Why does this iron man mesh not follow my rig bones in pose mode?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hello,

I’ve just started learning blender recently using this youtube channel.

I’ve also watched some (like the first 25 videos) of the old rigging tutorial 2012 by Nathan Vegdahl on youtube.

I have successfully rigged the Sky Mesh that I can download from the first link, which is a pretty simple looking mesh to be honest. I can do parent with automatic weights, and use an armature to generate rigify fine on this mesh.

Then I wanted to play around with a more interesting mesh and downloaded a free iron man from here.

https://free3d.com/3d-model/ironman-rigged-original-model--98611.html

I am having a lot of trouble rigging this iron man mesh. Parenting with automatic weights could not move the mesh with the bones in pose mode. Parenting with envelope weights does work, however I think the mesh and bones may have some issue I’m just not knowledgeable of enough to describe properly as moving iron man in pose mode isn’t as smooth (deforms a lot and easily) as the SKY mesh from the tutorial link. Using a armature to generate a rig also does not work on this iron man.

  1. So I’m left with the question of what’s different about this iron man mesh and the SKY mesh from the tutorial that makes rigging this iron man much more difficult?

  2. I’ve sent a message to the uploader and I’ve asked on the download page too but haven’t gotten an answer yet, what are the 9 small sphere looking thing in around the iron man mesh?

2

Look for error messages on the parent with autoweights operation. Sounds like autoweights are failing. Common reasons for failure are mesh problems (degenerate quads, non manifold geometry), small scale of mesh, and vertex density. Consider manual weight paint.

Envelope weights are not good. For special techniques only. Expect ugly looking deformation with them.

In basic usage, an armature is a rig (or sometimes, the way people use the terms, an armature contains a rig) so not sure what you’re saying regarding generating rig from armature.

3

I mean using the rigify addon to generate rig doesn’t work. No error messages pop up when I parent the mesh to armature by weights, by envelope, or even the bone option.

test rig
test rig1414×753 321 KB

Alright I scrolled through the messages on the download page of the iron man and it looks like some people are having trouble rigging the mesh too.

Thanks for telling me some ways automatic weights can fail but I think I’m gonna give up on this iron man mesh.

edit: I can generate a rig as you can see in the picture, but I can’t parent the mesh to it to move the mesh properly.