Skyrim facial animation . from custom skeletal rig

[AlphaWoIF]

The one thing has has always bugged me about modding skyrim is the way the face Animation setup works and i understand that they used to use a better method in the past Games but decided this time to use a propitiatory method. Lets be honest the face animations in skyrim are REALLY awful and the closed system they have chosen is all but Impossible to mod to 99.9% of skyrim modders hence why we have not see any new HD head types or better face animation mods.

I have battled with this problem for months trying to use all the tools like comfurmulator ,blender tri import scrips even conforming the vanilla heads in Max to the custom heads i want animated so they take on there likeness ,ALL in vain! as i have never been happy with the results.

 

So in a last ditch attempt i am no longer going to try to work with tri face morphs anymore , but i am going to try to bypass them like they dont even exist anymore. and maybe at the same time come up with somthing that all modders can use as a modders resourse to create a new face animation workaround.

 

Here is what i have managed to do bu t i need advice to finish .

Ive been working with a lot of witcher resources in my mods as the AWESOME! Cd projeckt allows us to, one of which is the heads of witcher characters, and i want them animated not just a stone faces.

So i have been experimenting an managed to invent a skyrim witcher 2 Hybrid skeleton. which @ its core is basically a skyrim skeleton with all the wonderful facial Rigging bones of the witcher 2 skeleton.

Only problem is they are dummys NOT bones and im not sure how to proceed as i dont know if skyrim or nilfskope can use them and i dont know how to convert them to bones either.

Its all working very well with the skyrim skeleton animating perfectly in max and triss face still rigged to them dummy bones as i have the face skin data intact to.

But my question is, if i can even get this in game can face animations made via this rig actually be used in skyrim once set up in the ck???

 

 

 

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1906/triss.jpg

 

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/7394/dummys.png

[Ghogiel]

getting animations to work like how you propose, I think you are thinking of using the bones to make all the morph targets, A, Oh, EE etc mouth shapes for speaking, As well as making a dozen facial expressions, essentially replicating what BGS has in their face morphs, and then having a fat load of sequences to be called out when needed... ie calling those morph animations via scripting everything.....more power to you. Or if it's just transform animation you are going to use it's still imo too finicky to be practical.

 

What's the difference with skyrim tri files anyway? I would personally be getting my morphs into that container, or just not at all. Because even if you do create a head with all the animations or morphs depending on how else you want to do it, it would be too messy to actually use, the animations will always have to be called to play somehow, and instead of using the games facial animation engine you'll have to replicate it some how. And I imagine it would be a massive pain in the ass

[AlphaWoIF]

that was the plan to create a skyrim skeleton that can have normal face rigged animations ,but getting the expressions to play on request like the ingame morphs do is the area im not clear on.

As for the difference in tri files i would not know as i never modded oblivion and am not able to open or mod skyrim tri files either as there are no proper working tools for 3dsmax to do so with.

Nothing that i have used works with them.

[Ghogiel]

that was the plan to create a skyrim skeleton that can have normal face rigged animations ,but getting the expressions to play on request like the ingame morphs do is the area im not clear on.

As for the difference in tri files i would not know as i never modded oblivion and am not able to open or mod skyrim tri files either as there are no proper working tools for 3dsmax to do so with.

Nothing that i have used works with them.

you don't need to export an actual packed tri file from max. just Objs. You can replace the mesh morph targets packed in them with AddMorph. You just need a list of the morph names that are stored in the skyrim tri files, which have probably changed a little.

[AlphaWoIF]

AddMorph Is that a function in max or a stand alone program ive never heard it mentioned before?

[Ghogiel]

I looked at scantis files on tesnexus but didn't see addmorph in it.. but I reckon TK has it included in his tutorial here:

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/18566

 

which will also basically explain how to get working morphs into a tri file. I am pretty sure TK also poked at the sk way of doing heads to the point where he'd be able to tell that blink morphs aren't so utterly retarded to pull off or not. All the tutorials for Ob/F3 are relevant to Sk.

 

if addmorph isn't in there, I have a copy of it I can upload.

[AlphaWoIF]

Thanks for your help so far Ghogiel i think i may finally be heading in the right direction.

with the help of the blender tri importer script i was able to capture a screen of all the morph target names

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/795/facetrinames.png

 

And i also have been watching some tutorials on The 3dsmax Morpher modifier and am now starting to under stand the basics of how morph targets work

I even made a few facial states by hand from one of the the custom heads im using.

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/2130/geraltfaces.png

I am thinking of redoing all the heads and using the the original rigging with face bones on each to create the expressions then capturing the mesh state with the snapshot tool for each morph target then injecting them in to the default male head tri.file one by one with the addmorph ,there by replacing the expressions with my custom mesh ones one by one as i dont know how to create a new tri. files.

also the original target. names would they need to just be called by the name EG Moodhappy, or do you think they would also require the number in brackets EG MoodHappy [13] .

 

Any thoughts on my methods as this is all new ground for me

[Ghogiel]

Before you go mental... do a test to see if the work flow works. there are issues with Obj and vert number orders that you can encounter that will screw the whole thing up.

 

not sure about the numbers, but I would bet everything I own that your morph names will have to match the vanilla set up 100% or the animation engine will vomit.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Ghogiel

[AlphaWoIF]

cant seem to get the addmorph thingy working right as it keeps giving me an error and the thing flashers up and vanished within a second so i had to get to it via the cmd & cd commands.

 

But i noticed that you said this.- (you don't need to export an actual packed tri file from max. just Objs)

Im at a loss as all the max morp tuts ive viewed were basically for animation purposes and i can find any single bit of info on what to do with the head after ive created the targets for it. or how you can export them.

 

do i just export it as an obj? that dont seem right some how as im trying to make a tri file and wouldn't exporting it as an obj loses all targets?

Am i supposed to collapse the morph modifier?

What is involved in exporting a packed tri files for use in skyrim

ive looked all over the net and cant find any info on how to export them or how it is supposed to work with my custom skyrim head

Edited November 17, 2012 by AlphaWoIF

[Ghogiel]

iirc addmorph is a command line tool, so it is working probably as intended

 

the morph modifier in max is not used in this work flow, you are not trying to export a nimorphgeomcontroller to a nif. It's only useful to see the face morphs in action and to check that the vertex number index WHILE IN MAX is intact.

 

Yes you export the morph targets as objs, you wouldn't lose morph targets as the objs ARE the morph targets. which you will use as the morphs to replace the morph targets in the existing tri file. Once the morphs are replaced it will contain all the morph targets for your head, and if the vertex number index is not borked, that tri will allow the face to correctly morph when it is called to do so. The face animation engine that the game uses does the rest

 

You do not collapse the morph modifier, you delete it.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Ghogiel