Multimesh armature

[obsidian folio]

Hi guys there is a way to add armature to a bunch of mesh ?
I mean I have a character with unmerge part like hand, upper legs etc... etc... each part is an individual mesh.

[slow moon]

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[magic nova]

Right right. Jannis has stated he plans to do this during the next update, but I don't necessarily expect that to be super soon seeing as he still needs to do patch work on 5.0.

There is a pretty easy way to keep this "segmented" system. This is my workflow for these:

1. Make your skeleton, don't worry about assigning anything for now.

2. Make a duplicate of your meshes and groups and keep them safe in a group so you ca reference the locations of all of your meshes. Keep the original in a folder, lock it, and hide it. You can also make a backup if you'd like to preserve the pre-skeletoned model.

3. Take the duplicate meshes and dislocate all of them from thier groups, so you just have a big pile of meshes lying around.

4. rearrange all of these meshes in space so that you can easily select all of the vertices (Take apart all the limbs and stuff so you just have a bunch of floating components.)

5. Convert all cubes to meshes (if you haven't already. Now, Go to mesh selection mode and select everything in the workspace (This should NOT include your skeleton or the original model, only the duplicate you ripped apart). With that selected, merge meshes.

6. Weighpaint each respective floating floating component by selecting all vertices on said component and assinging the weight value at 1 to it's respective bone. With all vertices selected, you can move this component back to where it should be. If you're unsure where it goes, you can unhide your original model briefly to check.

Hope this helps!

[surreal forum]

i have done it recently and there are few issues

1. there is not god way to export it so you can use it in blender so if you want use blender just rig it there

2. if you have duplicated meshes there is an bug that will replicate weight on all duplicates and only way to fix it for me was to export as obj and import it again

[magic nova]

1. export it as a .glb. That's what I do.

2. You are duplicating meshes, yes, but you don't care about the weight painting on the original. After step 6, delete the original folder containing the original model. You don't need it anymore.

This is the method that I have been using.

[surreal forum]

1. glb only exports one mesh so when you have multiple meshes it will only export one of them

2. i meant when you duplicate one part like upper leg and reuse it as lower part then even if you change it a bit it still copies weights see this https://discord.com/channels/314078526104141834/1429771308920475698

[obsidian folio]

okay so better to just rig on blender from the beginning

[surreal forum]

ya that's what i've wen't with for now also if you stuck with how to do it then i've used this tutorial https://youtu.be/HjGOeg2PO8Q?si=GJwDYjBRk8zYL86R

[obsidian folio]

For multi mesh rig I mean

[obsidian folio]

Thanks for your help mate 😄

[surreal forum]

yes multi mesh is not very nice currently to work with if you can make it sigle mesh then it won't be much of an issue

[magic nova]

1. Yeah, that's why you follow the instructions I provided earlier.

2. Make your model before weight painting it. This is true for Blender as well.

[magic nova]

I suppose you could do this method, I used to do that before 5.0. It's significantly more complicated and tedious than just rigging in Blockbench though and then applying constraints in blender though.🫤

[surreal forum]

" With that selected, merge meshes." ok sure i missed that it still sucks cus weight paining solid parts when they connected is annoying

[magic nova]

🫤 ...

Step 4 ringing a bell?

[surreal forum]

ok now i understand but still kinda feel like its still too annoying

[magic nova]

Weightpainting and Annoying are synonyms.

[surreal forum]

ya for solid meshes there should be way to just parent to bone but well that still leaves the issue of exporting it into blender

[magic nova]

Jannis said that in the next update (5.1.0 probabaly because this would be a feature addition and not a bug fix) He will be implementing this. Enough people have been asking for it.

What I figure will happen is that you can make your mesh the way you want to, and then when exporting the model will be baked as a single mesh.

[surreal forum]

i would like to preserve separate meshes but even if not it would be a big upgrade anyway

[magic nova]

Hey @obsidian folio and @surreal forum the new Blockbench update fixed this. You can now make multimesh armatures.

[obsidian folio]

Love

[surreal forum]

nice thanks for info
its gonna be so much easier

[magic nova]

Agreed. I'll need to test it out more.

[obsidian folio]

Everything even groups can be put in the armature

So thats great caus you can now mix between 100% weight painted model ,and other model like torse as a 2 bones weight painting

For exemple spine / torso

[surreal forum]

man now i wished i'd waited a week before starting my project well too bad

[obsidian folio]

what do you mean ?

[surreal forum]

i've started creating robot model for my project like week ago and wasted few days trying to weight paint it and export to blender with no luck

well can't predict future

[obsidian folio]

Yeah its a weird case sorry for you 😄

[surreal forum]

now if i can figure out pipeline thats would only leave rendering to blender then i will be happy

[obsidian folio]

But have you all part separated somewhere ?

[surreal forum]

ya i got few safe files in diffrent stages

[obsidian folio]

Okay so you can reinport everything in BB

[surreal forum]

yes nothing really lost just gotta redo rigging again

[magic nova]

hehehe the practice is valuable! I was messing with the rigging system all throughout the beta and must have rerigged the same model a dozen times!

[surreal forum]

ya happends but it always is painfull to try and try again to just find it dose not work at the time

[magic nova]

Well, things just got a lot easier for us! Being able to have multimesh armatures means we won't have to worry about weightpainting anymore, and it opens us up to be able to make blended soft & hard body armatures!

[surreal forum]

it really makes me want to do some kind of animal robot hybrid

[magic nova]

Maybe when I get around to a tutorial I will make a cyborg character.

[surreal forum]

will be great to see that