Having an Issue with an Idle animation I created

[technicalbrutaldeathcore]

Ok so i'll get straight to the point, I made the animation in blender (it's supposed to be a replacer for the Sword + shield idle.) I exported from blender and of course replaced the idle.....(I changed it in Nifscope so the string had it listed under it's correct name and made sure it looped..) and of course I tested it out in game. The idle stance displays in game...wonderful, the issue is that I can't SWING my blade while standing still (idle.).....my lower body moves as if I'm swinging but the upper body is frozen in the idle pose......another issue is that my character appears to be standing somewhat diagonally and not straight....yet it doesn't appear that way in Blender. This is of course extremely frustrating as I was going to start making new animations for the use of the weapons (shield and sword.) as well afterwards......which now seems like an almost impossible task considering I can't even properly implement an Idle.

 

lastly although I have somewhat rectified this, I was/still am sorting having an issue with making the shield actually sit in line with the forearm/handle sit in the hand....(I can't see exactly which bone...if any actually directly controls the position of the shield.)

 

Anyway to recap - Animation appears in game but the upper body is frozen in place when trying to attack.

 

Edit: I'll point this out just in case, I have looked for information on this issue for the past two days and haven't really found any for this specific issue. I've seen others suggesting they had similar issues when using scripts to switch between idle animations....but of course all of the solutions involve changing these scripts where as my issue is either with the animation file itself or the implementation of said animation in Oblivion. I made the animation by first importing another animation of the same type (the previous idle animation.) and of course changing the bones to fit my specific desires (essentially to somewhat mimic historical Viking sword and Shield stances....the animation is of course not even close to finished as finding a way to get it in game is more important than actually playing with the animation itself.) Anyway....some advice or troubleshooting would be nice as I'm out of ideas (Tried various different things already with almost 0 information to work with.)

Edited October 14, 2015 by technicalbrutaldeathcore

[Striker879]

I know nothing at all about animation in Blender, but have you seen Avoiding Blender animation pitfalls?

[DrakeTheDragon]

Additionally to what Striker suggested, did you read up about "Bone Priority" already by chance?

 

You can set up idle animations in a way so they "override" everything else while playing, and the way Oblivion's idle selector works multiple idles can play at once, which enables them to "blend".

The bone priorities in your new weapon stance idle now are basically "locking" into this one particular idle exclusively, and no other animations with lower bone priorities can make these bones move anymore until your idle stops.

 

I haven't yet figured out exactly how bone priorities are set in Blender, as there's for one a Script entry for doing that but not telling if it's only doing it for the selected bones or which selected bones (Pose Mode or Edit Mode?) or if it's doing it for "all" bones at once, and for two there's also a setting when "exporting" into a NIF to set up 1 bone priority, again without telling at all, or even means to specify, which bones. I'm usually using both at once and for all bones my animation touches, which of course eliminates any means to later figure out which one worked or was the right one. It's also been quite a while since I last read up anywhere about it, I'm just doing it blindly at this point.

 

But point is, if your bone priorities are by chance (either by you accidentally changing them or perhaps leaving the setting on export on default and too high for a simple idle) higher than a usual idle's should be, there's the reason while your bones are "locked" into your idle now.

[technicalbrutaldeathcore]

I know nothing at all about animation in Blender, but have you seen Avoiding Blender animation pitfalls?

I hadn't and thank you for the reply, you can bet I'll read up on it today.

 

Additionally to what Striker suggested, did you read up about "Bone Priority" already by chance?

 

You can set up idle animations in a way so they "override" everything else while playing, and the way Oblivion's idle selector works multiple idles can play at once, which enables them to "blend".

The bone priorities in your new weapon stance idle now are basically "locking" into this one particular idle exclusively, and no other animations with lower bone priorities can make these bones move anymore until your idle stops.

 

I haven't yet figured out exactly how bone priorities are set in Blender, as there's for one a Script entry for doing that but not telling if it's only doing it for the selected bones or which selected bones (Pose Mode or Edit Mode?) or if it's doing it for "all" bones at once, and for two there's also a setting when "exporting" into a NIF to set up 1 bone priority, again without telling at all, or even means to specify, which bones. I'm usually using both at once and for all bones my animation touches, which of course eliminates any means to later figure out which one worked or was the right one. It's also been quite a while since I last read up anywhere about it, I'm just doing it blindly at this point.

 

But point is, if your bone priorities are by chance (either by you accidentally changing them or perhaps leaving the setting on export on default and too high for a simple idle) higher than a usual idle's should be, there's the reason while your bones are "locked" into your idle now.

 

Thank you for the info and it does seem as this is what's happening, I don't know much about priority either but in one of the steps in blender it had an option where I was asked to click on the thigh bone and set the priority from 20 to 27....perhaps this is what the issue is? Unfortunately I'm not aware if this is the only process required to actually effectively change the priority but I'll try changing this for all bones (or at least the major ones.) and check to see if it makes a difference. If you can think of anything else it would be helpful......I'll respond either later tonight or tomorrow with the results!!! Hopefully it's fixed <<< I just can't wait to replace the sword + Shield animations with at least as close as I can get to actual historical ones. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR REPLY, I'VE NOW GOT SEVERAL NEW WAYS IN WHICH I CAN TRY AND COMBAT THIS ISSUE!

[technicalbrutaldeathcore]

Edit: Situation update, I can now actually attack from the pose but my character is still displaced (rotated in the wrong direction.), I've read in the links provided that I should change "BIP01 Rotation (Euler R) to 0" and "change BIP01 NonAccum Rotation to 90" if it started at 0.....the issue is that I can't find these in Nifskope. In block details under 'Controlled blocks' I found a bunch of BIP01's (seemingly one for each both......every finger, every leg...arm etc.) << There is one labeled simply 'BIP01' but under that tab I can only see the following Names/types/values

 

Interpolator = 6 NiTransforminterpolator, Controller = None, Priority = 27, String Palette = 3[Nistringpalette], Node name offset = Txt BP01, Property type offset = txt empty, Controller type offset = txt Nitransformcontroller, Variable 1 offset = txt empty, Variable 2 offset = txt empty.

 

I couldn't find anything to do with roatiotion nor this "Euler R" thing. I'm sorry if this appears rather basic but my knowledge of Nifskope is basic. Again I found the above things undern "0Nicontrollersequence {block details} > Controlled blocks > Controlled Blocks = BIPO1" <<<