huntsman2310 Posted February 9, 2012 Share Posted February 9, 2012 A while ago I started work on making a wingless, four legged sub-species of Dragon. First off I called them Wyverns, then it got changed to Draak, and then finally to Wyrm. The model and texture has been finished for a while now, and now that the CK is out I can preview its animations and movements, but first I want to edit the Dragon skeleton to remove the wings. Can I do that in Blender? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrakeTheDragon Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Oh well, I may not know anything about Skyrim and changes of its NIF structure, but since you're down on page 15 already, it could as well be me trying to help here with knowledge I got from Oblivion modding. From experience I wasn't able to export a working skeleton out of Blender myself so far. So what I usually did to customize skeletons was:- import them into Blender,- add my new bones,- export them,- and then open both, the newly exported skeleton and the original I imported from, with NifSkope to "copy branch"&"paste branch" over only the new bone structures I added.This way the basic bone structure was kept intact and the skeleton was still working, while my new bones were added and also working as well at the same time. Similarly you could just "remove branch" the two bone structures for the wings you want to get rid of and would be on the safe side again. But keep in mind I know nothing about the internal structure of Skyrim NIFs or how the dragon creature skeletons are set up. If it's far too different from how it was in Oblivion, my information is utterly useless to you now! edit: Oh, most important, why I always did it this way and what was failing on export from Blender directly to begin with, it was those collision and havok parts in the NIF. The constraints got always messed up on import as well as on export! And the collision meshes were a nightmare to keep in place. And why I'm mentioning this now, if you go "remove branch" the wings' bone structures, you could end up with "orphaned" collision meshes, as those are usually not removed along with their bones (for some cause I'm unaware of) as well as constraints. You should tidy up your NIF, using all "spells" NifSkope provides for this, prior to save by all means in this case! Bogus nodes, damaged link structures, invalid arrays and all this stuff "has" to be gone before you save it! And that's coming from me not even able to explain what half of this stuff does. Oh well. Edited February 10, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntsman2310 Posted February 11, 2012 Author Share Posted February 11, 2012 Getting rid of bones should use the same process right? I'm working on a Wyrm type of Dragon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirxazor Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 I had to reinstall my old 3ds max because blender does NOT like my nif scripts at all. I just couldn't get it to work... I would suggest download the nif scripts for blender and give a go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrakeTheDragon Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 (edited) Getting rid of bones should use the same process right? I'm working on a Wyrm type of Dragon.I know what you're working on. I'm a follower of your WIP thread. :thumbsup: Yes, like I wrote "Similarly you could just "remove branch" the two bone structures for the wings you want to get rid of and would be on the safe side again."If it's still more or less the same way as it was in Oblivion NIFs, you might come along pretty fine with just NifSkope for this task (only removing complete sets of bones, from the root of the branch to its leafs).If it's exactly the same as with Oblivion NIFs, this should be 2 "remove branch" calls, on the left and the right wing upperarm (or wing clavicle), or what they're named. All subsequent bones up to the wing fingers and wing phalanges should follow suit and vanish along when using "remove branch" on the root of their branches. Edited February 12, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntsman2310 Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 And for the new forelegs, I'd have to add some bones in Blender right? Looks like I've got some work to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrakeTheDragon Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 And for the new forelegs, I'd have to add some bones in Blender right? Looks like I've got some work to do...For adding new bones, yes, this could get a little more tedious.That's the long run I explained first, "copy branch" and "paste branch" the new bone branches from the exported, likely not working, file into the existing, already working, skeleton. Should again only be 2 calls.However, I didn't yet add any havok or collision structures to my wing bones, as they didn't really need it, yet, but for forelegs it could be critical to do so, and this part is where I'm lacking knowledge about how to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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