How does the SI "Butterfly room" work?

[DarkSpyda04]

I highly encourage other people to participate in this research and learn what you can and post it here. We'll be able to do some pretty cool things if we figure out how it all works.

 

I'm checking the NIF out in nifskope. It was located in the DLCShiveringIsles - Meshes.bsa at "meshes\architecture\quests\SE01WaitingRoomWalls". This NIF is unlike any that I have seen before. There are multiple layers of tri strips forming layers of a circle. I don't know if these are deleted or made transparent as the effect plays out or what. What I do know is that the collision is dropped below the mesh after the animation is finished, allowing the player to leave the room. There is an animation that happens with growing rings which correspond with the animation effect as we see it in-game. A dark cloudy texture might be slapped onto these rings to create part of the effect we see. It also seems to use "emitters" (whatever that means).

 

(This infernal site not letting me paste text is pissing me off!)

 

 

OBSERVATIONS

 

The butterflies seem to be a particle array. It looks like they're created at the base of the emitters which are these sort of semi-circle ring-shaped arc objects. I can only tell that the butterflies spawn here by looking at gameplay footage as the butterflies cannot be seen in nifviewer.

 

The butterfly particles are, if I'm right, a collection of 2D sprites that all animate individually. I don't know much about particle effects but that's the only way they could work in the game. I know this because when the lightning gun shoots in UDK and you play in wireframe, you can see a bunch of 2D planes.

 

The SFXripple is a cylinder which opens up almost like a flower to possibly simulate sunlight. There are several placed around and can be seen in the nifviewer as well as in gameplay albeit they look a bit different.

 

Also, the room in-game lights up to highlight the effect taking place.

 

I'd like to know how parts of the room disappear if not by animated texture. I can only offer theories. I'm stumped, guys.

 

 

TEXTURE LOCATIONS:

 

These are located in the "DLCShiveringIsles - Textures.bsa" archive.

 

textures\architecture\city\dementia\StoneFlat.dds - ceiling texture

textures\architecture\city\citywall\CityWallStone.dds - wall stone

textures\architecture\city\citywall\GateMadnessTrim.dds - trim and door

textures\effects\SEButterflies01.dds - butterflies

textures\effects\SEFXLightRippleINVERT.dds - the light aura effects

 

 

THE CS SCRIPT

 

Next we can look at the script. All it really does is play the animation and change the weather. All of the inner workings are already done in the NIF file.

scn SE01WaitingRoomScript
 
;this script makes the waiting room disappear into a dazzling display of psychedelic butterflies. crazy, yo!
 
Begin OnActivate Player
 
if ( SEHaskillREF.leaveVAR == 2 )
        playgroup forward 1
        set SE01Metronome.weatherVAR to 1
endif
 
End

EDIT on 06/23/14 @ 6:39PM:

 

Link to SI butterfly room study NIF files and text document describing how the room works. And yes, you can import these NIFs into the construction set and preview them or test them out in-game. Take what you learn and use these things to create cool things in your own mods. No credit is necessary unless you redistribute the study files.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/download/bddayd7jaa82ujc/se01waitingroomwalls_Study_Files.zip

Edited June 23, 2014 by DarkSpyda04

[DarkSpyda04]

I feel as though I broke some ground here. About a week back I completed Saidenstorm's tutorial on cool texture effects on meshes, such as UV scrolling, flipbooks, and disappearing meshes. Looking at how the SI butterfly room is made of layers of rings, it became safe to assume that the room used the NiVisController to make the layers of rings disappear as the frame slider moved. After a couple days of experimenting learning the ins and outs of the NiVisController, I was ready to put my theory to work by creating a cube made of rings and have the rings disappear just like they would in the butterfly room.

http://i897.photobucket.com/albums/ac172/DarkSpydaIV/ScreenShot210_zpse3b2e5fb.gif

This is what I believe is happening with the SI butterfly room. Maybe some other effects in the room mask the rings disappearing? If I wanted to understand more, I'd have to study things like particle arrays, particle clouds, a few other things, and continue experimenting. Truthfully, I can't imagine ever being able to fully understand how this room works but it's cool that I know this much.

 

For a tutorial on how to create a disappearing object, refer to the link below:

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1796010-tutorial-making-objects-disappear-with-niviscontroller/

[DarkSpyda04]

My head is spinning right now but I have some new theories to work with.

 

Gravity - Unsure what this is used for

 

HoleParts - The idea is that these disappear not only as the frame slider moves, but are timed to happen as roomRoomFX catches up with it.

 

roomRoomFX - Appears to be the ripple effect. Is a copy of the room but is instead attributed the "SEFXLightRippleINVERT" texture and uses NiTextureTransformController to animate the ripple.

 

EmitterH1/H2/H3Part - Unlike my previous suspicions, these animating ring segments are most likely used as base to spawn the butterflies off of.

 

PArray/PCloud - The particle systems that create butterflies and send them off in a linear direction. Multiple systems are created as time progresses.

 

Lightbeam - The beams of light that appear and fade out. Uses the NiGeoMorpherController and I don't know much about it.

 

Finally, the collision that prevents you from walking through walls is rotated and/or transformed out of the way as the animation progresses and is relocated underground.

 

Maybe sooner or later I'll get around to testing out these theories when I try and recreate the effect. The most troubling part I can think of is the room's unique ring-like topology.

[DarkSpyda04]

I can hardly contain my excitement right now. I just thought of something new, something wonderful, and have been using it to see exactly what is going on with the room. I went into the butterfly room with nifskope and removed branches such as all the gravity branches, saved the NIF, and previewed the room in the construction set. What I found out was that the gravity is responsible for manipulating the particle arrays specifically so that the butterflies fly around the room. Otherwise if it's removed, the butteflies will stick to the area that they were spawned in.

 

Not only that, but I could do the same thing with every other part of the NIF that I wanted to learn about, eliminating the guesswork and creating a mouthwatering overflow of information. The best part is all the theories I came up with were correct XD

 

I'm not going to be editing any posts because it shows the process I went through when you can see the original content posted. Besides, this way the thread pops up everytime I make an update. It's not like I'm spamming or anything. But just say otherwise and I'll stop multi-posting.

[DarkSpyda04]

I'm sorry but I seem to have lost interest in trying to remake the SI butterfly room although I did learn a ton of new things instead. Things like particle effects, gravity, morphs, texture effects, moving bases for particle emitters to spawn on, etc. While I can't manage to remake the room, I did record all of the information of the room's contents as well as some NIF files to study that pull apart the room and isolate certain elements for your viewing pleasure. PCloudNoGravity for instance is an NIF of the rooms isolated particle clouds with gravity removed so you can compare with the NIF where gravity wasnt removed and see what happens for yourself.

 

I was going to horde all of this information to myself until I could create an example of all of these learnings working together but seeing as that's probably never going to happen, here are the study files:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/download/bddayd7jaa82ujc/se01waitingroomwalls_Study_Files.zip

 

Take what you learn and use it to create fancy stuff in your own mods. Happy modding!