Blender/Creating a Character Animation

Introduction

Creating a character animation in Blender is easy, as soon as you've imported the proper skeleton and set up the different windows. This tutorial will cover the first parts of that process by explaining how to get the skeleton in Blender and it gives an introduction into animating. Make sure you have the tools mentioned in the box at the top, see the link to the Installing Blender tutorial for instructions on how to install the older versions of Blender and the NIF scripts. You don't need an older version to import the skeleton, but to export the animation in the end. The export process is covered in Exporting Character Animations from Blender.

Importing the skeleton

Version 1.5.7 of the Blender plugin can't export a skeleton without skin. You can download the already made skeleton at the link in the tools box, or you can make one yourself.

Making an importable skeleton

1. Extract the following files from the BSA archives depending on what body parts you want to give to the skeleton. It makes no difference for the end result, the skeleton is the same for each gender.

Female:

• Meshes\Characters\_male\femalefoot.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\femalehand.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\femalelowerbody.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\femaleupperbody.nif

Male:

• Meshes\Characters\_male\foot.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\hand.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\lowerbody.nif
• Meshes\Characters\_male\upperbody.nif

Skeleton:

• Meshes\Characters\_male\skeleton.nif

Head:

• Meshes\Characters\Imperial\headhuman.nif

2. Open skeleton.nif in NifSkope.
3. Open foot.nif in a new window and expand the first NiNode.
4. Right click the NiTriShape block and choose Block > Copy Branch.
5. Go back to the window with skeleton.nif and right click the first NiNode, Block > Paste Branch.
6. Close foot.nif and repeat this for the other body parts, including the head. Note that the lower body and upper body exist out of two parts (NiTriShape blocks), you have to copy both of them.
7. Save the complete body somewhere you can find it easily in Blender and close any remaining NifSkope windows.

Configuring the Blender interface

Unfinished