Talk:Blender/Creating a Character Animation

The workflow for this is totally different with NIF scripts 2...13. Should I just start a new tutorial or completely alter this one? User:Sickleyield 1 Dec 2008

Go ahead and completely alter this one. No point in keeping an out of date tutorial. If there is some reason to reference the old version, people can use the History.

Thanks for removing that notice on the Custom Cuirass page, by the way.

Dragoon Wraith TALK 16:12, 1 December 2008 (EST)

Roger roger. I'll do it as soon as I get my current small translation problem ironed out. One or two things will have to be conjectural/based on individual experience, but then, this is a wiki - if somebody proves different they can just edit it.

And no problem on that other thing. I've done so much individual tutoring on forums in the last two years that I will never again have to worry about not getting credit for my work here or elsewhere. :D User: Sickleyield 3 Dec 2008

Note: I may need to add another section at the end on fixing the translation/rotation bug in moving (nonpose) animations. Saiden's Max/CivIV tutorial on his site covers this but I don't know of anywhere it's translated for Blender. It's something of an ugly workaround, so I'm hoping the folks at NIFtools will get around to fixing the export scripts' issue; but if somebody comes up with an alternate or better technique before I get to it, fire away. User: Sickleyield 17:25, 5 Dec 2008 (PST)

Animation Export Issues: Solution?

This is taken from a post I made on Aug 4 on the ESF. So far, no one has commented on it, so I don't want to roll it directly into the article in case it turns out to be invalid for some users.

Ok, after much trial and error, I was able to create a custom animation using the vanilla skeleton without having to tweak anything in NifSkope (other than the animgroup tag and CYCLE_LOOP), without having to create proxy meshes, and without having to edit curves. This is the easiest method I have discovered. (Other than creating a custom creature and aligning local axes with global axes, but we can't do that here.)

In order to do this, import the vanilla skeletonbeast.nif. Select the armature and go into edit mode. Rotate the Bip01 +90 (to the right). This will make the bone appear to be pointing opposite to what it should (ie. along the negative y axis). This will correct the rotation problem. Now, go into pose mode and select the Bip01 NonAccum bone and press NKEY to pull up the transform properties box. Set the LocZ to 6.7414. This will correct the sinking issue. (Remember: Blender is 10x scale to Oblivion game units, so 6.7414 will translate to 67.414 in-game.) Now do all of your NonAccum transforms from this new baseline. (The animation will appear to be floating above the z-plane but will appear fine in-game.) Now all of your keyframes should have the correct rotation and elevation data built in, so set up the Anim text and save as your new animation-ready file.

Note that I have only tested this on a single file, so there may still be problems that I'm not aware of, but this is by far the easiest solution if it works.

If someone wants to confirm my finding (and possibly chase out any bugs I might have missed working late into the night...) we can update this tutorial with the new information. TheMagician 11:49, 15 August 2009 (EDT)

Is the start and stop time in nifskope in seconds or frames or something else? Alex 14:14, 1 February 2010 (EST)

Seconds. Text keys informing the engine when to start and stop the animation have to be keyed to specific frames, however. TheMagician 20:37, 2 February 2010 (EST)