Rigging & Weight Painting Clothing

At an elbow, for example, some vertices are influenced mostly by the upper-arm bone and others by the forearm. A smooth blend between them lets the sleeve bend naturally.

1. Get an authorized body developer kit. For a mesh body, use the kit provided or approved by its creator. For classic avatars, use an appropriately compatible Second Life/OpenSim skeleton reference. Follow the kit's licensing and export rules.
2. Open the kit in Blender 5.2. Find the body mesh and its armature in the Outliner. Keep the rig in its rest pose; do not randomly rename or reposition bones.
3. Fit a simple shirt or tunic over the body. Keep the garment in the same position and scale as the reference body. Avoid extreme intersections or large gaps.
4. Save a working copy (File → Save As) before you transfer weights. Preserve the original developer-kit file as your backup.

Using a body that is already rigged is usually much easier than painting every bone from scratch. Weight Transfer gives your shirt a starting point.

1. Make sure the body and shirt overlap in the same rest pose. Temporarily hide parts you don't need, but keep your source body and shirt visible for the operation.
2. In Object Mode, select the body first (source), then Shift-select the shirt last (target/active object).
3. Switch the shirt to Weight Paint Mode. Use Weights → Transfer Weights (you can also search for the command with F3).
4. Open Adjust Last Operation (F9) immediately afterward. Set the transfer to copy the body's vertex-group layers by name / all groups, and choose a nearby-surface mapping such as Nearest Face Interpolated. Labels can vary by Blender version.
5. Return to Object Mode, select the shirt, and check Object Data Properties → Vertex Groups. You should see groups matching the avatar rig's bone names.
6. In Modifiers (wrench icon), add an Armature modifier to the shirt. Choose the existing avatar armature in its Object field; enable deformation by vertex groups. Do not create a new random skeleton.

Why two steps? Transferring weights supplies the vertex-group values, but the Armature modifier is what tells Blender which skeleton should use them. The clothing needs both.

Not moving yet? Check that the shirt has the right bone-named vertex groups and an Armature modifier referencing the kit armature. Painting colors alone doesn't bind the garment.

1. With the shirt selected, enter Weight Paint Mode. Choose a relevant bone's vertex group (for example, chest, shoulder, upper arm or forearm) from the vertex-group list.
2. Use the Draw brush gently to add or reduce influence. Start with low Strength so the change is gradual. The Blur/Smear or smoothing tools can help soften jagged weight transitions.
3. Focus on motion areas: shoulders, armpits, elbows, waist and hips. For skirts and dresses, test the pelvis-to-thigh transition especially carefully.
4. Use Weights → Normalize All so the total influence on vertices is consistent. Use Weights → Limit Total with a limit of 4 for a conservative SL/OpenSim workflow. Then use Clean to remove negligible leftovers and normalize again if necessary.
5. For symmetrical garments, use weight mirroring only when the mesh, rest pose and bone naming are set up for it. Check both sides afterward.

Select the existing armature, enter Pose Mode, and test a few gentle poses. Watch the clothing, not just the body.

Try different poses, then return the armature to its original rest pose before exporting (clear any test pose transforms, e.g. in Pose Mode select the posed bones and use Alt+R for rotation). Save the corrected shirt as a new version.

Body sliders need their own test: Fitted-mesh sliders behave differently from pose-bone rotations. Always test slider extremes in the target viewer, even when Blender poses look perfect.

Our Mesh Refinery has a rigged-clothing path: it can read a skinned .glb with armature and bone weights, preserve weights while preparing LOD meshes, and package Collada .dae files. This is different from its static-prop workflow in Lesson 11.

1. In Blender, verify the shirt is weighted and its Armature modifier points to the kit armature. Keep the rig in its intended rest pose. Hide reference body geometry from export if it isn't meant to be worn.
2. Choose File → Export → glTF 2.0; select glTF Binary (.glb). Include the shirt and its needed armature (use a selective export only if all necessary rig objects are included). Enable Skinning and export bone influences conservatively; avoid baking unrelated test animations.
3. Open The Mesh Refinery on this website. Import the .glb and make sure the tool recognizes it as rigged clothing with bones. Inspect the tool's rig-check warnings and the avatar-facing setting.
4. Review all four rigged LODs, material faces and textures. Export the rigged .dae upload ZIP. Do not assume a static-only converter will preserve skin weights—use the tool's rigged output.
5. In a compatible OpenSim or Second Life viewer, open the model uploader, load the high LOD and appropriate lower LODs, and check the Include skin weights / rigging option. For ordinary clothing using the existing avatar skeleton, generally leave Include joint positions unchecked unless the developer kit or grid explicitly instructs otherwise.
6. After uploading, Add/Wear the clothing on the intended body, play animations, sit, move, and check the fit with body sliders. Make adjustments in Blender and repeat a test upload as needed.

Compatibility note: Skeleton and bone support vary by avatar body, viewer and OpenSim grid. A successful conversion doesn't guarantee perfect deformation, fitted-mesh slider behavior or cross-body compatibility. Test a small sample before finalizing a wardrobe.