Blender Animation - HEEEEELLLLLPPPPP!

[madmongo]

I'm trying to teach myself how to do animation for FNV with Blender (2.49b). With some help from Blender Noob to Pro and some poking around online, and a bit of trial and error, I managed to import a skeleton, animate it the way I wanted to, and exported it to kf. I also found out that I need to change the animation text string and set it to CYCLE_LOOP in NifSkope.

 

But now I'm stuck. When I try to preview the animation in the GECK, the NPC just stands there and does nothing.

 

The last thing I tried was taking an existing animation, loading it into Blender, and then doing nothing at all to it except exporting it. Same thing. The NPC just stands there.

 

Obviously I'm doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. I'm not getting any errors. Does anyone know of a decent tutorial that works? I'm using the export options from the Nexus Wiki and it's not working.

 

Any info or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[uhmattbravo]

Did you change the group name (the string at the top of where you changed it from clamp to loop)? Did you have all the bones selected when you exported? Did you set the bone priority?

 

Edit- did you remember to select .kf when saving in nifskope, I've forgotten before and ended up saving animations as .nifs.

[M48A5]

Have you seen this: Adult Animation Tutorial https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/28326 ?

[madmongo]

uhmattbravo, I did change the group name,and I changed it from clamp to loop. I had all of the bones selected when I exported. I did not set the bone priority because nothing I read told me that I had to, and I don't know how to do that. I have it set to export as kf (the default is nif+kf, and I changed it to kf only). Once I got that figured out, I went line by line down through all of the entries in NifSkope and tried to see if anything else looked out of place. Everything looked ok to me but it didn't work.

 

M48A5 I have not seen that tutorial. I will look at it tonight.

 

Thank you both.

[uhmattbravo]

To set your bone priorities open up a scripts window in Blender, select scripts-> object -> set bone priority. You'll need to have a bone (or all in alot of cases I've run into) first. IIRC, you want 25 for a special idle which I'm assuming is what you're doing.

 

Yes, you want to export the animation only. What I was saying about saving it as a .nif by mistake was after fixing it in Nifskope.

 

Basically, click use game defaults, click animation only, don't touch the collision or shader options, and even though I don't think it actually makes a difference, I use the bsfadenode for animations.

[madmongo]

I got it working, well, mostly anyway.

 

I was saving the kf as a nif in NifSkope (thanks for pointing that out). I also had an issue with the start and stop entries in the text file. I opened the text file and saw entries in there that looked correct, so I didn't think much about it. Looking at it more closely later, it turns out that the entries were something like idle_start and idle_stop instead of start and end.

 

I discovered that you can't rotate the mesh/skeleton. You have to rotate it via the scene_root bone or it won't actually rotate even though it is rotated in Blender. And right now the animation is rotated by 90 degrees, but I think I know why that is and how to fix it.

 

Thanks again!-

[uhmattbravo]

I do that all the time. I know to expect it, but still do it anyway.

 

Yeah, Bip01 handles horizontal movement. I didn't realize you couldn't rotate by using the actual rigging bones though, but I haven't really tried either. For future reference though, if you need to jump or something in an animation, use Bip01 Non Accum. It controls vertical movement like Bip01 controls the horizontal.

 

The 90° rotation happens when you import a skeleton (and/)or animation. One of Blender's quirks. It's fixable, but I don't remember how because most of my experience is with skeletons I made rather than imported.

[DKZZ2]

in Blender, select scripts-> object -> set bone priority

where? i know only kfupdater_2_2-496

[uhmattbravo]

 

 in Blender, select scripts-> object -> set bone priority

where? i know only kfupdater_2_2-496

http://i.imgur.com/43O3zEd.jpg

[dubiousintent]

This sounds like something that should be a "tip" in the "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article. But at present in this thread I found it a bit unclear in all instances so wanted to run my interpretation of it by you for correction.

 

* TIP: Animation Exporting.

First be sure to set the "bone priority" in Blender. To set your bone priorities open up a scripts window in Blender, select scripts | object | set bone priority. You'll need to have a bone (or all in a lot of cases) first. (For instance, you want 25 bones selected for a special idle.)
The 90° rotation happens when you import a skeleton and/or animation into Blender. One of it's quirks. It's fixable. You can't rotate the mesh/skeleton itself. You have to rotate it via the scene_root bone or it won't actually rotate even though it appears rotated in Blender. Bip01 handles horizontal movement. You can't rotate by using the actual rigging bones though.
If you need to jump or something in an animation, use Bip01 Non Accum. It controls vertical movement like Bip01 controls the horizontal.
You can't properly Import/Export Texture animation in Blender. Set up for such animations are best done in NifSkope.
After exporting your animation from '''Blender''' as a ".kf" file, make sure your "animation text string" in '''NifSkope''' is set correctly (e.g. change default Clamp to Cycle_Loop for repetitive movement), and change the group name (the string at the top where you do so to match (e.g. from clamp to loop). Check the start and stop entries in the text file are correct. Select ".kf" as the only file type when exporting from NifSkope. Do not include saving as ".nif" at the same time.
Basically, click use the NifSkope game defaults, click "animation" only, don't touch the "collision" or "shader" options, and while it may not actually make a difference, use the bsfadenode for animations.

 

-Dubious-