Where to start. - Maya Custom Animations?

[Markmid]

Hey all, complete novice at animation here.

I am looking at blender at the minute and considering buying maya.

 

However, I am failing at finding tutorials on maya in regards skyrim, can anyone point me at some? If not, can you just point me at some really good maya tutorials in regards animation in general. Failing that anything for blender?

I would use 3dmax but curse microsoft they have bought it out and removed public support for the files I need, so it might be time for me to bite the bullet and look at maya.

Thanks for any help for an animation newbie.

 

 

[mhalsan]

I've been working on this myself the last couple weeks. I don't have access to 3DSMax or Havok Content Tools, but I have had partial success with Blender 2.49b and a handful of other tools. So far I can take an HKX animation file, convert, import to Blender, alter the animation, export .kf which does work in NIFSkope with the original skeleton.hkx. But then, after converting from kf to hkx, the new file won't work. The character stays in the half-t pose.

 

Edit:

When exporting a .kf from Blender, I discovered that a lot of data is being left out, compared to the imported file. For this example, I imported and exported a .kf without changing any of the animation.

 

The first difference is that, under NiHeader/Controlled Blocks, the exported version has changed the order of all the controlled nodes. This may not make any difference as the node names are still correct.

The block "NitextKeyExtraData" has the correct data in it, however the block has been moved from its original spot on the list. Again, this may not be a problem.

Next, under NiControllerSequence/ there is a long list of NiTransformInterpolators. In the original .kf, each of these has its own NiTransformData. In the .kf exported from Blender about 3/4 of the NiTransformData are missing. This is more likely the problem.

 

Will keep digging! Any ideas please post!

 

Thanks, Mark