Sabat9 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 So, i've done some preliminary research, and found a thread about making an NPC into creature...but in effect, i want to do the opposite. There doesn't seem to be alot of organized information out there regarding non-human NPC's and the proper way to implement them. I'm sure there's some pretty heavy Nif-skoping involved, but first an explanation and show and tell of what I have so far.... I think i need to make a Protectron RACE (not as a playable race) so that I can have a robot who can repair equipment. "Creatures" (like the basic protectron) don't seem to have the ability to repair equipment, adding ShowRepairMenu to the dialogue simply brings up the menu in-game, but the creature's repair skill is Zero. So, in order to have a robot who repairs equipment, I need to make him as an NPC, which as far as I can tell, requires an entire new RACE. I came across some stuff on creating a new race, and the basics of it seem pretty straightforward.... Now is a good time to look at the pic included with this post... It seems that all NPC's use the default human male skeleton, which really messes things up when you try to load protectron .nifs and .dds's for the meshes and textures. (actually, the textures seem to work just fine) In the pic, you can see things are out of position, and you can see what I'm guessing are the protectron's thumbs being stretched out into infinity (this shows up in-game). The new NPC seems to function properly in-game, despite the out of place body parts. He even uses the default human animations, which is kinda entertaining to see from a protectron. SO, here's the real question....how do I get this new race/NPC to use the proper skeleton.nif for a protectron. If i get this part figured out, how do I get him to load the proper animations for the protectron? OR...should I basically make a new .nif cobbled together from the existing protectron to fit the default human skeleton, which would allow me to continue to use the human animations for the robot NPC. I'm thinking i'd really rather go with this option, actually...which would most likely require some re-designing in Blender and Nif-Skope. If this is the case, i'm not asking for tutorials on how to do it, i'll just have to brush up my chops and continue studying..... Does my solution lie entirely within nifskope/Blender? Is there a much, much simpler approach to having a protectron that repairs equipment, maybe something script-based? i've definately hit a wall here, so any advice would be welcome. THANKS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadPenney Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 If you are willing to do new modelling, then maybe it would be simpler to make armor for a human NPC that would make him look like a protectron and give him a protectron voice. Might be simpler than rewotking a protectron skeleton to use human anims. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabat9 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 in theory, that would be an easy solution...however, i've modeled a grand total of ONE things in my life. (the oblivion sword in my sig) and that alone took me a week or so....heh. It seems there would be a way to point a custom race to the protectron skeleton.nif that already exists, and then apply the existing protectron animations to it. this could be done in nifskope with the proper procedures, no? conversely, without having to model an entirely new item, i could edit the protectron mesh in a way that it would fit the human skeleton maybe? this approach would require editing and re-rigging in a 3d rendering program in addition to working with nif skope? yeesh...ever get the feeling i don't know what i'm doing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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