Animating Wings

[Deleted3006898User]

I recently started using Vipcxj's Air Fight system, and because I hated the demon wings and tail, I replaced them. The replacement came from Alexander's wings -the dark angel wings- . It look better with my character, however there is no animation. I don't know how to do anything modding related, and I like not crashing the game and blowing up my computer. So therefore my request is for someone to either walk me through the process or provide a link to a tutorial.

 

Thank you,

R.A. The Walrus

[DrakeTheDragon]

The topic at hand is "rigging" the new wings to the wing bones of the skeleton, as most of Alexander's wings were never rigged to any bones for animation.

There's no need to mess with animations or create new ones, only the mesh needs to be properly rigged so it follows the wing bones and bends with them and all that.

 

If the shape of the new wings isn't too much different to the old ones, or the bones of the winged skeleton are at a proper place for the new wings, too, you could for ease of use simply try to "Copy Bone Weights" (that's the name of a NifTools script in Blender) the rigging from the old wings to the new ones.

 

I attempted to do something similar for my dragon wings, so for the time being, while I don't get around to work on my own flight system as intended, people could use the Air Fight System with my dragons... but in my first attempts I only failed miserably. There's something off with the position of the bones in the skeleton compared to the position of their nodes in the wing mesh. It looks like it is "pre-posed" in the skeleton, and as such the skeleton file can't be used as armature for the wing NIF right away but requires some more... advanced fiddling for this to work out. I don't get enough free time to mess with this right now, and as such I had to give it up.

 

I succeeded with a task similar to this already while helping Divine Avenger with the Blood Demon Race, so I know it can be done right... but in the limited timespan I got to try it out so far I only failed miserably in it.

From what I know the Air Fight System uses a pretty common set of wing bones, maybe even the ones from a certain compatibility or universal skeleton resource, so if you're lucky, you may be able to find already-rigged versions of the wings you're after or similar ones among the winged custom races out there. If the wings are rigged to bones compatible with the maximum compatibility or universal skeleton resources, they should work with the Air Fight System, too.

 

I learned rigging and that stuff through CuteUnit's famous Rigging Tutorial, but unfortunately nowadays I can't find it anywhere anymore. I'm sorry I'm not of much help with this.

Edited June 19, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[Deleted3006898User]

The topic at hand is "rigging" the new wings to the wing bones of the skeleton, as most of Alexander's wings were never rigged to any bones for animation.

 

I'm sorry I'm not of much help with this.

 

You actually helped me quite a bit, so the obvious reply is thank you sir. I now now to screw around with the skeleton and the wings. I will probably destroy everything but I have backups. Another comment is I am putting these with my own edited race. I disliked how the original Synx male had, in my opinion, a somewhat feminine face. I'll also be looking at your files very soon.

 

Edit: I will possibly upload animated, rigged wings as replacers for the Air Fight System if I can get the permission from both authors and I actually follow through.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Guest