Please help the poor, downtrodden bots and critters of the Mojave

[devinpatterson]

Got a bit of a bug/flu thing going and I figured instead of just shooting out mucus all day, I'd try and tackle something I'v always wanted to do with fallout.....NiVisControllers.

 

Set the NiVisControllers up right and creatures/non humans can appear to swap out equipment like armor and weapons, from something as small as Tabitha's "taking off" her glasses to allowing Marcus to swap out armor. ED-E can have hats that he can swap out (and you know he wants one), or weapons. Pistol tot'n protectrons can blaze a steam of led, then appear to holster their revolvers. Rex can have a pack, hat, bandanna, homemade wasteland armor etc. Essentially you can change models without having to change Ref/Base ID's and difficulties that includes.

 

Long story short the NiVisControllers turned out to be simpler/easier than I thought, but there are complications. I'm using my dog the fallout 3 mod as an example. The visibility controller is triggered by a idle animation, (the kf just has a few blocks in it) and all the extra meshes are rigged to the skeleton.nif. I don't mean they are rigged in the standard way (import skeleton only + parent selected) like we do everyday, but rather they are in the skeleton.nif itself.

 

 

 

http://i1066.photobucket.com/albums/u404/devinlpatterson/skeletonnif_zps09e2c319.jpg

 

 

 

The skeleton.nif is a unfamiliar creature to me, with the amateur, some basic polygons that look to me like collision meshes around the amateur and other oddities. If I try to import + parent the skeleton.nif's skeleton to itself and any other objects I want to add (lets say a hat) only disaster results. Here is a eyebot skeleton.nif with a hat, I tried to rig and the unfortunate result;

 

 

 

http://i1066.photobucket.com/albums/u404/devinlpatterson/eyebotSkeleton_zpsf7df424b.jpg

 

 

 

I can copy a item in nifskope via copy branch to the skeleton.nif without a problem, but it's not rigged so it doesn't do me much good. And I don't know of any practical way to rig an item in nifskope :sad:

 

Christmas is coming soon, won't you please help all the disadvantaged creatures and bots of the wasteland to have shiney new weapons and armor......don't they deserve that?

[neomonkeus]

You can't combine the collision skeleton at least not to my knowledge. You will need to rig this using Blender as you need to weight the vertices to the bones, something not really achievable in NifSkope by copying branches.

[devinpatterson]

You can't combine the collision skeleton at least not to my knowledge. You will need to rig this using Blender as you need to weight the vertices to the bones, something not really achievable in NifSkope by copying branches.

Well they would already be rigged and weighted. Then they'd be copied into the skeleton.nif.

[devinpatterson]

You can't combine the collision skeleton at least not to my knowledge. You will need to rig this using Blender as you need to weight the vertices to the bones, something not really achievable in NifSkope by copying branches.

 

My problem is that I start with a hat rigged (in blender) to a eyebot. No problem there (at least I don't think there are), the hat behaves fine and it's something I'v done a ridiculous amount of times with hats, pistols and other junk to my mechanical buds. Then I go ahead and copy a NiVisController block into the skeleton nif. Then under that block I copy my hat. Animation etc works (it appears and disappears with the idle), but I guess nifskope doesn't preserve the rigging data (bones, weights etc) or at least, the way that I'm doing it isn't carrying over that info :(

 

Is there a better way that caries over the rigging?

 

You had mentioned "You can't combine the collision skeleton at least not to my knowledge." which I assume means this (the hat and whatever else I'd like to put in there) can only becopied into the skeleton via nifskopej, and is not possible via blender?

[neomonkeus]

Well no, to my knowledge the skeleton that you have used will not work correctly as it has constraint data. Basically the skeleton.nif should not have any mesh data. You can import it and use it as the base for the mesh but they have to be kept seperately. Again its been a while since I have done much on this subject.

[baduk]

Hi,

Yeah, believe what neomonkeus said to u. except for that thing about obj format. :laugh:

(I recently learned obj importing to nif destroys ur uv map on the newer nifskope and thats a lot worse for obj than it used to be so i guess neomonkeus was right about avoid obj if u can and everything.)

 

 

Skeleton.nif is for animation, it has the bones arranged in the parent child hierarchy and the constraints and collision meshes on skeleton nif is for when u die and the body animation is then controlled by havok.(ragdoll)

 

When u are importing the skeleton for rigging it will be in your nif now but consider it as simply bone markers and they associate with the skeleton nif in the game to animate your character. Its a bunch of ninodes on the nif and also referenced in bsdismemberskininstance of the geometry parts.

 

U really dont have to make any new skeleton.nif unless it is for new animatable appendage or new creature.

Edited October 31, 2013 by baduk