Adding Weapons to the Rig

[Rain]

Hi everyone,

I hope this is the right place to ask this. I’ve searched online and the forums and couldn’t find anything.

I’ve watched the tutorials and built a rig from the Game Biped template which is working brilliantly! I am just struggling with adding weapons to the rig. I want to add a rifle that is attached to the right hand IK, and the left hand IK needs to follow the rifle at the front. And if possible, I would like to have the option to attach and detach this rifle from the hands.

Sorry if this is a basic question, I’m still a bit of a amateur when it comes to rigging and mgear, I would really appreciate if anyone is able to help me with this.

Thanks

[chrislesage]

Here are some tips/clues for you:

• Instead of the gun following the right hand IK, consider making it follow the hand. Then it will follow IK and FK.
• Better yet, add a control_01 control. Make THAT follow the hand. And make the gun follow that control. Then it will give you an extra offset to animate. Extra control_01s will also help you avoid cycles.
• Then on the left hand, you can add the gun control as a space switch on the IK.

So to elaborate a bit: What I basically do is make two extra control_01 controls. handHook_L0_hook and handHook_R0_hook. (My own custom name that doesn’t have _ctl, so the animators don’t interact with it. And I delete the shape nodes, so there is nothing to select for them. It just holds the space switches.) They are constrained to hand joints.

Then on the weapon, I add those hooks as space switches. So the weapon can follow chest (for a chest holster or something), handHook_L0, handHook_R0, world, local, and any other spaces you need.

Then the left IK has the gun as a space switch in the IK Reference Array. So it can follow the gun, but doesn’t have to. The left IK does NOT follow the handHook controls, because that would cause a cycle.

I hope that is detailed and clear enough to help!

[Rain]

Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it. It works perfectly!!