Impulseman45 Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 Hey everyone,I am looking for some help and or tips for making working animal meshes in 3DSMAX for Skyrim. In the past I made the new mesh for the Elk in "True Elk of Skyrim". But it didn't work and I handed it off to someone who got it working. That person did a great job, but is to busy to help any further and not really willing it seems to help teach me what it takes to make them. I know MAX pretty good and have been making static meshes for almost 2 years now. I know everyone says that you have to use MAX 2012 to make working animal meshes, But I was able to successfully make a working mesh in MAX 2014. There is a new updated set of niftools for MAX 2013 and 2014 and as I said I was able to pull it off once. But I have not been able to do it again. I seem to be following the exact same steps but I have to be missing a step somewhere. The mesh I was able to make is fully animated and works in game, but it has issues. Its a new version of the "Irish Elk" and the antlers are to close to the ears so every time the elk moves its ears it is distorting the antlers. I also noticed that the hairy mane around the neck seems not to be moving with the body. So I need some help. There are quite a few animal meshes I want to make and get into the game but I am stuck. I cant repeat what ever i did the first time. So if anyone knows of a good tutorial or how to that can step me through the process, or if someone that has the knowledge on how to do this can give me instructions I and the whole Skyrim community at large would and will appreciate it very much. I did find find a video tutorial showing how to make creatures, but it contains steps that do not apply to an animal mesh, basically the creature in the video tutorial is based on a human form and has dismember information in the mesh. As animals are not dismembered in Skyrim, but left intact so adding this code doesn't work and makes a mesh that crashes Skyrim. If I use MAX 2012 and the niftools for it I get extraneous code in the mesh that again breaks it and keeps me from adding alpha-transparency to the neck mane portion of the mesh. So you can all see I am at a bit of a loss as what to do. So I need some help, any help. I don't want to have to resort to handing the meshes off to someone else to fix. The whole point is that I want tot learn how to do this myself. So again any help would be great. If it sounds like I am begging than you may be right. Help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saerileth Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 I think your problem is with the weight painting of the mesh, that would explain why the antlers move with the ears for example. Now unfortunately I don't know how to edit the weights with Max, I use Blender for all my mesh work. I also don't know if and how well the weights export with the current NifTools. But you could google for tutorials on how to manually paint bone weights in Max, then just try if they export right. I'm very sorry that I can't be of more help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impulseman45 Posted April 21, 2015 Author Share Posted April 21, 2015 (edited) I did find a video tutorial on making creatures on YouTube, but the guy had a heavy accent, allot of noise in the video and he was making a humanoid creature and not an animal so it had some skin weight settings that would have been different. I kind of modded the steps and ended up getting a working elk once. But it has that glitch. I can't replicate what I did that one time, no matter what I do I cant seem to reproduce it. I did this with the newest niftools plugin that were made for MAX 2013, although 2013 plugins work in Max 2014. It was recreated and updated for SkyWind I believe, its on the TESRenewal Project, http://tesrenewal.com/forums/tools-and-coding/nif-importexport-plugin-for-3dsmax-2013 . I use 2014 out pure necessity at this point. I can't install MAX 2012 on my main rig. Something about the hardware or a driver breaks the install and this is on a completely fresh install of Windows. I do have it installed on my notebook, an older mid range gamer from about 5 years ago and it does work on that. But i get all kinds of extra materials left behind that breaks the mesh. I thank you for your replay, but i have all but given up on ever getting any of it working. I am going to probably hand the meshes over to someone else and let them deal with it. I am going to stick to architectural statics. At lease they always work for me. Am going to try this request on one more site. Edited April 21, 2015 by Impulseman45 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithinhanoi Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Please excuse my complete and total ignorance, but I see that there's a 3DSMax script called Autoweight which helps with weight painting and setting up transitions between regions of the creature's skin. I notice it mentions it will work with custom bone hierarchies, so it is not limited to biped creatures. There are tutorial videos for version 1, but the newest version works with 3DSMax 2015. Unfortunately, the full version does cost $30 US, but it has a feature limited demo mode to try it out. Also there's a free "Lite" version. I notice in the comments of one of the tutorial videos (from almost a year ago) that the script does the auto-weighting before the bones are animated. I don't know if that would be a deal-breaker for you, or if the newest version of the script includes auto-weighting after the bones are animated, but I thought it's worth pointing out. I hope this helps! EDIT: I see there are other Max