Oddity: Animating Elite Guard's Pauldrons?

[Domarius]

They don't move with the arms. This means once I've finished animating the arms, I have to then animate the pauldrons to match - its essentially me doing the same thing twice. Is there a better way for me to go about this? Can't they just be attatched to the upper arms?

[oDDity]

No, then they'll cut through the body at various places during various movements. It's not that difficult or time consuming to do them separately.

[Domarius]

Wouldn't it be better to have them attatched, and then tweak them when clipping actually does occour?

 

As far as I can tell, most of the time they would be fine, and clipping would not be frequent.

 

And judging from last night, it would save me a decent bit of time that I could better spend on other areas of the anim.

[oDDity]

It wouldn't be any faster to do it that way, and it also looks rather ridiculous to have them glued to the arms.

[Domarius]

So there should be a bit of "play" in them when the arms move - like the arm moves forward, and the pauldron doesn't, untill the arm moves past a certain point, and THEN the pauldron moves?

[oDDity]

Yes, they are basically hinged to the neck guard and should flap up and down, though they dont' go below a certain angle when the arms are at his sides.

[Domarius]

Do you think you could do me a screen shot then, of how far they go down, and any other poses you might think are significant. That would be good because of course the whole thing is seperate and I'm not even sure where it's supposed to be hinged.

 

I will try to guess in what way they should flap up and down, but if you can offer suggestions there that would be good too. I assume they are heavy and would only flap up and down very slightly while running.