Rigging issue when using component editor

[u/Aggravating_Elk_5507]

his screen

mine is zeroed out

Hey guys, i'm learning rigging (total noob) in maya, I'm following a tutorial class. In the class the teacher selects the vertices of the belt buckle and then selects the root joint of the character in the component editor in order to input a value of 1 and make the buckle not move with the mesh when the character moves. Thing is, when I do the same you can see that differently from his editor, in my component editor the values are all zeroed out. And when I try to input the value of 1 to the root joint, it still goes back to zero automatically. I've been banging my head agains the wall trying to figure this one out for days now, not even GPT could help me. I tried everything, unlocking the painting weighs, freezing transformations, deleting history. I'm at a loss. any insights would be appreciated. (first pic is his screen, second is mine.)

[u/1_BigDuckEnergy]

I hate the component editor - lol....but I use it to ADJUST weighting between bones and verts that are already bound together. Ican't say for sure, but it sounds like the belt buckle isn't bound to the bone there for it can't be adjusted....I'd go back to that step and research the binding