Here is a doosie: Why does my custom animated static mesh show up in G

[Guest Messenjah]

Hey guys, I know I promised something today but I just haven't had any time to work on it as I had to take care of laundry and cleaning today with my wife. :) Anyway, I'll get back on it tomorrow.

 

"What usually goes wrong for me is an incorrect flag or an incorrect controller value. I'm not totally sure, but will an anim work if parented to a node named anything other than "Scene Root NonAccum" - will just "Scene Root" work too?"

 

Actually, I was wondering about that myself. Could this be why the new animation doesn't work correctly? It requires a node to be named "Scene Root NonAccum"? In the new version, I created an object and named it "Fan". That was the primary parent node. I parented the blades and the stem to their corresponding collision meshes and then parented those collision meshes to the node called "Fan" and re-created the animation. Then, I exported the new .kf file, naming it idle and opened my new file and renamed the primary parent node that the other nodes are under, "fan", deleted the old sequence data and re-imported the kf data. I didn't get any errors when I ported unlike before and everything worked within nifskope but when I open it in the GECK viewer, I can't see the sequence playing, even though it is labeled as idle and set as a cycle loop animation.

 

Do I need to name the primary node: "Scene Root NonAccum" to get it to work then?

[Ghogiel]

Do I need to name the primary node: "Scene Root NonAccum" to get it to work then?

it does not need to be named NonAccum. the first ninode after the scene root will automatically be picked up and considered the NonAccum node. everything that you want to be animated must be under that node. and that node has to be the first node in the hierarchy. but i would have it as called Scene Root NonAccum anyway. makes it easier to understand at least.

 

I can just animate this thing from scratch and set up the in less than 10mins. I nailed down how to export these types of animated nifs with zero errors, and the minimal post nifskope process a little while ago. < all i have to do is fix the sequence so it does not target the scene root or the nonaccum node. other wise you get this error saying that the sequence is targeting the scene root... and once you remove that, you get one saying it's targeting the nonaccum lol. I think i can actually avoid adding the scene root to the animation in the first place, the way i animated the scenes so far, I was adding a key at the beginning and the end of the sequence for the root node. so if i just don't do that it rpobably won't have keys for it. either way its just a case of removing them from the controlled blocks list in the sequnce, and as targets in the NiMultiTargetTransformController.

[Guest MobMessenjah]

So, I'm having further issues. I'm using empties in Blender and parenting my meshes to those in order to create nodes when I port it to Nifskope. The problem, is that when I import the new animation, it doesn't see the collision mesh as the collision mesh becomes un-named. Then for some reason, the collision mesh doesn't animate along with the blades.

[Ghogiel]

you do not need to do anything to the collision mesh, you don't even need to key it, when animating it, just link it to the object that it's supposed to be the shape for. or don't bother and do it in post, export a separate nif, make it the correct layer/ type, add it as the collision object to the fan blade node(the one that is animated). enable animation in the BSX. done.

 

i think i only see bethesda use niconvexverticesshape or standard primitives. so Mopps might not be suitable for one reason or another... but I don't think so. i have a recollection of using Mopps as anim static.

 

so just export the collision into a separate nif, then paste it over.

 

anyway the collision is not important. just add it in post if you have issues.

[Guest MobMessenjah]

Yeah, I actually got the fan sequence working now and everything is set up correctly. You know, if I had tried setting all of this up in the first place without the collision meshes and then added them later, I would have saved myself a TON of headache and about 3 sleepless nights in a row with little time spent with my wife. :( I think what has caused me the most trouble actually was the fact that I was trying to animate the collision meshes along with the sequence and then the collision meshes seem to have issues.

 

Tonight after the house was quiet enough, it finally struck me after spending most of my day beating myself to death over this, so I simply assigned the blades and the stem to an empty, animated it, exported the nif and kf file, then saved a second nif file for my collision mesh, created my collision meshes in that one and set up my actual file in the first file and imported my animation and everything worked fine! In game and in the geck! However, when I noticed that when I copied over my collision mesh for the fan blades, it started having problems and when I copied the second collision mesh over the GECK would crash every single time. So, I believe something is wrong with my collision meshes. However, I'm almost keen on skipping the collision meshes since, you don't often have an opportunity to run into one of these even by jumping and they don't really have a very nice collision effect, even when they are working properly. :P So, I'm not really sure if collision is even necessary or worth the effort for this mesh and maybe my time would be better spent on the texture work. Would be nice to know what is wrong with the collision mesh for future reference...

 

Here is a file to check it out with:

 

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q8GV05RU

[Ghogiel]

this is probably because your collision is incorrect.

 

it is not contained in a bhkCollisionObject node. the blend shape, as far as i am aware, is used with constraints.

also it is only a packedtritripshape, this is the worst form of collision and bethesda never used it once because of the performance is so unbelievably crap, use a Mopp in place of all of these.

 

it might also be wise just to use the bhkConvexVerticesShape or better bhkBoxShapes for these blades, i do not recall bethesda using Mopp for anim statics. but they might have, or at least it probably works. but i haven't done so with f3 yet, so dunno. :shrug:

[Guest Messenjah]

Hmmm for some reason I thought that packedtrishapes were the only ones we could use? I think it is because I was using a video tutorial to figure out how to create collision meshes for statics and I didn't understand why they used a format that Bethesda didn't use. Yeah, I noticed I couldn't find any models using that either.

[Guest Messenjah]

Also, why is it that when I port my model over, initially there is a NiTransformController under one of the nodes but not under the others? I just deleted it but since I'm seeing it on Bethesda models.... maybe it is necessary after all?

 

Hey, where do I paste the Nitrishapedata into the bhkConvexVerticesShape?

[Ghogiel]

Hmmm for some reason I thought that packedtrishapes were the only ones we could use? I think it is because I was using a video tutorial to figure out how to create collision meshes for statics and I didn't understand why they used a format that Bethesda didn't use. Yeah, I noticed I couldn't find any models using that either.

time to find a better tutorial! packed trishape are not the only one you could use. it's the one you won't ever use. that's is pretty absurd.

 

collision exporting directly from blender has been possible since like early 2007. dunno really. it was one of the earlier additions.

and Mopps were added in maybe 2008 at the latest.

 

 

Also, why is it that when I port my model over, initially there is a NiTransformController under one of the nodes but not under the others? I just deleted it but since I'm seeing it on Bethesda models.... maybe it is necessary after all?

dunno really, I'm not psychic.

 

as a hunch, this is also likely tied into why you have a blend shape. these are both found in skeletons. I guess your scene setup/ export setting/ or just the way the exporter works :shrug:

 

anyway it is certainly not necessary.definitely remove them

 

Hey, where do I paste the Nitrishapedata into the bhkConvexVerticesShape?

erm... say wha?

 

you don't. just export the collision mesh as bhkConvexVerticesShape.

[Guest Messenjah]

Holy crap! I've been reading someone who is not apparently aware of what can be done! I was wondering why collision meshes couldn't be created in Blender.... because they can! I'm reading into it now. Dude, you have been really useful! We really just need a video tutorial on how to properly perform these tasks. I think it would probably make a lot of people a lot less afraid to add custom content to their mods. Most people I ask, simply just tell me that it's too hard or too complicated so I had to hunt down the info personally and found a couple of tutorials that were VERY basic so I just kind of had to "wing" the rest.