Replacing The Base Head...

[HSovieticus]

Another option would be to pre-render the NPC for dialogue. After all, there is no player movement when in conversation with an NPC. So, when you enter conversation with the NPC, it will be replaced by a flat plane with the pre-render being applied to that plane.

 

Of course, you would still have to use some other method to animate the character's face for non-conversational speech.

 

And in case anyone cares, I am still working on the previous approach. I'm working on a test rig for Marcus right now. I'll let you know when I get anywhere.

[HSovieticus]

I've found a facial rig which I am going to adapt for use in Gamebryo. Right now I am trying to adapt it for use with the Marcus creature's head. But it is difficult, so I will need to ask a few questions as I go along.

 

First, is it okay to make the armature parent to the mesh by using a modifier? I am thinking that it is, since the Marcus skeleton is a modifier upon import into Blender.

 

Next, I am having trouble weight painting the jaw. In particular, I do not know how to weight paint the part of the lip that is not visible. The effect is that the jaw moves and so does the bottom part of the bottom lip, but not the top part, so the lip just stretches downward. But I want the lip to move and the mouth to open. I tried hiding vertices, but that only works in edit mode. So if there is some other way, like auto weight painting a vertex group, or copying the weight paint from one bone to another (since the problem area has already been weight painted by Bethesda, but for a bone that I no longer have use of), or if there is any other way to correct the problem, then I am open to suggestions.

 

EDIT: nevermind, I am able to pose the problem area so that I can paint it properly. Blender was just being tricky, as usual, so I needed to do some stuff before it will allow me to pose the bones in weight paint.

Edited September 16, 2011 by HSovieticus