Animating a new model

[glowplug]

Thanks DrakeTheDragon, sorry to hear you are snowed under.

 

Now that I know I 'can' get something this side of the project can take months if it has to. My main concern is that is that I don't have to alter the quests that I'm working on.

 

I've been having problems with Oblivion since I gave in and installed Windows 10 Creators Update (WCE) a few weeks back. It's not long since I built my pc but Oblivion went from loading within seconds to around a minute as well as a lot of crashes. PositionWorld would crash more often than not so I have no idea.

Turning off Game bar fixed it but the problem returned. Changing power to High Performance fixed it but the problem has returned - not quite so bad but around half a minute from clicking Play to the load screen appearing. That was why I decided to reinstall Oblivion but the load is still slow. All I did was backup my mod, then replace Oblivion with a backup of a fresh install from around last release of CSE. I'm going to try clearing everything out and letting Steam download it.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Now, finally, that was 1 new server every following day as well. Gladly the next times they kept the order right. I hope you made good progress in the mean time.

 

First off, I don't think the order of the sanitization spells in NifSkope is really critical. A lot of them can be done at any point and won't affect the outcome of the others. Not sure about "Adjust Link Arrays" and "Check Links", but that'd be the only one I could expect some trouble with. Oh, and I actually missed "Reorder Blocks" somewhere along the line as well last time. The "Update All Tangent Spaces" should be done rather early I think, as the tangent spaces are computed from the normal vectors and used for texture mapping via UV. If you adjust your UV maps before updating the tangent spaces, chances are the results will change when you update them later, or it won't even work, if the tangent spaces haven't ever been updated/computed before.

 

No, I don't know of an existing resource that would fit your bill here straight away, but I far from know them all either.

 

I've had problems with gaming/modding in Windows 10 myself every time so far, but I'm running Windows in a virtual machine and always took this as the main fault. Gaming/modding in Win 8 in the VM, however, works perfectly fine. Go figure.

 

If you're going to add another limb to a skeleton and its KFs, it'd be better to first add the whole limb's bones, rig the models to it, and only then expand the animations. Otherwise, how would you see how the models will behave later when you move a bone in the animation and nothing else moves with it? Plus, getting the rigging right on a model between 2 or more bones isn't always easy to begin with. Having to re-do your rigging all over again with each new bone you add individually, and without knowing how the next bone you introduce will change it yet again... well, let's just say you'll likely regret that idea rather soon.

 

 

As for your Import settings,

- using "Import Animation" without having a "Keyframe File" selected will have no effect,

- nor does having "Animate" checked without providing a "FaceGen EGM File".

 

And in your Export settings,

- "Export Geometry + Animation (.nif)" I myself never used so far. From what I know it's for those NIFs with baked in animations, as in Animated Statics or Activators. This baking in of KFs into static NIFs I always do in NifSkope myself though afterwards. (I created a sarcophagus that can open and close its lid that way, for reference.)

- The entire block for "Collision" settings I also only rarely use. It's likely for the collision body capsules which go along with most skeleton's bones, to give the creature's body collision properties.

- "Flatten Skin" will, like I said, remove the entire hierarchy of the bones and turn them into flat reference nodes, useful for items, bad for skeletons.

- "Stripify Geometries" is used to turn all "NiTriShapes" into "NiTriStrips" on export, and as far as I know "Stitch Strips" will sort of connect them again afterwards. No idea as to how though. Certain models will prefer NiTriShapes for their geometries, but mostly NiTriStrips are more performant. This isn't a skeleton thing though.

- The "Weapon Body Location" section is only relevant when you export Weapons, like the name says, or in general every kind of item that's mounted on one of the so-called PRN attachment points, like weapons, quivers, shields, torches, etc. These are special attachment points inside a skeleton where you don't rig things to but where said items will stick to when equipped.

- And I for one usually uncheck "Smoothen Inter-Object Seams", as it turned out more detrimental to me than helpful, always slightly altering certain vertices' positions on export, and in my cases usually only creating huge gaps between body parts where inside Blender there were none.

 

 

In your screenshot of the two NifSkope NIF trees you're actually comparing like apples to oranges. The skeleton's bones are always NiNodes. The children of a parent bone are the NiNodes inside that NiNode. If you go look into another block like "XYZController"-something, the NiNodes inside there aren't the "actual" nodes but only references to them, like the nodes the Controller controls. You'll always find the same nodes with the exact same ID/number outside of there somewhere further inside the tree as well, and if you edit a node, its properties will change everywhere else it appears.

 

You can see it fine in the left image. The entire tree with only occasional additions of controllers which then only control a very select group of nodes. Usually you'll quickly spot the node they control in the near surrounding as well and see it's as if it's a duplicate or something, but it is not. Just leave those XYZController blocks closed, and you should never have an issue finding the right nodes/the actual bones. As it is right there, in the right image you look inside one of the controllers, a NiBSBoneLODController, if I'm not mistaken, and see only a list of the nodes it controls. These aren't the actual bones.

 

 

And as for the actual problem at the end, for starters I for one never use "Copy" and "Paste Over" for branches, that is nodes with an arrow sign at their side and further nodes or whatever inside. I always only use "Copy Branch" and "Paste Branch", though this can't be used for pasting over but I have to "Remove Branch" the old one before. I don't even know if you can "paste over" a branch over another so it won't affect the contained bones.

 

But if you did like the picture says, then you actually tried copying a branch and pasting it over a reference node inside a NiTransformController, again not the actual bone. You see the actual bones' nodes all have arrows and other nodes inside, while the ones inside those controllers' reference lists have no such thing. Do not confuse them with the actual bones' nodes, that's also why it created an error when you tried.

 

Some things cannot be copy&pasted from one NifSkope into another, for example all the collision bodies usually won't remain inside the blocks they came from but move to the root branch "0 NiNode - Scene Root" instead.

 

 

As for the rest, I got no idea. There is something special inside Growlf's Total Controllable skeleton NIF, which I can imagine cannot be imported and exported as is straight away. But that's about as much as I know.

 

 

And sorry again for the delayed response.

[glowplug]

Thanks for your wealth of information DrakeTheDragon.

Sorry for the lack of feedback since you posted but I've been snowed under myself.

With your help, I'm now getting 'experiments' to work on a regular basis.

I'm glad it's no longer a question of 'if' but when I can get the creature done.

Even if it's not exactly what I want it will certainly be something new as required by the mod I want it for.