Multiple Bodyshapes per Animation

[deedes]

Since i started playing Oblivion (which is about ... two months now) i have heard this multiple times: you cannot have different body on npcs!

I looked around and saw attempts for going around the annoying problem that comes up, when you only have one set of torso, legs, hands and feet.

Usually they just use a item that gets equipped as soon as the torso/hand/lowerbody/foot slot gets empty.

 

This is half Tutorial and half Request. You should know about weighting and animating for this.

 

 

Now here is my suggestion, which proved to be pretty good, but not perfect - since I'm not as good as a modder yet:

 

1. Select a bunch of different bodys (i will take the four lowerbodys from HGEC and Roberts Feet for HGEC, Argonian Feet and modified Khajiit Paws, fitting on the lowerbody from the Argonian feet.

 

2. Add the needed Bones for the skeleton - In this case you will need 6 Bones - 4 for the Legs, 3 for the feet - I named mine:

I Parented them to the Bip01 NonAccum -1 with 90° rotation, for a better view

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC S

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC M

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC L

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC LL

- Bip01 Plantigrade Feet HGEC RF

- Bip01 Digitigrade Legs HGEC M

- Bip01 Digitigrade Feet Argonian

- Bip01 Digitigrade Feet Khajiit

 

3. Import all the Nif Files into Blender (no, not the kitchen appliance :teehee: ), maybe put them on different layers, remove the orginal bones.

 

4. Parent the bodyparts to the skeleton (CTRL+P)

 

5. Start weighting the corresponding bodyparts >>completely<< with 0.01 by going into the edit mode and selecting all vertices, adding the vertice group:

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC S for the HGEC S Legs

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC M for the HGEC M Legs

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC L for the HGEC L Legs

- Bip01 Plantigrade Legs HGEC LL for the HGEC LL Legs

- Bip01 Plantigrade Feet HGEC RF for Roberts Feet for HGEC

- Bip01 Digitigrade Legs HGEC M for the HGEC M Argonian Legs

- Bip01 Digitigrade Feet Argonian for the Argonian Feet

- Bip01 Digitigrade Feet Khajiit for the Khajiit Paws

and hitting Assign.

 

We only add a weight of 0.01, because a higher value would slow down any other animation on the body.

If we would take a weight of 1, any other motion done would be only going half as far - the character would look like walking with stilts.

 

6. Export the Body.

 

7. the weird part - Animating the body.

Heres where i could not get any more confused....

I tried three different approaches, of which only two worked, to an extend:

 

Visibility:

After seeing the basic animation tutorial in the CS Wiki, i thought it could work on the body, too. Well. No, it did not. I guess its an item only animation.

 

Scaling:

Scaling worked fine, when the weight was at 1.000, but it would only turn the body into a flat disk which would be hanging in the middle of the body. At a weighting of 0.01 it would simply shrink the body a little, but as soon as the scale was turned to a negative value, it would grow again.

 

Translocating:

Simply taking the bodyparts you don't want to see right now, and putting them 10 million units away from the Character. Out of the eyes, out of the mind. I would stick to this method.

 

Now here's my request:

I got the animations all right when i had them within the Idle file, but they would not play when i used them in a special idle. I don't know much about the idle system within oblivion, and after looking at it for a whole day and having to go into the tes cs editor about a dozen times to see if it works now, i tough i should simply let someone else do this.

 

I can upload the files i already made, so that someone might be able to add the animation, but i would like to hear some other people's ideas first :)

 

The screenshot shows the bodyparts I used in a lineup, which i made with the animation.