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20. Assigning joints

Now the shape and the texture mapping is finished. But before we can go preview our mesh with a nifty texture we need to look at the joints.
This is because we added brand new shapes and the game needs to know how the shapes move in the game. If you forget to assign all vertices to a joint you get an error message when exporting.
Ok, so click the joints tab. You'll see a long list of joints to choose from. How do you find out what joint so assign to? Well as the maxis mesh is already assigned to joints you just need to find out to which joints the closest maxis vertices are assigned. You may need to assign different parts of the shape to different joints if you make a larger shape.
But first make sure all parts of the mesh is visible (Edit -> unhide all).
Then click the SelUnassigned button to see which parts of the mesh are not assigned yet.


No surprice, it's the belt. Ok, so find out which joints the hip are assigned to by choosing different joints from the list and clicking SelAssigned.


The pelvis comes closest.
Now select the belt again by clicking SelUnassigned and with the pelvis joint selected press the Assign button.
To check that everything is assigned right click first the SelUnassigned botton to see no vertices were left out and then Pelvis, SelAssigned to see all the vertices assigned to the pelvis. Well, everything looks just fine.

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