Loss of vertex group/bone associations in Blender

[xavier]

I already asked this over at Elysiun, but someone here might know too...

I have a model composed of about 30 rigid submeshes and 5 armatures. For reasons discussed elsewhere, I need to export it as a single mesh.

The easiest way to assign the vertex groups is to select each submesh one at a time, parent it to an armature in the normal fashion and choose "Name Groups" and then assign the vertices for that mesh into the proper vertex group.

However, once I "Join selected meshes" into a single mesh, I lose the associations between the groups and the bones. They are all still named the same (i.e. each group is named the same as the bone it is with) and the vertices are all still in each group as expected, but moving the bones around in Pose mode no longer moves any mesh (it all works fine when the model is 30 separate submeshes).

I take that back; the mesh and armatures parented to the root armature move fine; nothing else does. If I select a mesh at the end of a limb as the last thing selected before CTRL-J'ing, everything in that limb and up through the root work fine too.

Am I missing something or is this an issue with Blender?

[reimpell]

However, once I "Join selected meshes" into a single mesh, I lose the associations between the groups and the bones.

This is a bug in Blender.

[xavier]

Actually, what they said in the Elysiun forums is that the "release" versions of Blender, you can only have one armature per mesh; CVS builds do not have this limitation. Does that sound correct?

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=488997

[NeOmega]

I'll just post what I posted at Elysium:

If your mesh is made of rigid mesh pieces, then you should not have a problem reassigning them. I would suggest using the "L" key to select linked vertices, unassign them, then reassign them.

I have run into something luike this before, and it seems only unassigning/reassigning the vertices works. Sounds like a lot of work, but really isnt... especially if your mesh is broken up in rigid parts.

For future reference for OGRE models using Blender:

1 mesh
1 armature
A vertice can only belong to 4 different bones at once (not a problem with robots usually, but perhaps for more organic shapes/animations)

[xavier]

Yup, saw it there too, I'll give it a shot. I thought it would end up being something like that -- which is not a huge hardship, btw -- but just didn't know which particular set of steps was necessary (it wasn't enough, unfortunately, just to deselect the vertices in a group and reassign them).

Thanks!