Character shoes..do I attach to character mesh for animating?

Danzigo

Hi guys,

Probably an easy question...

I'm not sure on what to do with the shoes I have modelled for my character. I have them on the character, surrounding the feet at the moment.

Do I delete the feet and just leave part of the leg inside the shoe?

Do I attach the shoe to the character mesh and then go on with rigging from there?

Or does the shoe need to actually be joined with the mesh by welding vertices and bridging etc.. so it's not just an attached piece of geometry?

I'm just not sure how this works. What's the best way, for animating, so that the shoe stays on the foot?

Thanks alot

.Wiki

Is the character allready weighted? If yes you could just copy the character weights to the shoes and then you can delete the feet it they wont be visible and if its for a game.

How you copy the weights depends on the software you use. In Softimage there is the great tool "gator" which allows to easily copy UVs, weightmaps and a lot of other stuff even if the topology not matches.

But for a better deformation and movement your shoes would need a topology which is nearly the same as your feet.

Danzigo

Everything is just a model and no skinning has been done yet. I'm using 3Ds Max.

See the pic below. Everything is attached. I have selected the polys of the leg and they end at the top of the shoe. This looks fine but I just wanted to make sure, when the skinning and rigging comes in, that it is ok for the leg to just end like that. Is this how it normally works in character animation?

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