Severe avatar deformation when uploading mesh, and weight issue with added part

[Maradyne Andel]

[BLENDER POST]

 

This should be basic.  Make a kid's-sized five-jointed mertail. 

I made a simple mock-up (very simple) of the mertail.  Uploaded to second life.  It animates the same as Bakemonoya's five-jointed mertail with the Bakemonoya mermaid AO, but as you can see, this child has erectile problems, and his arms have gone all over the place!  This should be simple.  Model, apply weights, import.  Why is this happening, and how can I fix it?  Is there a way to disable bones that are not being used or something?

 

Now onto another problem.  I made a shirt, but it has military style straps on the shoulders (I forgot what these were called).  These, and the buttons on the sleeves did not get weighted to the skeleton, even though it's all one mesh. What's different is that they were modeled separately, and then merged with the shirt mesh. The buttons are an easy fix, but when I try to weight paint on the strap, it distorts horribly.  Is there another trick to merging the mesh that I am not aware of?  It's already one peice.

 



Hopefully no one's neck would bend like that anyway.

[Maradyne Andel]

New development:  I played with the model some.  I do not know what is different, but now when I put the tail on, my avatar disappears.  I assume it's actually been moved somewhere far far far far far far away.    I don't even...

[Maradyne Andel]

I asked someone in world. I got a bit of a convoluted answer, but I did get [most of] my issues with the deformation fixed. It all boiled down to not including joint positions when uploading. That's all. It poses another problem, but I can figure it out, I hope.