So I’m having this problem with my Astronaut. When I want to attach buttons and other extra objects to the rigged mesh and don’t want it to transform and want to keep it as precise as possible in terms of movement (like a button of a pocket on an arm) here’s what I did. I vertex parented those f***ers. So it all moves nicely, but as soon as I delete something that makes up part of the basemesh of the astronaut model the whole vertex parenting goes nuts and is gone with the wind. …
All objects have applied locations (so that’s not the problem…) Someone help me please before I find myself a lightsaber to die a jedi’s death!
At least in other software, like 3ds Max, such parenting/linking to vertex is carried out using vertex ID, i.e. just an arbitrary number assigned to that vertex. When you change mesh topology, by removing or adding verts, you can most likely alter this number.
See if you place the button, then kill a few faces so that you remove verts too, check if button just moved to some other vertex. Then it’s most like the case of vertex ID changing. I might be wrong.
In general doing this kind of setups, I’d keep duplicates of to-be-attached objects and I’d attach them only as last step, and would be ready to replace them if something has to be changed.
So if you want a button to attach to your rig’s “Arm.Bicep.L” (for example), create a vertex group on the button object with that same name (“Arm.Bicep.L”). Then go into edit mode on the button, select all verts, press apply. Then add an armature on the button object modifier pointing to the rig.
This won’t work perfectly in certain areas, like for instance the neck since it deforms a lot.
but it didn’t work for me, also scaling seems to be an issue as there are also hooks involved (the solution was to use a duplication group for this one… rather unintuitive though). Thing is I want to publish the rigged Astronaut once it’s done, for free so people can use it for their projects or to learn from it etc. That’s why I wished for a better way than losing all the information once a single non-vertex-parent-vertex is deleted. Isn’t it such a widely used thing? Attaching objects to a rigged mesh? Anyway here’s a screenshot
