tidy things up.

My biggest worry with multi-mesh rigging is whether such a rig will still export alright as a DirectX model. I managed to find a multi-mesh rigged human model at the Blender Model Repository here. When I posed her and exported as a DirectX model, in the DirectX mesh viewer her dress detached itself. :confused: A scary thought if that happened to my models… Anyone has an idea why that happened? Is it because of multi-mesh rigging? Thanks in advance.

5

I have little export experience and none with direct-X so I can’t help.

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6

You can use remove doubles, sometimes that works. And you can usually select groups by using the L button to select and it will highlight an area and you can delete the whole area.