I have basically got 3 joints. Head, Body and 50/50 of both.



However, on certain animations the 50/50 part stretches obscenely. Does anyone know why that might be happening and if it can be fixed?

Depending on how the vertices are distributed around the mesh and in the joints, you'll often want to even the joints out based on placement - you can do some vertices with a 25/75 or 30/60 split (one side 30/60, middle 50/50, the other 60/30, depending on which joint they're closest to)

If the head joint is very far from the body joint, you don't want 100 "head", maybe not even 50/50 "head+body" on the parts that are closer to the body joint than the head joint.

Also make sure the mesh comments are set up for 3 or more joints. In Milkshape, make sure the comments have "NumSkinWgts: 3" if you're splitting weights between two or more joints, or the mesh only exports one level of weights (everything 100% to one joint) instead of 2-4 (mixed weights).

Got another pic of it. I set it to 3 joints, but didn't make any difference.

Is the spider smaller or larger than the original hamster (main body)?
I think it might look better if you made sure the legs don't split up, but instead follow whichever part of the body they are attached to. Spiders have more rigid bodies than hamsters. The back of the body likely need to be weighted a bit different (make sure it's not 100% a different joint, so it follows the front a bit better and doesn't have a clean split in the middle).

Checking how the hamster is weighted compared to the joint placement could be useful.

Could you take a picture of the joint weights colored in, from Milkshape? (turn on "show skeleton" + "draw vertices with bone colors", position the view over the spider, then right-click the 3D window and click "take screenshot")

(seeing the actual file would also be useful)

Okay, the first picture is of the terrifying 12 legged womrat lol. Just to show where the meshes are in relation to each other.

The second picture is with the joints showing, comparing my spider (left), womrat (middle) and TNW's spider (right). I copied the bones off TNW's spider, but the legs ended up too complex, so they got lumped with the body/head.

Third picture is just my spider, zoomed in on the 50/50 vertices. Although all the legs are attached to the head, I'd given the back set of legs the body joint, as they were stretched out beside the body.

I attached the file as well and the cage file in case it's needed.

Thanks for trying to help. I'm terrible with bones.

First of all, your spider seems to have gained a double skeleton (last in the joint list should be 46, not 8D). This can sometimes cause trouble. It's easy to fix by importing the original mesh (in this case a hamster) or otherwise a mesh you know has the right amount and placement of joints (as in correct age/gender/type/etc.), importing your mesh over it, saying "no" to "include additional bone definitions", and then deleting the original mesh. It replaces the skeleton while keeping the comments and bone assignments (but check just in case).

You can also see the joints a bit better if you reduce the joint size.
File -->preferences --> Misc --> Joint size "0.010000"

I think the spider might move a bit better if you use the spine/head/neck joints for the main body, but the joints are such a confusing mess I'm having a bit of trouble with it myself. The overview in the CRES might be of help, once you've sorted out the double skeleton.

Not entirely sure which joints are which even then, because while #9 seems to be the head, #46 seems to be the right toe, but the actual joint is in the upper middle of the mesh instead of to the side. Even I'm a bit confused here...

I'll poke it a bit more and try figuring out which joints are which.

If it helps, this is the spider I based it off. http://www.theninthwavesims.com/201...p-required.html