Weapon Animations via 3ds Max?

[NieaV]

Basically I animate weapons (usually 1st person type) for source engine games (my work is under Zoidberg or Strangelove aliases). I want to get back in to it again because Fallout 3 and NV have extremely bad animations and it bugs me to death.

 

My preferred program is 3ds Max 2010 and I am curious if there is a pipeline in place for exporting animated assets in to the engine. I know how to create my own rigs as well so no worries about a lack of existing ones.

 

Any info is appreciated!

 

-Niea

[LieutenantIDan]

You're the Zoidberg that made the HL2 Pistol Animations?

Nice work, I love those,

 

But, sadly, I don't think you can make custom animations, because if you were able to, there would be way better reloading and idle animations for most of these weapons, like in F3 there were a bunch of bullpup rifles that used standard animations for the CETME, it looked really bad...

 

I'm almost positive you're able to edit animations, because some guns I've noticed the idles are different, like there was a two-handed hold animation for the 10MM SMG from 3.

[ecksile]

You can replace any existing locomotion animation (movements, reloads, firing, ect), But you cant add new ones. unfortunately unlike the models for source the animations aren't contained within the models they are external so its rather limited.

[NieaV]

You're the Zoidberg that made the HL2 Pistol Animations?

Nice work, I love those,

 

Yeah I made those. I have made a new set of HL2 pistol animations that are a large improvement I have just been too lazy to release them.

Most of my work was for CSS so I'm surprised you mention those haha.

 

I don't mind that I can only replace existing animations. What I want to know about is process by which this is accomplished: what is the content creation pipeline, plug ins needed, information regarding rigging, limitations of the exporter. I can't really find a single source for this information which is why I'm asking. Can I even do this with 3DS Max?

[Interfer0]

There are only a handfull of people that have worked with any game animations. There are tutorials for Oblivian, but F3 and FNV is a different process.

 

I believe it is possible though. I was working on a blumpkin animation for F3 a long time ago, and I got as far as getting a rough animation in game. But it was extremely time consuming, so I moved on to other projects. I believe blender is more compatible with the .kf animations. Then you also need the niftools exporter, python, nifskope. 3DS Max also uses the niftools exporter, but I am not sure if 2010 is supported.

 

 

 

I think Jaysus has done some work with animations, or he will knows who has. But he hasn't been around the forums much, I think he is working on mods still. He has been around on the Beth forums though I think.

[ecksile]

Most tutorials I have seen are for blender I was looking for one to post to you that has the full process in it but I cant find it. Its called better bouncing breasts or something like that (cant member if it was FO3 or TES4)..but in the tutorial it has the whole process for working on getting animations in game (Its for blender though), but you could use the second half which is the nif configuration.

 

Being a blender myself I have messed around with animations and I say the process isn't to difficult. One thing I have noticed with the import scripts though is that some bones mainly the positioning ones tend to get rotated on import into blender, as well as some other bugs like animations playing sideways instead of their correct directions ect..

 

Another person you may want to speak to is alexscorpion as he has much knowledge with max and nif format. Hes really busy though so he might be hard to get a hold of.

[Treebiter]

This presents a bit of problem for a project I'm working on. I've basically got a new robbot that I want to put in game but animation is the main hurdle. Have there been any sucessful attempts at putting a new creature into F3/NV? I may be able to use an existing animation with a little tweaking so do you reckon I should abandon any hope of creating a new creature animation? I looked into this shortly after F3 was relesased and was a little overwhelmed by the processes involved.

[ecksile]

It is lots of work but yes you can add a new creature with new animations. I posted a file that cakester did for him on the nexus the the day after? NV came out and he did the creature from scratch and it worked fine. But to fully animate an entire new creature would be a decent amount of work indeed. You could always just rig it to the closest existing creature skeleton in NV and simply use its animations as that's a lot less work depending on your creature's anatomy.

[NieaV]

Does anyone know if the Gamebyro 3ds exporter will work?

 

Also, if I use Niftools to import human skeleton, can I just rig it up and use it for the animation? What bones are weapons supposed to have?

[vashts1985]

sup DR.Z

 

still have the same issues as with F03. only a set amount of containers for 1st person animations. how many are used i dont know.

 

the weapon animations are in /meshes/characters/_1stperson, and the actual skeleton/bodymesh is in /meshes/characters/_male.

 

different weapons use different bones, but from what ive gathered, they all link back to the weapon bone in the character skeleton for positioning in game. basically the 1st_person holds the actual translations and rotations for the weapons, the _Male animations contain all the hand animations, while the actual "skeleton" for each weapon is contained on the weapon nif. its a really strange arrangement, but i do believe its what allows the same model to be used for both 1st person and 3rd person.

 

the engine, nor Betheseda really support animation changing. it can be done though. NifSkope has a meager few tools for working with .Kf's but if you can make them, you can get them in that way.

 

there is no official rig available, and i dont think those that have created rigs for these games have been willing to share them. i do believe you are gonna have to start a rig from scratch, or figure out how to get the information form the Skeleton.Nif (cause i couldnt figure it out)