3ds Max: Custom Creatures

The goal of this tutorial is getting a creature you modeled and created your own bone rig for in game and working properly, without using anything that originated from the original gamefiles.

There is one exception to this as you will have to copy/paste the collision and Constraints from one of Bethesda's skeletons into your's to get Havok working.

Required Programs

Programs you will need for this tutorial

• 3DSMax
• Tazpn's KFUpdater
• Civ4 Exporter
• NifTools Importer/Exporter and NifSkope

Disclaimer

I am not going to teach anyone how to model or rig this tutorial assumes that you already know how to do both of these within 3DSMax.

I Use 3DSMax 8 with SP3 and Niftools 2.10 as of writing this tutorial, there maybe some setting that need to be changed to get other versions of max/niftools to work properly.

This Tutorial will cover only proper Mesh Export using NifTools Exporter, Skeleton Export Using NifTools Exporter, and animation export using Civ4 Exporter and Tazpn's KF Updater.

Getting Started

You have a nice new creature modeled up and ready for the boning and rigging process.

As you create the bone's skeletal structure think if you want your creature to be able to wield weapons or shields, cast magic, and if it needs to be able to sheathe weapons, then you will need to add these bones:

• Weapon (Weapon Wielding Bone)
• SideWeapon (1H Weapon Sheathing Bone)
• BackWeapon (2H Weapon Sheathing Bone)
• Quiver (Quiver Bone)
• MagicNode (Magic Casting Bone)
• Bip01 L Forearm Twist (shield Wielding Bone)
• Torch (Torch Bone)

Note: the SideWeapon, BackWeapon and Quiver Bones all seem to have some parenting requirement as no matter where I placed them in the skeletal scene where they showed up ingame was based off what bone I parented them to, this was actually a source of irritation as I fully created 10+ skeletal rigs testing getting these bones trying to get them to work how I wanted and just ended up removing them completely.

Ok now you have a fully modeled and Rigged creature ready for concept testing

Mesh Export

Hide all bones and helpers. Then

File -> Export -> Netimmerse/Gamebryo(*.kf,*.Nif) -> Creature Name -> Save

Nif Export Screen Settings

Check These:

• Hidden Nodes
• Flatten Hierachy
• Vertex Colors
• Update Tangent Space
• Export Skin Modifer
• Enable Multiple Partitions (18,4) default
• Add User Prop Buffer
• Sort Nodes

Skeleton Export

Hide the Complete Mesh and Helpers, then

File -> Export -> Netimmerse/Gamebryo(*.kf,*.Nif) -> Skeleton -> Save

Nif Export Screen Settings

Check These:

• Hidden Nodes
• Skeleton Only
• Add User Prop Buffer
• Sort Nodes
• Add Accum Nodes

Now That you have a mesh and skeleton all you need to test your creation is an Idle animation

In Max

Time Configuration -> Set Frame Rate

Set it to NTSC 30 Frames per second, set end time to 100 frames, Hit OK

You can do some basic keyframe animation up/down left/right whatever you want.

Civ4 Tools

If you havent already set up the Civ4 Tools then go to Customize < Customize User Interface < Catagory < CivilationIV Tools, Hit New - Name it, Scroll down to your new toolbar and uncheck hide you should have just an empty box , drag and drop the Civ4 Animation Manager and Civ4 Export to your new toolbar, close the customize user interface box, and if you want you can do as I did and right click your new tool bar and Dock it somewhere so its not just a floating box and is out of the way.

Click the Civ4 Animation Manager and a new box will open, Known Actor Roots < Add Press "h" and chose Bip01

Active Sequence Name , Rename everything in there to Idle and check Loop Sequence Set your start frame and end frame's

Open Sequence Tags (this is where you will add sequence tags for the animations to do what they are suppost to do, casting magic and attacking blending playing sounds and everything you will need to get the animations to react correctly ingame).

Now hit Civ4 Export < Idle < Save < File Export Script < Single KF Export Without Nif < OK

Now unpack NIFCMD.RAR to its own directory and add your idle.kf to this directory, edit UpdateKF.bat

@call nifcmd KFVersion -v 20.0.0.4 -u 11 -p 50 -i %*

-p = Priority to assign to all the bones coltrollers for all my idles I set this to 10 (1 also works fine) it needs to be something low so other more important animations can take over control when needed.

