Merging Skeletons

[slogwiser]

As the topic suggests, I am trying to merge together two skeletons, or at least part of them.

 

I am currently using P-Froggy's First Person Body mod, which creates an immersive first person view by utilizing a "fake" first person skeleton. Basically, it is a body without a head or arms that you see whenever you look down.

 

However, it is incompatible with the BBB system. It lacks the bones for it, creating the "stretchy boobs to infinity" glitch in first person. This only occurs on the "fake" body of the PC. NPCs are fine, first person or third.

 

So, what I am looking to do, is merge the "skeleton_viewable body.nif" with Growlf's Universal Skeleton Nif to make it compatible somehow.

 

I am limited in the knowledge of how to do this, so I am requesting assistance on how to go about this task. If anybody can help me, or point me to some relevant tutorials, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

I know my way around NifSkope "somewhat." I also have Blender, but know almost nothing about it. I am willing to learn and do this myself though, I just have no idea where to begin.

 

-Thanks

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, the way "I" am always using for this (there are more than likely a bunch of others, but this is pretty safe and straight-forward) is copying the bones from one into the other one-by-one in NifSkope.

It will not work, if there is the same bone in different orientation or something like that, but that's highly unlikely to ever be the case here.

 

For example, I merged the custom bones my dragon race requires (wings, armblades, tailblades) into Loup Sombre's 3rd Person Animations In 1st Person View 1st person skeleton, as I was using this mod back then, and my custom body meshes did exactly as your's without my custom bones present in the skeleton.

 

It was pretty simply just "copy branch" on the left wing upperarm branch (the first of the custom bone branch I added) in the NIF tree then "paste branch" into the left clavicle branch (I connected the wings to the clavicles) of the Loup Sombre skeleton, then doing the same for the right wing upperarm branch and the other custom bone branches I had.

 

Lately I did something similar by adding BBB bones (the new branches for the breasts and the few new bones around the butt and groin area, I think 6 "copy branch" -> "paste branch" steps in total) into a Playable Spider Daedra skeleton file, as requested by a random Nexus member some days ago. It's really as simple and straight-forward as it reads here. Once you successfully copied over one branch of BBB bones, the others will be just routine work to you already.

 

So far I was unable to create a "working" skeleton in Blender right from export, but always succeeded in creating a custom skeleton in Blender and merging its "new" bones and branches into a working "existing" one in NifSkope afterwards to create a "real" working new one. So that's likely why I won't suggest doing the merge in Blender or another modeling app. I just haven't yet figured out how to succeed in doing it this way, so I do it the other all the time.

 

Give it a try, it's just a few clicks. You only need to find the right bones and branches in the NIF tree. Though if you open both skeletons in two seperate NifSkopes next to each other and browse up the trees comparing the branches, it'd be pretty simple to quickly determine the ones missing in the other and copy them over accordingly.

 

Little disclaimer: I seem to be one to solve certain issues the most tedious ways possible at times, so maybe I'm just doing it again with this and there's a far more simple and comfortable way to do it. Perhaps someone else will come along and post his solution later, which is way better than mine. But it's a start nevertheless.

[slogwiser]

Well, the way "I" am always using for this (there are more than likely a bunch of others, but this is pretty safe and straight-forward) is copying the bones from one into the other one-by-one in NifSkope

 

I will look into this and give it a try.