How to weight paint armor/clothes/monsters?

[Toasted1]

Hi!

 

I've recently gotten into Oblivion, and love the customization the game allows. Ever since stumbling across Growls Body Resizer and the BBB animations, I've wondered how far it could go. The biggest problem Bethesda games have is the stiffness of the creatures and people. Sadly, I am a noob at modding, so this is a tough nut to crack!

 

I would like to start by weight painting some original armors/clothes, maybe Colourwheel's Sexy Imperial guard or HGEC_MovingBreastsFighterD stock clothing mod, and then move on to something cooler, like adding jiggles to monsters : wiggling Goblin ears, fat Ogres that jiggle when you hit 'em, and who knows what else.

 

Anyone have suggestions on how to get me started? I've gotten FCOM to work, so I'm not that bad! ;)

[Megatarius]

First of all congratulations on FCOM. That is praiseworthy indeed! :thumbsup:

 

 

Unfortunately I may have to burst your bubble. What you are suggesting is beyond massive for one person.

 

The skeletons of each creature and NPC are very minimalist. They have arms, legs, a few torso joints and a few neck joints. The faces have a bunch more, but only for face editing at the start.

 

If you want to edit wiggling ears and jiggling fat, you would have to first add more bones to the skeletons. Way more. Then weight paint to them. Then animate them. Then watch with horror as vertices go all over the place in the game when it worked great in Blender. :wallbash:

 

There actually is a moving breast mod for HGEC already, somewhere. I don't use that body mod, and the way the breasts move is beyond horny teenage male fantasy, but if that's what you want, it's there. :thumbsup:

 

 

I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying it's huge amount of work.

 

The first place to start would be here:

 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

[Corthian]

I wouldn't say impossible. Oblivion really doesn't have too many creatures. I could add new bones to each creature skeleton, which would be the most effective solution if not a little extreme, or you could add toe weight to various parts of the body to simulate shaking, this was the old method of breast jiggle before BBB. I would recommend using Blender mainly because it's free.

 

PS. You wouldn't be able to edit the Goblin's head because it is a static mesh with vertex animation groups, which can't be weight painted.

[Vagrant0]

I think the part where it becomes a major task, even for someone who knows how to do any of this, is in having to make changes to animations in order for the new bones to be used. For BBB it's not an issue since the animations used for the jiggle are custom made, but for all those creatures, you're looking at a rather large amount of work re-tuning animations.

[Toasted1]

Perhaps an animation that simply shrinks and expands a monster body part can simulate a "collision shudder" and avoid adding more skeleton parts? Add a color change to mask it a bit (like red blood or skeleton dust), and you'd have a pretty convincing illusion. Perhaps differentiating weapon blows too, daggers/swords would affect limbs, and blunts affect the center body. They wouldn't jiggle when they run/jump after you though, which is what all the Bethesda games need! Gosh, I can't say I'd do every monster either. It'd take a single Pro months to do them all...

 

Perhaps a "snap-on" cylinder bone can be created, and just copy pasted around limbs/bodies? If the vertex points are placed like an accordion exoskeleton around the original, lengthening it could be done easier. Trouble would be associating the old meshes to the new ones in a one-click fashion. Gosh, well two ideas at least.

 

The tail portion seems the easiest way place to start and test. Have tails been weight animated yet? Hmm... it seems the easiest thing to animate.

 

I'm interesting in the gears behind the gameworld, and I like Ladies and monster slaying, in that order, so animating both seemed a nice place to start! Plus, I just want to learn about animating. Might as well start with the fun bit : boob physics and monsters! :thumbsup: I clearly have a lot of reading to do however!