[LE] Need help to make hit effect art animated piece of armor

[xxxCYNICxxx]

Hello. I am new to Skyrim modding. I need help to make effect of animated piece of armor triggered with magic effect. I've created magic effect (healself) and attached it to armor enchantment so when HP is lower than certain value heal effect is launching. All is working good but i need play animation on my armor while effect is active. I've made nif with animation for hit effect art, created in CK hit effect art and assigned this nif to it. Then i put this hit art effect into appropriate slot in my magic effect. Now i have animated piece of armor which appearing while magic effect is active. But i have problem - my piece of armor appering not in right place - it placed right under my character. So question is - how can I attach my hit effect art nif to certain bone of my character. I've looked at other similar effects from game and tried to create needed string in my nif. I've managed to attach my nif to MagicEffectNode, but i need it to be attached to pelvis bone of my character. If there is some good tutorial how to do that i've would like to read it. I already know there is two kinds of nif animations: simple one when animation isn't controllable, and more advanced one when you can control stages of animations. I am using simple animation, because i have lack of knowledge about behaviour graphs which controls the animation stages to get needed results. But at the moment i am stuck with attaching nif to certain bone.

 

here is my nif setting in Nifskope. When i use NiStringsExtraData with parameter NamedNode&MagicEffectsNode my nif is appearing at chest bone (i think and NPC spine 2). But when i use NiStringExtraData with pelvis bone (NPC Pelvis (Pelv) ) - my nif in game is placed at character pivot point on the ground.
It would be cool if i could not only attach my hit effect art nif to needed bone, but also i could have few stages of my animation (not just simple loop), to make my piece of armor smoothly animated at beginning, and ending effect. Actually i need simple task - piece of armor to be still when magic effect isn't active, and play some animation when magic effect is active. When magic effect is finished - animation stops. Thank you in advance.

Sorry for my English it's not my native.

[testiger2]

Now first of all let me share what i have found out about attaching nifs to nodes

there are 2 methods that look the same but behave a little different:

 

AttachT Method
-------
NiStringsExtraData named AttachT ---NiStringS - don'T overlook the s
Array[1] = NamedNode& nameofTheNode*

works with
----------
as NiNode and BSFadenode OK
Magic Hit Effect Art -OK
ArmorAA -Niet
only workts in nistringSextradata in array
can be pointed to custom nodes added through either ARMA/ARTO**


PRN Method
-------
NiStringExtraData - without the s, this is not an array
named PRN
text = nameOfTheNode*

works with
------------
as NiNode and BSFadenode OK
Magic Hit Effect Art -NIET
ARmorAA -OK
can be pointed to custom nodes added through either ARMA/ARTO**


*This is the name of the bone/node you want to attach the nif to (ex: for pelvis use: NPC Pelvis [Pelv]
**You can add a new node with one nif and with another nif point to this new node if the actor has the effect/armor eqipped

 

If you use the wrong ExtraData for the wrong job or if your ExtraData has spelling errors this will result in the effect beeing moved to the pivot

 

 

For the animation issue you can look at some of the vanilla files to see how they work. some work just as you want your effect to work as well

for example Data\meshes\magic\frostbarrier01.nif has 3 sequences called: mBegin --when the MagicEffect starts, mLoop, -- loop, mEnd - when the magicEffect ends

So you could use that as a template and replace those 3 with your animations

 

Google for NiControllerManager, NiControllerSequence or NiTransformController, there are a few tutorials/docs on how to use them (i don't have the links on hand)

 

I hope this helps a little

[xxxCYNICxxx]

Thank you very much! AttachT perfectly worked. Now my armor is placed where it belongs! I will google about controllers, thank you for directing me. God bless you!

[xxxCYNICxxx]

Hello again, guys. I have one more question about animated nifs. I've made big progress in my work, thank to testiger2!

Now I've know how to manage animations vis NiControlManager, how to attach nif to any bone and so on. But I have one problem. If I want to animate separate shape in my nif there is no problem, I just attach it to bone and then just animate bone using NiControlManager, It work just fine. But I need one of my my shapes inside nif to be skinned - to animate this shape with two animated bones. What I've done is assigned vertex gruops for specific bones to my shape mesh, and then did animated bones way I want. In Nifskope animation is playing just fine - my shape is deforming as I need. But in game this shape apearing still. If i attach this shape to one of animated bones - then animation is playing in Skyrim but shape is animated as rigid object cause it's using only one bone animation, ignoring rest of the bones.

I've found vannila effect called miraakstaffprojectile.nif it has skinned mesh animated with chain of bones. I was tried to replicate this to my nif without any luck. I've copied everysingle nodes with appropriate settings, but no matter how I tried my animation don't want to play. It's seems like i missing something. But have no idea what exactly. Then I've edited this vanilla effect, - deleted all nodes i don't need, left only one bone chain and skinned mesh (Tentacle), attached root node to bone via AttachT. And put it ingame. Nif appeared at right place with working skinned animations. But I've spended whole day figuring out how to replicate such effect without any luck. I've copied all parameters and flags, edited every node inside NiControllManager, but my skinned animation don't want to play in Skyrim. I've stuck only with object animations - shapes directly parented to single bone. It's really frustrating. Please help.