Brainstorming getting a Flail to work

[RGMage2]

I had not looked at it in Nifskope but now I see what you mean.

 

What I did was to delete all bones except the whip bones, and then merged the armature with the first person armature, and then parented the whip root to the right hand. Perhaps this was the wrong way of doing it, or maybe it required fine-tuning in Nifskope,

 

If we copy and paste the Translation and Rotation data on the whip root from 3^rd person skeleton to first person skeleton will this fix it? or have you already done that?

 

I apologize for my failure and the wasted time it has caused you.:( I know the pain of that because I too have wasted several hours trying to get a very simple 1^st person animation to work properly. :wallbash:

[fore]

RGM, there is no reason AT ALL to apologize. It was my missing experience with 1st person, so I stubbornly looked for the wrong cause. I probably had never noticed if I hadn't done something I do very often, and I usually feel quite comfortable with: change or copy/paste animation data between different animations.

 

After changing the skeleton with NifSkope I can't see any difference in the animations. And I'm happy that you didn't make it on purpose, for rigging reason. That's why I wrote a bit agitatedy. :)

 

Shall I send you my animations, or do you need any help with yours? I have developed some tooling, which can make animating much easier (spread-sheets and the necessary export/import scripts)

[jamochawoke]

Lol every time I get some time to look in to what you guys have done to see what I can do you keep making more (and awesome!) changes lol. I actually went to see what I could rig up for the sheathed weapon last night and here comes RGMage with something way better than I was working on LOL!

 

I guess what I can do is to rig up the other flails in the original resource and work on getting some levelled lists going to put them in-game. I can texture really well also, so I can make multiple versions if needed while you guys work on the animations, because let's face it, I'm not an animator by any means (extremely limited animation knowledge). I know how things should look but technically can't get them there... and you guys are doing way better of a job than I could.

[fore]

... and you guys are doing way better of a job than I could.

Have you seen anything working from us? :D :D :D

 

After changing the skeleton with NifSkope I can't see any difference in the animations. And I'm happy that you didn't make it on purpose, for rigging reason. That's why I wrote a bit agitatedy. :)

RGM, sorry to say, but there is a fundamental issue with the skeleton I'm not able to fix. You can see it in Blender when importing a combat animation (walks and idle were fine). The character is laying on the side.

 

The reason seems to be, that there is an additional "scene Root.000" on level 1 in NifSkope, and Translation & Rotations for ALL bones (except whip) are different to coronerras and standard. In-game the skeleton seems to work, as I said. But for me it's a problem, since I can't figure out how to change Blender view with the NumPad in a predictable way.

 

Noone knows better than I do how difficult it is to work with Blender. ;)

[jamochawoke]

fore, are you a student? If so Autodesk has released 3DSMax 2010-2012 for free on their website for current students or staff of universities. All you need is a .edu email address to get it.

 

I believe 3DS Max 2010 is the latest version that has the .nif import scripts.

 

I have it, but don't have time to learn it unfortunately so I mostly stick with clunky old 2.49b Blender haha :/

[RGMage2]

@fore My own animating I would describe as entry level. I might be able to put the weapon on the hip in the Idle and walking animations, but really you are the only animator here.:biggrin:

 

I will do the 1^st person skeleton again. Maybe I had another armature open in another frame in blender. I am also going to try a first person animation with an unedited vanilla skeleton just to see if I can make it work, and maybe I will learn something.

 

@jamochawoke Don't give up on those sheathed weapons yet. It is really not determined how we will do that, so if you have some ideas there, we might go with them.:)

 

What would be good also would be if there was a flail that matched each set of the default armours.

 

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OK guys, as promised, here is a working esp with all non-animation files included. This is not a finished product, you should think of it as a prototype. I have made the reach very long and the speed very slow, this is just for testing. It is actually kind of fun having such a slow weapon with a long reach that does serious damage. You will find the flail in a chest on the dock at the IC Prison Sewer Exit.

