How to put clothes/hair models on a Splatoon 2 Inkling in Blender?

[Jasper7438]

Hello, I can help you with this! The processes for putting clothes and hairstyles on a Splatoon 2 player model are both quite simple. They may seem a bit complicated at first, but once you learn it it takes 10 seconds to do.

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First, since hairstyles have their own bones that need to stay separate, we use a bone constraint.

1. Import the hair, it should import at the player model's feet.
   
2. Select the hair's armature, and enter pose mode.
   
3. Select the "head_root" bone and navigate to the bone constraint tab in the properties panel. 
   
4. Add a "copy transforms" bone constraint. Set the target as the player model armature and the bone as the head bone of the player model ["head"].
   
   

If done correctly, the hair model should snap into the correct position. The hair will now move with the player model's head. Both armatures are still separate and can be posed independently.

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We could do the same thing with clothing models, but it would be a very tedious process. There is an easier method.

1. Import a clothing item, I chose a shirt for this demonstration. We need to move the shirt into the correct position. 
   
2. Select the player model armature and select the hip bone. 
   
3. Press shift+s and select "cursor to selected" which will move the cursor to the player model's hip bone. 
   
4. Exit pose mode and select the shirt armature, press shift+s again and select "selection to cursor".
   

The shirt should be in position, but it's not yet connected to the player model's armature.





To connect the shirt model to the player armature:

1. Select the shirt model, press alt+p and select "clear and keep transformation". Delete the shirt's original armature and armature modifier.
   
2. Select the shirt model and then the player model's armature, press crtl+p and then select "armature deform".
   

The shirt model now follow the player model's armature! You now have the problem of clipping, which is solved by using the gear alpha masks.





If you want to put on other clothing beside shirts/shoes, all you have to do is find the origin point [represented by an orange dot] and select the corresponding bone in the player armature to move it into the right place.

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Shoes require a little bit more work than the rest, but are also easily dealt with.

By default every shoe is a left shoe, the left shoe can be moved into place and connected to the armature in the same way as any other item. To have a right shoe, you need to duplicate the left shoe and mirror it.

1. To do that, press shift+s [cursor to world origin] and change the pivot point to 3d cursor [located at the top of the screen]
   

1. Once you've done that, select the left shoe and press shift+d to duplicate it, then right click to let it go.
   
2. Then [with it still selected] press ctrl+m then x to mirror it across the x axis. Change the pivot point back to Bounding Box Center.
   

We now have 2 shoes, but they are both weighted to the left foot. To fix that, all we have to do is rename the vertex groups. You can find the vertex groups in the object data properties tab in the properties panel. Rename the groups from "_L" [left] to "_R" [right].



Now the shoes follow the player armature and can be posed independently!

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Now you have all the knowledge needed to put clothing and hairstyles on Splatoon 2 player models.

I hope that was helpful to you.

~Jasper