Hey guys! I had 0 luck with finding answer everywhere else, so I’m trying my luck here.
I have multi mesh character (r2d2) made and rigged in blender, textured in substance painter. Each part had more objects, but i connected them for easier texturing. Each part has it’s own material (texture set). Problem is that i don’t know how do i attach those separated objects to skeleton.
a) get this to work and basically have multiple mesh rig
b) Connect all meshes together in blender, retexture it (one material for the whole character) and traditionaly attach skeletal mesh.
These have their own pros and cons, and may requires knowledge of character blueprint, but you have a few choices that does not requires re-do UVs(texturing).
merge only skeleton and animations, then use Modular Characters system. I am not 100% sure about your skeleton hierarchy and complexity, but your riggings seems relatively simple. therfore you just need a single root bone which has body and limbs as direct children. just beware any children of the Master Bone has to be a subset with the exact matching structure(arms need to be re-exported including root of body).
having many skeletons or separated parts might be later headaches - one example is bad performance. if you don’t need changing parts, combine bones and meshes then assign separated materials refer Multiple Materials. combined mesh requires re-do Skin/Weight job but it would be not a big deal since your character is rigid.
create arm sockets on the body skeletal mesh, then attach arms skeletal meshes to the body as form of child actors blueprint or skeletal mesh components.
because each parts will use its own animation sequences, you may have some problems when the synchronization of animations is critical.
you may build relatively complex animation blueprint,
or you will have to prepare animations that has same unit length
(sync animations manually),
or look for right looping frame lengths of common multiple.
i.e. 120 frames for the body and 60 for the arms.
Im using method 1, modular characters and armor that share the same Body-frame bones. (And Set Master pose node in CharBP > so child meshes use Parent’s animation.)
But now I want to add different [child/addon] Hair bones that attach to the final Head bone.
Meaning I want to import a Rig, Body mesh, Head mesh, and Hair Mesh/hair bone set 1.
Then import the same Rig, Body, Head, and Hair Mesh/bone set 2 - so they still share the same anims.
Can you please direct me: what this is called? Child bones? (Idk what it’s called, thus not getting good search results.) Thanks.
And how to import it?
How to import the first Main-body frame-bones (that will link to animBP/anims).
But then import a new SK that has slight differences to the Hair bones that are at the End of the Head hierarchy, thus body anims are not affected. Yet at Import do I select the prior Main-body Skeleton? Or do I create a new skeleton and [assign it as a child of the first somehow]? (Ive seen this done in an asset I bought, but dont know how.)
Im using Kawaii physics. Thus I need hair bones to get the wiggle.
But I need body bones attached the the [joined body + Head + hair mesh import], or else the Hair bones will not have a body-bone reference to prevent hair from sinking into the body mesh:
