Model won't follow its armature in pose mode

Question

I've set up a rig and built it around my model, and I've linked it to my model but when I rotate the bones in pose mode, the character doesn't move with them.

My rig is the human meta rig that comes with rigify. I've seen tons of videos of it working. Why isn't it working on mine?

My character was made by creating different body parts and joining them together into the same object, then a texture was added by unwrapping them in texture mode.

Answer 1

try following these steps

after joining all the separate parts and the body mesh together, you should parent the body mesh to the armature by ( in object mode )

1. selecting the mesh then the armature and pressing Ctrl P
2. select Armature Deform >> With Automatic Weights
3. select only the mesh and go to Modifiers
4. deselect Bone Envelopes in the Armature Modifier

5. press Tab to enter Edit Mode and navigate to Vertex Groups
6. ensure only necessary vertices belong to each Vertex Group

7. press Tab to enter Object Mode
8. select the armature and press Ctrl Tab to enter Pose Mode
9. select a bone and move by pressing G or rotate by pressing R

hope this helps!

Answer 2

I had this same problem, and the apparent solution is wasn't obvious to me. You see, I had done the weight painting setup against the base human meta-rig. However, it is only used for getting the base setup of the rigify armature. When you reparent the model to the generated rigify armature, it doesn't work because it is not using the same bones as the human meta-rig. What you must do is parent against the rigify armature with Automatic Weights (or empty groups), and then do the weight painting process.