 

https://rapidshare.com/files/18516456/FlailTest.7z

 

Everything I have done here is a resource for other people to build on. Something I think we need now is a talented scripter. As far as scripting goes this is as far as I can go with this. I am not a scripter, my scripting abilities are extremely limited.

 

Issues for a scripter

 

The messages that pop up when items are added or equipped by script need to be removed

 

The ground item when activated will add the flail to inventory and is itself disabled when it is activated, This will cause bloat. I believe there is something in OBSE that can handle this differently.

 

When the flail is dropped from inventory the ground item is added by PlaceAtMe which works fine, but the flail weapon needs to be removed from the world space. I found that when I disabled it OnDrop then my character was not only unable to pickup the ground item, but was also unable to pickup anything.

 

The holstered position of the flail. If we are not going to do it with animations then we need a way to do it with a script.

 

[jamochawoke]

I am decent at scripting I'll look at what you did. And if I can't get it to work I know several scripters a little more talented than me that I can ask. I'm almost done with a major project today so I'll be back on next weekend after I've looked at everything and will upload something by Saturday night. Edited October 9, 2011 by jamochawoke

[fore]

RGM, I might be able to help here. Before I started animating, I did a lot of scripting for my huge private mod (companion, trainer, playerhome, roleplaying, ...), which I couldn't release because it contains many restricted elements. I also used OBSE, mostly for arrays and strings, not many of those fancy features. OBSE wasn't there where it is today.

 

Without looking into your upload I think you can avoid much scripting, and the bloating. The following would work only if we restrict the weapon to the player, but I think for NPCs there could be a another approach.

 

What you need are 2 different dummy sword nifs (one with a scabbard looking like a flail, one with an invisible scabbard) and OBSE's setmodelpath. Whenever the character equips the weapon, the 1st model is used (invisible blade with a flail shaped scabbard). As soon as he equips the weapon (getisalerted, or whatever is needed to determine that), you simply change the modelpath to the 2nd version, where the scabbard is invisible, or consists of a belt hook, or whatever).

 

I have not used that setmodelpath, but I have seen several mods using it, even for the player's skeleton.

[RGMage2]

@fore, you might want to have a look at these.

 

https://rapidshare.com/files/5559765/Flail_Animations.7z

 

I do not know if we can use them or not, but I have an Idle.kf and a WalkForward.kf with the flail in the holstered position. To make them work with the OneHandIdle.kf I had to make a very small change to the OneHandIdle. I had to Loc the whip root on frame one and give the unused whip bones bone weight priorities.

 

　

 

I took the flail for a test drive and my conclusion is that it might become my favourite weapon, It requires strategy that you would not normally use. It is powerful but if not used properly you become vulnerable. I love it. It is awesome.:D

 

2 videos here. The first one shows the flail in the holstered state Idle and Walking changing to the Onehandattackright. The second video is Flail Combat.

http://youtu.be/uQ687oprQkE

 

Edited October 9, 2011 by RGMage2

[fore]

Good job with the animations, RGM, especially for someone who claims to be at entry level. :thumbsup:

 

There are a few minor issues with idle.kf (bone priorities; different NonAccum rotation (which in fact is a Blender import bug)). However I really hope we can avoid them by using the setmodelpath solution I mentioned before. I know you spent some time making this nice flail bouce while walking, but do you want to modify all non-combat animations? If not, and your character changes walking speed or direction, this animation will freeze right away, which can cause clipping, and looks more strange than not animating at all.

 

The onehandidle can't be used as it is. You have to make sure the flail goes straight down on EVERY frame, or the eye will immediately notice. And you can't do this with Blender. Even on idles, the flail will do some zig-zag. I already made some spread-sheet algorithms for all non-combat animations to calculate straight hanging. So if you do something, you should always use my adaptations as input.

 

Yes, and I like the flail very much as well. It's really great fighting with :) .