auto-skinning scripts for free, but they may only work with biped creatures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saerileth Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Skin weights can also be painted by hand, to fix the antler/ear problem he mentioned one would only have to remove the influence from the ear bone on the antler. But the way he describes it it seem to be a problem in the nif export script that somehow messes up the weights. Just to be sure though, Impulseman, is the problem already present in Max when you move around the bones? Or does it only happen after exporting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keithinhanoi Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 If it's an issue with the NifTools exporter plugin for 3DS Max, then why not post in their forums, here? Alternatively, posting in the NifTools Skyrim Modding forum area might be helpful. Just thinking out loud here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impulseman45 Posted April 23, 2015 Author Share Posted April 23, 2015 (edited) Hey guys, the issue I got with the ears messing up the Irish Elk mesh is, I believe the very reason that Bethesda twisted and bent the antlers they way they did. They simply are to close to the tops of the Elks ears, so when the Elk moves the ears it is also pulling and distorting the antlers. I have made a mesh were I slightly elongated the portion of the antler that comes from the head to give them the clearance I believe will fix the issue. The other option I think it to break them from the body itself and reattach them to the skull as it was done in the elk mesh for the True Elk mod. The antlers in that mesh get real close to the ears, almost touching, but are not moved by them. So breaking them free would be the way to go. But it still leaves me with the issue of getting the weighting info exported intact in the nif. According to Nifscope, the file looks good, Its nearly identical to the original nif file, but somewhere there is broken code or weight settings leaving the mesh to do nothing but slide around Skyrim on rails. Its very funny to witness but is not what I am going for here, LOL I did find a tutorial on Dark Creation forums about making a custom horse mesh, but it gets very involved in using Nifsope and importing and exporting sections back and forth between nif files until it works. I may try it as a last resort, but I know it can be exported directly from MAX as I have done it once, and others have been doing it for years now. I just cant repeat what ever it is I did. It has literately driven me crazy trying to figure it out. I am at the point of just throwing in the towel and moving on and turning the meshes over to someone else until they can be made to work. The other option is to beg the person who made my first mesh work to do it again. But that doesn't teach me what I am doing wrong and there are a ton of animals I want to make for Skyrim and possibly for other big mod projects. Thanks for the input, I am also going to post this request up on L*****L*b, as they seem to have allot of custom meshes being made over there, I just hope they don't ask me to add genitals to the mesh. Edited April 23, 2015 by Impulseman45 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impulseman45 Posted April 25, 2015 Author Share Posted April 25, 2015 Well, everyone that read these and responded thanks for the input. It really, at this point won't make any difference anyway as I am done with any further modding of Skyrim. As most of you know Valve has declared open hunting season on all Nexus mods and that they are free for the taking. I can not continue work under those threats. I don't want the work I do going on Steam, and there is just no way to really stop it at this point so I am done. My only hope is that Bethesda and Valve do not go after New Vegas next as I am working on some custom meshes for that. But I a NV Workshop goes up, well I guess the witting is on the walls for everyone to see. Thanks for the time, I am moving on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrittaKitty Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Well, everyone that read these and responded thanks for the input. It really, at this point won't make any difference anyway as I am done with any further modding of Skyrim. As most of you know Valve has declared open hunting season on all Nexus mods and that they are free for the taking. I can not continue work under those threats. I don't want the work I do going on Steam, and there is just no way to really stop it at this point so I am done. My only hope is that Bethesda and Valve do not go after New Vegas next as I am working on some custom meshes for that. But I a NV Workshop goes up, well I guess the witting is on the walls for everyone to see. Thanks for the time, I am moving on. Noooooooooooooo..... Now I'm sad :( *hugs* ... not that it matters anymore, but with the antler mesh you can detach the antlers from the deer/elk head and make it a separate object in your scene and then only add the 'skull' bone to that meshes skin modifier. That way there are no other bone weights such as the ears influencing the mesh, just make sure that mesh is named 'antler' and export the whole animal normally and it should work. I did the same with a unicorn mesh that I made for the aeonbarr mod, which is meant to be included in the next release (if that is still happening with all the hoo haah around now). Anyway, I am sad to hear you don't feel safe to release mods any more, I hope things at steam cool down soon and our talented community unites again! TCKritta. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts