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To everyone here doing playermodels.
When i started with my clones i found out eventualy that the hands werent moving, they were sticking right through the rifle...after some time i came to the conclusion that i didnt envelope it to the hand bones, i looked but there was no hand bone.

after consulting psych0fred i looked on his site and came to the following conclusion...

the hand bones are HIDDEN, if you want to have proper working hands, got the explorer window, press "L" to go to the layer view. Go the bones layer, find bone_R_hand and bone_L_hand and manualy unhide then.
After you have done this you can envelop it to the hands so it will work properly.

hope this was helpfull

Been there done that.

You can even unhide them from Explorer>SceneRoot by going through the hierarchy tree. You also have to unhide bone_l_hand, and bone_r_hand if you want to animate them. Out of all views, I consider the explorer to be of the most use when it comes to modeling (texturing/skinning and animation are entirely different beasts). In explorer, you can select any property to modify, even removing the envelope operator completely from the CloneTrooper mesh provided (afterwards you can export the bones only as .emdl w/o the mesh).

Another rule of thumb when doing player models is after enveloping, take your time to adjust the envelope weights, and test the range of motion for each bone and how it affects the mesh. That way you ensure the proper bones move the correct portions of the mesh, and you don't get any weird deformations.

maxloef wrote:...hope this was helpfull

Yes! thank you

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:

maxloef wrote:...hope this was helpfull

Yes! thank you

Same. But how do you "Un-hide" them?

EGG_GUTS wrote:

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:

maxloef wrote:...hope this was helpfull

Yes! thank you

Same. But how do you "Un-hide" them?

right click/properties/viewing/view visibility

Wow, this is very helpful, thanks!

You can un-hide them by selecting them with the explorer and hitting "H".

oh maxloef, whilst your in that sorta "helpfull" mood, maybe you could give a short tutorial on how you got your weights so good on your models?

thanks in advance

@maxloef
like VF501 said, you really should use an Explorer(hotkey 8 ), and make your bone selection in there when enveloping, it's so much easier and it shows you everything in your scene whether something is hidden or not, overall it just takes the guesswork out of it.

In the Explorer view, branch select(middle click) bone_root and press H twice ,once to hide all and a second time to unhide all in the hierarchy if you want.
Select only the bones and press ctrl+g or right click and select "Create Group", then just save that scene and you'll have a re-usable template for future player model enveloping that you can then merge into your scene containing the player model you're working on.
Then when you're ready to start enveloping all you have to do is Get>Envelope>Set Envelope> select your Group(containing all of the bones) and you're done, do your weight editing and then export.
It's quick and easy and you won't ever miss any "hidden" bones.