@call nifcmd KFVersion -v 20.0.0.4 -u 11 -p 10 -i %*

Like so.

then make a new txt file rename it CMD.bat, then edit it and type in "cmd.exe" close and save

double click your new cmd.bat file to open a command prompt for that directory and type in

UpdateKF Idle.kf "hit enter"

Add all 3 of these files into a custom directory within your oblivion/data/meshes directory

Now load up the CS and test your mesh skeleton and idle.kf this should not put out any errors if you do get one something messed up :/

If all is good you can move forward and start creation of all the other required animations to get a working creature.

Walking

I would start with walking:

• WalkForward - Animate In Motion
• WalkBackward - Animate In Motion
• WalkLeft - Animate In Motion
• WalkRight - Animate In Motion
• WalkTurnLeft - Animate In Place (no actual turning in the animation, Ob's Engine handles that)
• WalkTurnRight - Animate In Place (no actual turning in the animation, Ob's Engine handles that)
• WalkFastForward - Animate In Motion
• WalkFastbackward - Animate In Motion
• WalkFastLeft - Animate In Motion
• WalkFastRight - Animate In Motion

Pay close attention to the sequence tags used by Bethesda's animations as well as controller priorities per bone used by Bethesda.

To get working "Animate In Motion" animation ingame and working you will have to follow these steps

After using NifCmd to update the .kf, open it with nifskope expand NIControllerSequence, expand the first NiTransformInterpolator (this one controls Bip01) and delete its data, expand the last NiTransformInterpolator (this one controls Bip01 NonAccum) and copy its data then paste it back into the kf.

click on the Bip01 NonAccum Interpolator NiTransformData and delete all scaling keys, then expand the translations data and set all the value keys there to 0,0,(leave Z Translations Keys)

Now go back up to the Bip01 Interpolator and assign the data you copied/pasted into this interpolator.

Click on its data and delete all scaling keys, then delete all rotation keys. now set Rotation Type KeyType to 0 (zero) and set number of Keys uint to 0 (zero) as well, And Delete All "Z" Translation Keys.

(im not sure if this next step is needed but I did this to be uniform with beth's .kf's)

click on the data for Bip01 and ctrl + UpArrow untill its number is one greater then its interpolator click on NiTextKeyExtraData and ctrl + downArrow untill its the dead last number in the file.

Save. and try it within the CS if you dont get any errors about being exported with animate in place from Max being set the movement animation should work.

Flying

This Section is for people who want to have thier creatures be able to seemingly fly off their scene's ingame plane.

All you have to do is when you copy/paste the bip01 nonaccum data to the bip01 interpolator keep all the Z-Plane translations with the nonaccum data and zero out the bip01's Z-Plane data.

Hand to Hand

All 10 of the above animations can be renamed and reused for testing to handtohand"xxxxxxxxxx" to get movement working while using bare fists.

You will also need:

• HandtoHandAttackRight
• HandtoHandEquip
• HandtoHandUnEquip (maybe not Required but my game kept crashing everytime I killed one of my critters untill I added this one, I think its needed for releasing weapon and shield upon death)

All 10 Movement KF's

List Of Animation Sequences

These are listed in the following format:

• Movement - Active Sequence Name

• WalkForward - Forward
• WalkBackward - Backward
• WalkLeft - Left
• WalkRight - Right
• WalkTurnLeft - TurnLeft
• WalkTurnRight - TurnRight
• WalkFastForward - FastForward
• WalkFastBackward - FastBackward
• WalkFastLeft - FastLeft
• WalkFastRight - FastRight

Note: To localize anims change the filename from WalkXXXX to handtohandxxx, onehandxxx, twohandxxx, Staffxxx, Sneakxxx, swimxxx, DO NOT CHANGE THE ACTIVE SEQUENCE NAME.

