Attaching the Armature to the Mesh

Now that all the bones have been made, I needed to attach these bones to the mesh so that when the bones are moved, the mesh is moves also. To attach the armature, the bones first need to be parented to the mesh. When parenting the bones, there is the option to create vertex groups. I selected the option 'Create from Bone Heat' which basically tells the mesh to attach the mesh to a bone if it is in close proximity to that bone. This saves a lot of trouble of having to weight paint the entire model.










After creating the vertex groups, I decided to check the rigging to see how the mesh would respond when posing the armature. It was here that I noticed a problem with the rigging on the right hand of the armature. Instead of bending in sync with the ring finger, all of the fingers bend off in different directions, regardless of which way the original ring finger bent.

To solve this, I first tried unattaching and then reattaching all of the parents and constraints in the hand, but the problem still persisted. The next step I took was to check the names of the bones, incase there was a problem with the left-right names being flipped. Lastly, I decided to research this problem on the internet and see if there was a fix. In the end, it turns out there was a problem with something called the 'bone roll', which needed to be recalculated after the left armature had been mirrored. By re-aligning the z-axis with the cursor of the bone rolls, I fixed this problem.