That darn pelvis bone!

[GnargleHankar]

I'm having a big problem right here. I am trying to chreate a character animation for Oblivion but the pelvis bone just rotates the whole body. That is only when I import the complete skeleton from the skeleton.nif file though, the skeleton that comes with the lowerbody.nif doesn't have this problem - the pelvis bone just moves, well, the pelvis and not the entire body.

 

I am using Blender 2.49b and the universal skeleton from growlf (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37596). Any ideas? I have been searching like mad for the past few hours for a solution but I have yet to find one.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Can't speak for oblivion bit the fallout skeleton has the bip01 node is in the exact same place as the pelvis bone so make sure you have the right one selected. If you pick bip01 it does exactly as you describe.

[GnargleHankar]

Can't speak for oblivion bit the fallout skeleton has the bip01 node is in the exact same place as the pelvis bone so make sure you have the right one selected. If you pick bip01 it does exactly as you describe.

 

Nope. The pelvis bone is definiteley selected.

 

edit: I think I found the problem. The spine bone was a child of the pelvis bone resulting in the rotation of the whole body. Any idea what bone should be the parent for Bip01 spine? Just removing the parent wouldn't end well I guess. :c

 

It's pretty weird though that the skeleton is set up like that. Or I am overlooking something.

Edited April 14, 2011 by GnargleHankar

[LHammonds]

If that skeleton is giving you trouble, don't use it.

 

The one called "Full Human Male and Female Topless ImportReady Body 1_0" which is attached to the Blender page works just fine.

 

LHammonds

[fore]

It's more important, which animation you import. The skeleton by itself doesn't do any rotation.

 

And: there is no skeleton coming with any of the lower/upperbody.nif. Only a few bones, which have to do with body weighting (skinning), and are necessary to keep the nif in place. If you want to load an animation together with Body meshes, you should remove those bones from the meshes before you import the "real" skeleton with animation.

 

Then you should explain more precise what you do (import or start from scratch), and what you see.

 

From what you describe I assume you are importing an animation. The pelvis bone is used for rotation of the whole body. However, there is a bug/feature in Blender import. When the animation uses splines, they are converted into NiTransformInterpolators, but these conversions result in rotations which are about twice as large as in the original splines. Is this possible in your case?

[GnargleHankar]

It's more important, which animation you import. The skeleton by itself doesn't do any rotation.

 

And: there is no skeleton coming with any of the lower/upperbody.nif. Only a few bones, which have to do with body weighting (skinning), and are necessary to keep the nif in place. If you want to load an animation together with Body meshes, you should remove those bones from the meshes before you import the "real" skeleton with animation.

 

Then you should explain more precise what you do (import or start from scratch), and what you see.

 

From what you describe I assume you are importing an animation. The pelvis bone is used for rotation of the whole body. However, there is a bug/feature in Blender import. When the animation uses splines, they are converted into NiTransformInterpolators, but these conversions result in rotations which are about twice as large as in the original splines. Is this possible in your case?

 

I don't import any animation, I'm starting from scratch. First I import all the body meshes and deleting the bones that come with each of the meshes after each import. Then I save the file and close Blender. Then I start Blender again and load the body I previously saved, hit "a" and import the skeleton.nif.

 

The problem I have is that there is no way for me to actually move/rotate just the pelvis area. The pelvis bone just moves the whole body. However, If I disable the parent from the first spine bone (which is bip01 pelvis) the problem seems solved. But I'm sure this isn't a good idea.

 

I found a better solution: When I select both of the thigh bones and the spine bone and choose "Don't Inherit rotation or scale from parent bone" everything behaves exactly like I want to have it. Would that cause problems later on?

Edited April 15, 2011 by GnargleHankar

[fore]

Now I understand. But then: what do you expect from a skeleton. If you turn your lower body, your upper body will turn as well. Unless you make the opposite turn with your backbone. In your case: Bip01 Spine.

 

So what would be necessary to make the counter rotation on Bip01 Spine. Which of course requires some math, since Spine has a 7.3° tilt off the Pelvis bone.

 

But unless you just need this for a movie or so, you don't have a choice. You can't use a special skeleton with your modification:

- Pelvis is used for turning animations

- standard animations take into account that spine is movine with pelvis. I doubt they will look good with your skeleton

[GnargleHankar]

Now I understand. But then: what do you expect from a skeleton. If you turn your lower body, your upper body will turn as well. Unless you make the opposite turn with your backbone. In your case: Bip01 Spine.

 

So what would be necessary to make the counter rotation on Bip01 Spine. Which of course requires some math, since Spine has a 7.3° tilt off the Pelvis bone.

 

But unless you just need this for a movie or so, you don't have a choice. You can't use a special skeleton with your modification:

- Pelvis is used for turning animations

- standard animations take into account that spine is movine with pelvis. I doubt they will look good with your skeleton

 

What I mean is rotating or moving the Bip01 Pelvis bone has exact the same effect than rotating or moving the Bip01 bone. You can't compensate this with modifying the Bip01 spine.

[fore]

Sure, the same effect, because these bones or pseudo bones are attached to one another: Bip01 -> Bip01 NonAccum -> Pelvis -> Spine -> Spine1 -> ...

 

If you turn one, all the following will follow. And of course, you can compensate the UPPER body by modifying the spine. But you're right, the 2 tighs (and many more bones on coronerra's) are also connected to Pelvis, so it looks like Bip01 and Pelvis (and NumAccum) have the same effect. But they DON'T.

 

If you rotate Bip01 you change the coordinate system for moving animations AND turn your skeleton, if you change Pelvis you ONLY turn skeleton. Always keep in mind:

- change Bip01 for moving animations

- NonAccum for altitude

- Pelvis for rotation

 

Would you mind telling why it is important for your animation to rotate pelvis only. Bone weighting?

[GnargleHankar]

I don't want to use the pelvis area only but it's part of my animation and the Bip01 Pelvis is the only bone that affects this area. I don't want to make a new running animation or something that makes the character actually move in the game, only a stationary but animated pose (like dancing).