Editing a rigged mesh - Help pls!
 

I have been wondering about this for a while - If you have a standard mesh of a human and it is rigged; how do you then edit that mesh whilst it is moving. For example if I wanted the man to grow an extra arm which I had full control over whilst the man is continuing a full walk cycle, how would I do that? The only solutions I can find are ways of disguising the swap between two pre-made models, no fluent transitions between the two.

I have asked several people and they often mention things like blend shapes but I was hoping to get a more specific answer.

Thanks in advance

I think the simple answer is that you'd have the full rig (with extra arm) already built, and during the animation, you'd turn on the effects of the extra part of the rig (e.g. partly with blend-shapes and weights). This sounds like a tricky project, and I can't be too specific unfortunately, but start by building the full rig and mesh, and experiment with turning on and off parts of the rig's influences. You should learn how to use blend shapes too if you're not already familiar with them before starting a challenging project like this. Hope that helps.

thanks for the advice, everyone I have asked seems to recommend something similar - finding a way of making the mesh as close to acceptable as possible using blend shapes and then swapping it for a replacement and disguising the transition seems to be the best way of proceeding. I guess I can always touch it up in Shake afterwards...

Thanks again