hi all!

i've got a question in regards to having a conforming figure (shoulder belt) that spans multi groups (chest, rCollar, abdomen), i have a sheath on the backside of the belt (part of belt obj)...i have a knife that i want in that sheath...okay?

so we all know that the belt is conforming to M3 (example) but do we make the knife parent one part of the figure (rCollar) or do we make the knife parent to the shoulder belt? you see i can forsee the problem of posing the figure and having everything conform correctly to the figure but the knife will be hanging in space just outside the sheath...just trying to avoid that! lol!

thanks all!

It sounds as if you may need to make the sheath a separate prop also, unless it is a distinct body part.  The way you explain it, the sheath is going to bend.

John

Two ways to do it.... First, to have the sheath a smart-prop to the shoulder belt. I believe the cr2 can be saved with that relationship (saving the user from having to do it). Better, I think, is to make the sheath its own group, parented to whichever part of the belt conformer is most convenient, and turn bending off on that body part. I've used variations on the latter several times. The trick is that a conforming clothing item may contain body parts that do not match the figure beneath; giving you the opportunity to pose or otherwise adjust them manually. (If you wanted to be really, really tricky you could put some ERC channels in the sheath that let if compensate for certain poses. The problem there is you have to call on cross-talk to do it; the rotations it would need to "see" are present in the conformed-to figure, not the conforming shoulder belt.)

great...thanks for the replies!

There's no reason a scabbard couldn';t be treated as an extra limb, as long as you were careful to have the mesh-grouping 1 parent-group to each child. You have a thumb and four fingers branching off the hand, after all.