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Replacing the Mesh
You should finalize the mesh before proceeding with rigging and tracking, if at all possible. Special care must be taken if you have set up painted vertex weights for deformation control or do-not-track regions, and then you later change the mesh (the weights are stored per vertex, leaving a puzzle if vertices are added, removed, or renumbered). Without care, the painting will have to be dropped. Changes are sometimes unavoidable, and you don't want to have to redo the painting, so read on!
Some SynthEyes tools may update weights if you edit the mesh, namely lightsaber deletion and Delete Unused Vertices, but those are special cases. Building
new portions of mesh should be done before rigging and tracking, or if it must be done, you must use the mesh-replace tool described next.
If you need to replace the mesh with another, and maintain the existing vertex weights, you must use the GeoH Mesh Replace Script name or the Hierarchy View. From the Hierarchy View, you drag the new mesh onto the GeoH object containing the old mesh, and you'll be asked what you want to do.
Never use SynthEyes's Reload mesh capability to bring in a new, overwritten, different version of a mesh. That will clobber the vertex weights. Instead, import the new mesh, then use GeoH Mesh Replace.
Important : The mesh pivot position of the old and new mesh must be the same in order to be able to successfully match geometry between the two. You may need to readjust the pivot position of the replacement mesh if you earlier adjusted it in the original.
Similarly, if you need to edit a mesh substantially within SynthEyes, make a copy of it using the Hierarchy View or Script/Duplicate Mesh, edit the copy, then use GeoH Mesh Replace.
Note that there is a distance parameter associated with Mesh Replace that controls how far vertices can snap onto the old mesh. You'll need to adjust it if you see vertices that aren't picking up weights, or vertices picking up weights that shouldn't. See the GeoH Mesh Replace Script writeup for details.
Note that when a mesh changes substantially, you'll likely need to make some minor adjustments to the weights depending on what you're trying to do. For example, new portions of mesh must be painted appropriately, and you need to decide what you want near hard transitions where the mesh resolution is increasing. So take a look at after you do a mesh replace!
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