jamochawoke

Went back to the model before I made collision shapes. Made new ones. Set up all the collision for each one of the three (metal for rungs, wood for steps, stone for column). When I exported I again got two ninodes, one with the column collision by itself with HAV_MAT_STONE and another with the rungs and steps collision bunched together with HAV_MAT_METAL. I deselected "Use bhkListShape" and got the same exact result when I exported again. At this point I'm willing to put up a .blend or .nif file if anyone wants to have a go at looking at it.

I tried it again messing around with some stuff and it created different ninodes for each different collision mesh and had them all on different blocks, but joined two materials together (the stone and wood parts) and made it all wood. I'm just scratching my head at this point. I have a save of before I created any collision meshes so I might just back up to that and try again.

Hmm how did you set that up? I tried it and got the exact same result. What I did was separate my mesh into the different objects. Then for each object I duplicated it and turned it into a collision mesh (bounds wire triangle + string with the correct hav_mat). Then I selected all the original meshes and rejoined them into one object again, but leaving out the newly created collision meshes. When I export with "Use bhkListShape" button selected I still get all of the collision meshes joined back into one bhkCollisionObject with the property of HAV_MAT_WOOD this time.

I've also tried exporting each part of the mesh separately and trying to copy the branches of the different nif files into a main nif file in nifskope but when I copy the bhkCollisionObject branch and the associated objects they won't nest into Scene Root 0. Even after I manually go into the data blocks and try to make it so, nothing.

Hello again! I'm currently working on some models that have multiple havok collision materials. I've created the collision meshes and assigned them havok properties using the string method that works just fine for single collision materials. But when I assign multiple different materials to different collision meshes and export my model I end up getting a single havok collision mesh with just 1 material. For example: I have a static model with a steel rung at the top and a cloth hanging from it. I want to make the steel rung HAV_MAT_METAL and the cloth HAV_MAT_CLOTH but when I export both collision meshes become one and with the same property of HAV_MAT_METAL. Another example: I have a spiral staircase. The steps need to be HAV_MAT_WOOD, the rungs HAV_MAT_METAL, and the column in the center HAV_MAT_STONE. When I go to export all three collision meshes become one bhkCollisionObject with the property of HAV_MAT_STONE. I've tried exporting by clicking the "Do Not Use Blender Collision Properties" button selected and it still gives the exact same result: all collision meshes are joined as one and given the same property. How do I go about fixing this?

I came here as a refugee from the heavy handed moderation at TESNexus (now Nexus mods) and having to threaten legal action to get my mods and project threads taken down from there after they removed my access. You guys welcomed me with open arms and no judgments about being kicked out from there. It's rare I find a group of people that share my interests, and less so when I find a group that is knowledgeable enough for me to really get something out of the community. I know I don't participate as much as I'd like to here and I don't post even 1/5 of what I should of my mod I'm working on (I'm actually kind of paranoid people will steal things from me so I'm keeping as much under wraps as possible and I agonize for days on what I could possibly share. I almost had a heart attack when I saw someone do another complete race overhaul that made the races skyrim-esque several months after I had shared that that was one of the major goals of my mod with progress shots (I'm still going ahead with that portion of the mod, and hopefully some people will like mine over theirs) but broad things like that are to be expected I guess especially since they've been done before sort of. I'm happy I have a place here to share my work and ask questions when needed. I miss some of the experts over at the Nexus I was on friendly terms with and we collaborated and shared a lot. When I re-registered over there so I could private message them for help (they had no other way to contact them) they IP banned me lol :/. This space makes me happy because there is simply no drama here, just questions and answers and friendly chats on the slow days . And above all I'm thankful that you guys are hosting my work, even if I have gone missing for long periods before as I had some chaos in my life and had to move several times, and you've never knocked me for my ambition to one day work for Bethesda. I plan on building a website around it for portfolio purposes, but I also plan to give you guys as much credit as is due in that as well. Thank you.

