power armor part

[xBloodTigerx]

having a headache with the power armor arm being 'static' (only 'connected' to shoulder).

 

how to you get the segments to work? it does not follow the arm at all

 

here's a pic;

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/Images/63609/?

[stihspid]

That's rigging. I'm only guessing, but let's say the puppetry skeleton for the actors & the PA frame are both built into a single skeleton (armature). Now we take the Red Rocket Gas Station (Yes, the whole station, I must insist) Put it all on the shoulder node, which is just another node on the skeleton, which is a armature or sometimes referred to as the armature. It's there, but nothing is there to tell it how we want it to behave. You know a intermediary between animation files & our super sexy stick figure. Composite Layers. So we put a animation on the skeleton, it's moving, but Red Rocket isn't.

 

Nodes add up to bones (what we think of bones) So the shoulder node, clavicle, and elbow might only be needed to make it work. The old way would mean using a tool to copy the bone weight (that's the data we were lacking) from a similar item in the game already, but we could then hand paint it based on testing data. So you have this shape, all those bones/nodes, and animation looking for something to tell it how to move. We would load a reference (something else that we know is good) then quarantined from the reference (if possible) copy it's bone weight (which is painted in colors, in layers, on geometric shapes)

 

After that one would need to clean up the extra data or superfluous (un-needed, extra, useless) parts of that bone weight paint copy, as well as the extra functionality or legacy nodes, but we would hope the program does most of that. Then, I'm not sure if it will do it, but the old Bethesda SDK used to play out animations in preview window, which was a great way to check the clipping (where geometry intersects other geometry) Think of a brick wall with a animated pickaxe that swings as the wall walks around, if the pickaxe goes thru the wall at any point while it's moving, it's clipping.

 

Which because this is Red Rocket Gas Station, would pretty much clip the whole rest of the PA frame, so we would go into the layers of the bones it used (some would be messy) clean those up, an paint the whole shape of Red Rocket to bend an fold under the armpit as the arm moved, though shoulder in particular really only refers to the clavicle movement & torso in regard to the composition of the shape, is it made of steel (and should bend/morph to avoid clipping less) or is it made of flesh/cloth and can bend/morph into all kinds of weird crazy shapes, such as would be needed here, but we only need it to go back an forth as the arm moves from the feet walking, and part of it to move for melee strikes & weapon animations.

[xBloodTigerx]

ah so it's the bone weighing. that is going to drive me crazy.

 

with my recent attempts to copy bone weighs are not successful. i exported the original arm using nifskope and used body slide to convert it again to nif without editing anything and the arm does not work.

(later figured out that the weigh is maxed out after export)

 

arg. i guess i'm off to figure out what value i'm looking for.

 

edit: great. it doesnt even open in nif if it's weighted ;-;

Edited January 29, 2017 by xBloodTigerx