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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 27th Oct 2015 at 8:33 AM Last edited by anna131313262 : 27th Oct 2015 at 9:33 PM. Reason: Fixed!
Default (Problem solved!) Accessory Mesh Bone Assignment Woes
EDIT: I figured out a good set of bone assignments after all - I'll put my solution in the reply!

I'm making a set of Sailor Moon choker accessories for female, child through adult sims. I tore the base mesh off the teen outfit GothSpikeNeck and did a fair amount of stretching and deleting and poking here and there. (I think) I've got the positioning and UV mapping down, but now I'm running into problems with bone assignments. I'm using Milkshape 1.8.5 with UniMesh plugins.

Here's the bone assignment settings I've tried so far. The names in front of each are arbitrary, I'm just using them for better identification. I've got pics of the in-game choker plus its bone assignments in Milkshape. Left sim in game image is teen, right is adult.

Moon Choker: Everything 100% assigned to the neck bones. This is the setting I put everything on to begin with - only to realize there was some really bad clipping plus some other weird animation.



Heart Choker: Bottom row of vertices 60% to neck bones plus 40% to Spine 2 bones. This is the best set of results, but honestly still not like I'd like it to be. The few vertices in between the top and bottom are 80% neck and 20% Spine 2.



Pluto Choker: Same as above, plus extra Spine 2 assignments to the dangley piece there, which is 30% neck and 70% Spine 2. The piece's assignments look great, but the choker bit is still clippy.



Saturn Choker: Bottom row of vertices 100% to Spine 2. Middle bits gradually increase neck bone percentage towards the top. Far too stretchy for my tastes.




And then there were the kids...

Moon choker again was the control. Still a lot of clipping.


Pluto and heart chokers had the same assignments as the adult and teen chokers. Yet this happened (It looks fine in Milkshape, but not in BodyShop or game):


I did a Saturn choker for kids even though I expected it would be terrible. And it was.


I then did one child specific test: bottom vertices 92% neck and 8% Spine 2. Minimal shrinkage but still clipping!



Any help or suggestions or condolences would be appreciated. I can also provide the mesh files for people to poke at if needed. Thanks!
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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#2 Old 27th Oct 2015 at 9:45 PM
Alright, so I realized the solution to this problem was to look at another choker accessory mesh bone assignment rather than the body mesh bone assignments like I had been. I took a look at one of LianaSims2's choker meshes and saw they had used more Spine 2 assignments than neck assignments. I set the top row of vertices to 70% Spine 2 and 30% neck, and the bottom row to 100% Spine 2.

Here's a pic of my results:


I mean, there's still a little bit of stretching going on, but its so much better than how it was.

I didn't take a pic of the child mesh, but the top row is set to 92% Spine 2 and 8% neck. I had to reposition the choker, but it still worked.

Conclusions:
Neck bones on sims are wonky, especially on child sims. Spine 2 is generally a better bone assignment to use for necklace/choker accessories. Use another simmer's bone assignments as a reference for accessories, rather than body mesh bone assignments.

Anyway, I'm leaving this post up in case it helps anyone else in their bone assignment problems!
Screenshots
Lab Assistant
#3 Old 1st Dec 2015 at 12:54 AM
You are doing way too much work! all you need to do is assign the choker to the neck bone and it will move just fine.

You can do this using the joints tab

simply select the vertexes you need to assign the bones to then go into the joints tab. Go to the first bar under where it says vertex weights. I like to check show vertex with bone color so I can see that the assignment worked or if I missed any vertexes. Then simply scroll throw all the bones till you see neck. Select neck. Drag the percent underneath it to 100 then go all the way to the bottom of the tab where it says assign and hit assign.

that should do the trick. I've always done this and never had problems.
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