Importing Animations from Blender

Introduction

Creating animations for Oblivion, so far, has only been possible for users of 3DS Max versions 6 to 8 (AFAIK). If you're like me and don't have access to these versions (and don't want to obtain copies from ~those~ places), then you're stuck with Blender, Milkshape, etc.

Getting animations from Blender into Oblivion is a bit more work than that for 3DS Max users, but it can still be done. For this tutorial, the player's cast self animation will be altered partially, but the same process can be used to change the entire animation if you want too.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have the correct tools.

Tools Needed

Before you start making animations for Oblivion, you need (at least) the following tools:

• Blender
• scripts for importing and exporting .nif files to and from Blender
• the latest version of NifSkope
• some talent :)

Obviously it helps if you've read some tutorials on how to use these tools. Tutorials are available on the pages linked too above, as well as in the tutorials section.

Creating an Animation in Blender

The first thing you need to do is import an skeleton and mesh from Oblivion into Blender. The creature meshes 101 tutorial is quiet good for explaining how to do this.

Once you have a clean mesh in Blender, animate it. For this tutorial, simply rotate the left upper arm (Bip01 L UpperArm) so that it is above the character's head about mid-way through the animation.

Exporting an Animation from Blender to NifSkope

A poorly documented fact, only found by me when examining the export scripts and checking out the of the scripts on the NifSkope page and which hadn't been mentioned on the forums (AFAIK) was that the script could actually export animations! So export the model using the export script.

This will create a .nif file that contains:

• the skeleton,
• mesh and
• animation.

The only problem is that these three are merged and are not usable as an animation (.kf) as is.