I’ve just started to learn XSI mod tool, and I wanted to add a Wehrmacht helmet (prop from DoDS) to a Classic zombie. So, I started to fit the helmet onto the zombie in XSI mod tool, removed a lot of points on the head of the zombie and the bottom of the helmet, then selected both, right click, merge, and it all seemed to work, it was one mesh now.

I know I have done something wrong because when exported and compiled it looks like this. The Helmet is floating in the air and the ragdoll turned in a heap of crap.

So, the question, How do I attach a prop to a ragdoll?

Oh, eh, is this the right forum?

It looks like the envelope weights are all messed up. 

Try this:  Select the mesh.  Hit w (brings up weight paint, and shows which deformer is affecting which vertice).  Do they look correct? 

Whenever I import decompiled models from HL2/TF2/L4D, they seem to all have incorrect envelopes.  Actually, on the last model I imported, it looked like the weights were correctly assigned, but when I played the animation, it got totally messed up (similar to your screenshot)-inside XSI that is…

Reason your helmet isn’t part of the tangled mess is it has no weights assigned to it; you still need to add your helmet to the envelope.  I was gonna say don’t have it automatically assign it, cause it would undo the previous one, but actually that may be a good thing.

I’m sorry, I keep getting messed up ragdolls, I did what you said, but I’m not sure what’s right or wrong, could you, maybe, write a step by step instruction what to do when you add something to a ragdoll?

Search Youtube for Softimage and Half Life 2.  There was a video on there explaining how to replace Combine Policemen with a Skeleton character.  Shows how to import a hat, glasses, and a skeleton mesh, merge them all together and export it for HL2.

As I kept adjusting the envelopes, change, compile, check, change, compile check etc.
I finally got it right, but now there’s holes everywhere. :(

I have no idea what I did to make that happen.

Edit: And thanks for the tip about the tutorial, that helped alot.

Ha - that pic is kinda funny.  :)

The holes might be due to a material not being assigned to those polys, or maybe they don’t have uvs/texture projection.

Yeah, I thought that was also a great tutorial, so I decided to provide a link in it’s own thread.

Oh, right, I found the cause, I pressed the wrong button, “Smooth envelope weights” at some point, forgot to undo, and it looked the same. :o

I think it’s fine now, the hands are usually kind of messed up because the zombie has extremely long fingers, and in Gmod it uses human animations.

While looking at the viewmodel thread, I found this link which might be helpful for you:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_worldmodels_from_viewmodels