Blocking

• BlockHit - BlockHit
• BlockIdle - BlockIdle
• BlockAttack - BlockAttack (fairly Sure this one is PC/NPC only)

Dodging (Fairly sure all 4 of these are PC/NPC only)

• DodgeForward - DodgeForward
• DodgeBackward - DodgeBackward
• DodgeLeft - DodgeLeft
• DodgeRight - DodgeRight

Spell Casting

• CastSelf - CastSelf
• CastSelfAlt - CastSelfAlt
• CastTarget - CastTarget
• CastTargetAlt - CastTargetAlt
• CastTouch - CastTouch
• CastTouchAlt - CastTouchAlt

Attacking

Note: All Attack Anims need a weapon type in the name of the file IE: handtohandattackright - onehandattackright - twohandattackright.........

Normal Attacks

• AttackRight - AttackRight
• AttackRight_Chop - AttackRight_Chop
• AttackRight_Hook - AttackRight_Hook
• AttackRight_Jab - AttackRight_Jab
• AttackLeft - AttackLeft
• AttackLeft_Chop - AttackLeft_Chop
• AttackLeft_Hook - AttackLeft_Hook
• AttackLeft_Jab - AttackLeft_Jab

Power Attacks

• AttackRightPower - AttackRightPower
• AttackLeftPower - AttackLeftPower
• AttackForwardPower - AttackForwardPower
• AttackBackPower - AttackBackPower

Skill Based Power Attacks

(Fairly sure all 5 of these are PC/NPC only)

• Skill1AttackPower - AttackPower
• Skill2AttackRightPower - AttackRightPower
• Skill2AttackLeftPower - AttackLeftPower
• Skill3AttackBackPower - AttackBackPower
• Skill4AttackForwardPower - AttackForwardPower

Sneak and Swim

All you need for These two are to add the word Sneak or Swim to the from of the base anim names IE:

swimforward - sneaktwohandforward - sneakforward - and so on.....

Miscellaneous Animations

• Recoil - Recoil
• Recoil_01 - Recoil_01
• Recoil_02 - Recoil_02
• Recoil_03 - Recoil_03
• Stagger - Stagger
• Idle - Idle

Note: these can have the weapon names added to thie files so you can make them all different

Special Animations

• Death - Death

Jumping

• JumpStart - JumpStart
• JumpLoop - JumpLoop
• JumpLand - JumpLand

Tips & Tricks

Mesh/Skeleton

1. Your skeleton NEEDS to be made of bones not a biped :), niftools exporter doesnt support Biped's.
2. Every seperate mesh needs its own skin instance -> not a shared skin instance.
3. The Bip01 bone is required to be the first bone in your heirarchy, I tried not bothering with this bone and just gave myself a headache from the problems that persued. :)
4. If your structure is made of a biped it can be converted into bones but the ik/fk constraints wires and controls will not be able to follow you will have to set those up again.

Animation

1. The Positive "Y" Translation in max is Forward, from the Top view your mesh should be facing up to the top of your moniter.
2. Root Node = Bip01 (bone).
3. Oblivion uses 30 FPS time frame for animations, anything other then that have a tendancy to look strange - but will play.
4. Most animatons are 1 second long this is especially important for attacking anim's because if you set an anim to 30fps @ 15 frames your creature is going to rip through the player like hes wearing paper armor and there wont be anything you as the player can do to stop it within melee range. :)
5. Movement a good rule is for every 1 second of animation your critter moves about 80-150 units walk and 200-400 running, at the 150/400 animation distance your critter will practically blur across the screen at times its very fast. My EE for instance uses 116/292 walk/run and he moves so fast ingame that at 50 speed he can keep up with a player with 100 speed/athletics and is able to get off some attacks from time to time, at 100 speed the player cant outrun it unless you cheat and player.setav speed/athletics 255.

Special Thanks

• Saiden Storm for learning how to create custom creatures in the first place, and for the original version of this guide
• Gundalf for creating his exporter
• Tazpn at NifTools for creating his kf updater and for updating Gundalf's exporter
• the Civ4 people for thier exporter

Videos

• Original Custom Creature Test
• First True Custom Creature

External Links

• Saiden Storm's Second Custom Creature Tutorial - It can be considered more of an accompanyment to this tutorial then a replacement as this one is still valid.
• Theo Habit's Conversion Of Denethor's Dragon - This is also a useful read.