Difference between revisions of "Blender/Creating a Character Animation"

[[Image:charanimtut1.jpg|right|thumb|]]This should leave you with something like this.

This also shows you somewhat the number and type of windows you will need.  The easiest way to manipulate frames of the animation is to use the Timeline.  You can create a long, narrow window for this by right-clicking on the right or left-hand border of Blender and choosing "split."  Then click on the little square in the corner and choose "Timeline" as shown. [[Image:Charanimtut2.jpg|right|thumb|]]

[[Image:Charanimtut3.jpg|right|thumb|]]The buttons window in the lower left should already be there for you.  It is used in many things; in this tutorial it will largely be noteworthy for skeleton settings.

[[Image:Charanimtut4.jpg|right|thumb|]]And very importantly, make sure you have a window in the lower right for the text buffer.  Use your split command on the top border of the buttons window to create another box on the right, then select the little square and choose "text editor."

[[Image:Charanimtut5.jpg|right|thumb|]]Now choose Text -- New.  Give this the name "Anim" so that Blender knows we are working with the Anim buffer.

[[Image:Charanimtut6.jpg|right|thumb|]]Now type what you see here.

[[Image:Charanimtut7.jpg|right|thumb|]]Now go to the button window and temporarily turn it into a scripts window - as you can see, it's the one with the green python for an icon.  Choose the "Set Bone Priority" script under Scripts -- Object.

 

[[Image:Charanimtut8.jpg|right|thumb|]]Now turn your buttons window back into a buttons window and make sure you are still in Pose Mode.  

[[Image:Charanimtut9.jpg|right|thumb|]]So just to recapitulate, before animation begins the window should look roughly like this.

[[Image:Charanimtut10.jpg|right|thumb|]]Pictures are less useful at this point, because it's time to do the actual animating.  The simplest way to do this is by selecting an individual bone and pressing "r" to rotate it.  If you press 3 or ctrl+3 on the numpad, you can select both leg or arm bones at once to create symmetrical poses like the ones in this pic.

  [[Image:Charanimtut11.jpg|right|thumb|]]Now export using these or similar settings.

[[Image:Charanimtut12.jpg|right|thumb|]]Open your .kf file in NifSkope.  Nothing is visible because there is no mesh data included.

[[Image:Charanimtut13.jpg|right|thumb|]]With this node selected, you can see information in the data blocks down below as well.  Most important in this case are the start time, stop time and cycle type.  Set the cycle type to "Loop."  The start time should be 0.  The stop time will be 0 as well if you are creating a stationary pose; change it to this if so.  It will be a different number if you create a moving animation and probably will not require change.

[[Image:Charanimtut14.jpg|right|thumb|]]There are many controlled blocks.  You need to locate the one called "Bip01 NonAccum."

Now you should have one key for the start time and one for the stop time.  Don't change the numbers if they're already this way - you don't need to change stop time to 0 for a pose in this particular place.[[Image:Charanimtut15.jpg|right|thumb|]]

Normally the height given for Z should be 67.414 in this NonAccum node's translation keys.  As you can see, it's 0 in the above example, which is why the test anim dropped partway through the floor.  Changing the Z numbers to 67.414 fixes the problem.