Help with capes/Blender/Skope

[SickAlice]

This may be possible or not but if anyone can figure out where I'm going wrong. I'm trying to make working capes that are
attached to the forearms of a mesh. There are five models in the Blend. The female body, cape and cape 001 originally.
Those are weighted. The two I brought in that are not weight painted are capeL and capeR.

What I tried to do was join female, cape and cape001 then weight copy to capeL and capeR. I tried that individually and
joined capeL and capeR. Then I did the usual and deleted the old stuff and assigned the new weighted capes to the armature
then exported and skoped it into the character.nif, into the cape node. It works but the arm capes fall away from their
original position, the capes themselves to the left and right respectively of their forearms and regardless whether
individual or joined as well to the back and down. You'll see in the fly animations for example.

If anyone can figure out what I'm missing that would cool. In the Blender the original meshes are not yet joined, I left
that open in case it's the wrong move. Or if the problem was my positioning the original is Sif by Gren which can be found
there's also a copy of the nif that's untainted with all the extra stuff stripped out. Thanks to anyone who takes a look
at it.

http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/4armcapetest.rar

[Randomdays]

Downloaded and taking a look

[SickAlice]

To add because I assumed something here I've done the weight copy thing from Joined objects a lot and successfully and more often with capes. Standard move, import a nif and join to objects, say the body and cape then weight copy to your new model from it. It's how you make capes that are joined to the costume like Emma Frosts cape for example. This time it's just given me a big no, normally those capes should be attached where they picked up weights on the model, the forearms and the further part of the cape drags towards where the cape would normally flow. See INK's Storm with sidecapes.

[SickAlice]

Nevermind I figured it out lol. So I guess as not to waste the space I'll explain it.

So normal procedure as above, join body and cape. Import new cape model that falls into the body and weight paint it from the original now joined body and cape models.

Except in this case start over. Import the nif with the cape and body. Go into Edit mode and move the top vertices, I chose the very top row into a part of the body, I'm choosing the forearm here. Make sure the line closely with some vertices so there's something to pick up info from on weighting. I shrank these moved cape verts at this point to fit inside the female body arm. Then for good look move more rows so the cape looks natural, I move the next two down but important to leave a good part of the bottom right where it's at.

Now save this Blend and export that cape. Do whatever clean up needed and import that warped cape model. Join the original body and deformed cape. Weight the imported to that (after smoothing the faces of course). Save this Blend. Export the nif and skope it into your other nif. Works like a charm of course.

Here's were we move to arm capes. Open up the Blender and go into Edit. Grab up the vertices that aren't inside the arm, shrink where need be. This includes the bottom part of the cape we left before. Now move all of that to the arm so it's in a position that looks like a cape hanging off the arm. Save the Blend. Export the model. Fix the model, reopen the Blender, weight copy and export the now sculpted arm cape and stick it the other nif with Nifskope. Works like a charm.

Lastly of course now you can sculpt a real nice arm cape. Or maybe the character has gauze or some other thing hanging off that arm. This is all for Black Cat's modern arm fur for me btw. And then lastly import that to your last saved Blend, weight copy, export and skope and it's good to go.

Going to experiment and see if I can pull this off on different body parts. Maybe try some long braided ponytail deal to the head, a tail to the pelvis and something off the calves.

Side note and something I often do in this it's good to delete body vertices you aren't using so there isn't a chance the weighted model picks up extra node info. Especially in that first step where the still large cape is going to be running through a lot of the body. So in my case I deleted all of the female body mesh with the exception of that left forearm. That included the hand too so I wouldn't grab anything from their by accident.