I wont go into too much detail, but i'll briefly explain what i'm up to and then my problem:

I need to make a sword in two parts, the hilt as a standard Weapon and the blade as an Armor piece. The blade must be skinned to the hand bone in the correct location relative to the hilt being held. So what i'm doing first is to take the whole mesh (blade+hilt) and skinning it to the hand. I can then equip both this new armor piece and the hilt weapon at the same time and then trial & error my way to the correct location. Once i get it right i can then delete the hilt out of the mesh and carry on working.

But i'm falling at the first hurdle. I have made armours before without (too many) problems, but for the life of me i cannot get this sword to work right. I have skinned the whole mesh to the right hand bone and then put it into bodyslot 46. But in game it doesn't follow the player's hand at all. Instead it just sits stationary, floating next to the player, pointing towards the heading.

Here's a couple links to some screenshots (ignore the test texture) and an archive containing my nif and the max file if anybody wants to take a look:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0uhns0wmziysvls/problem1.bmp

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z3rehu3sjkl8wgp/problem2.bmp

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hsz7mh92ahz9lyr/Katana.7z

I'm so confused...

- Hypno

My first thought is it should be skinned to the entire hand, just like any gauntlet would be, while in the position you want it to be in. Is there some reason it's only skinned to R Hand?

Well my thinking was that i want the whole mesh to move with the hand, rigidly. So i just picked the R hand bone for the whole thing. If the skinning was spread out to multiple bones wont that make the mesh deform if those bones move about relative to each other?

- Hypno

Hmm, you could be right, but it was just a guess as I don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish. If you just want the blade to be held in the right hand, perhaps set it up like a shield or torch?

Ok I'll explain what I'm trying to accomplish in full:

Ultimately, what I'm trying to make is a Katana Flick-Knife, where the blade extends or contracts from the hilt when the player draws or sheathes the weapon (think medieval Jedi ).

To accomplish this there's going to be multiple parts.

First is the closed version, which is set up as a normal weapon, with blood meshes and full collision, just no visibly open blade.

Then the blade that the player will see will be equipped when needed via a script attached to the weapon (and probably an alias, haven't gone that far planning it all out).

I'll be using Anton's new animation tools to accomplish the extending/collapsing visuals. I have a strong feeling that this tool only works for skinned armor meshes, hence why I'm trying to get the blade in as an armor piece.

It's definitely my skinning technique that is the issue here. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong to be honest.

If somebody could quickly just take my nif, import it into their modelling program of choice and re-skin the mesh to the one right hand bone correctly so the sword follows the hand in-game, it would be greatly appreciated. It doesn't have to be in the right place, as all I'll use it for is to import it into my own scene, then use it in the Skin Wrap modifier to steal the skin and put it on my own meshes. I can then carry on with my trial & error

Anybody fancy quickly helping me out? My brain hurts

- Hypno