I'd still like some input on the standards, if you guys have anything to add or would like to see

I've been writing a book (ok I've been writing about 10) to be placed in-game as part of my Vanilla Drops mod. However, I need a little help with the lore surrounding one of the biggest parts of my mod - the Imperial Legion. To help the player as they join the faction they are given access to a book which breaks down what the Legion is, how they operate, et cetera. There is, however, shockingly little in the games regarding this. From what I've found out from the Imperial Library, Michael Kirkbride's stuff, and the In-Game interactions with the Legion: * The Imperial Legion is roughly based off of the Roman Legions when it comes to organization, with some major differences. * The Legion acts as the main military force of the Empire, and often uses auxiliaries as troops (such as battlemages conscripted from the Arcane University or local mercenaries or even local lords' armies) if they aren't present in the Legion proper already. * The Legion also has a policing branch, known as the Imperial Watch, that acts in Cyrodiil. The other legions (the majority) make up the conquering/invasion/peacekeeping forces of the provinces. * The Imperial Legion runs the Imperial prison networks as well... usually only concerned about political prisoners in the provinces though, as the local lords and governments have their own systems of policing. * Apparently the different generals of the legions are only answerable to the Elder Council or the Emperor himself. * Morrowind gave all the ranks present in the Legion, they are somewhat mirrored in the faction Bethesda used for Oblivion, although Skyrim kind of has a different order of ranks. I feel that Bethesda was trying to change the feel of the legion by removing the chivalric ranks. However... * The Roman Legion in history only had nobles who were the upper crust of the officers and often had almost a precursor of knight orders reflected in them... these nobles were entitled to land and bounty in respect to their rank and status they had in the legion when they retired. What I've done: * I've decided to break down the Legion into a sort of chivalric non-commissioned and commissioned officer type set up. It reflects the way modern militaries are run, how the Roman Legion was run, and how the Imperial Legions in the game are sort of run (again, it is very difficult to tell, especially since the timescale between some games is so large). * So when you join you are just a legionnaire. When you get inducted into the knight orders of the upper crust of the legion you become a centurion. I've kind of separated the Knight Order from the main officership. So while you are a Centurion, and remain at that command level, you can gain more fame and reward by being higher in the Order. The other two ranks above the Centurion were Legate and General... which I felt didn't really add anything to the game for the player to reach those levels (as a Centurion you are already capable of commanding troops in my mod). * I've looked up every instance of every legion mentioned in the in-game histories and other materials presented by Bethesda. I used these to start the base organization. Any holes left (and there were MANY!) I filled in with my kind of made up organization. I really hope it works. Here is the book if you want to read it. It's about 99% done and only needs some last minute editing to be placed in-game or if I need to change something (I'm thinking the only thing I really need to work on is the standards used by the different legions as there's even less evidence of them in-game except for a few exceptions).

I've never had a problem importing animated .nif's into blender (except on morphs, but I eventually figured that out thanks to Throttlekitty). Perhaps take a screenshot of your import settings (or maybe your process in general) and we can look into how you are importing it?

Wow nice! Can't wait to use this since I have Skyrim on multiple machines all with their own, uh, "personality". Do you know if something like this exists for Oblivion too? Editing the ini files for that has been a bear.

I will have time to help with 1 or 2 specific things. Basically what I'm saying is I will make time to help you so you can get your project out the door . Right now I can: * Create quests * Script (simple event scripting to item swap scripting to a few effects) * Model - not my biggest skill but I'm getting pretty good at making monsters and armor sets * Rigging - I'm kind of new to rigging but I needed to learn this to animate the stuff I've been making without rigs already present. * Weight Painting - one of my strongest skills. I HATE CLIPPING. * Texture - I started by retexturing but since I've learned to model I've also been hardcore learning UV mapping and also making normals and speculars. I own a copy of CrazyBump as well. * Animation - What I consider to be my best skill. Give me a rig, and I will make you something great . If you want me to make an armature and rig... well that will take me a lot of time but it can be done. I can also make 2D animations in case you wanted an in-game clip of something... but expect to wait for a long time for something like that. * Voice Act - Really depends on what you need though as I can only do a few character types and it's not a huge range. Pick me one project to start and I will work on it for you.

Hey guys I long ago partook in a project to revamp the races of Cyrodiil and have actually had recent enormous success... all but in one area. When I create a head that looks slightly masculine the females of that race look really awful. When I make a head that looks slightly feminine I get an androgynous race for both genders. The problem is in how Oblivion handles it's male/female differentiation of the meshes. It likes to morph along the morph targets for brow line and a few others in the .egm file that I can tell and it does so pretty severely (to create a marked difference in the vanilla races when switching between genders). However, now that I'm using high poly meshes I made myself based off the head06 set and .egm files things are getting pretty whacked out. So is there a way to lock a gender so I can just make male/female versions of each race? The only thing I can think of is to make a copy of each race and to make it so the "male" slot of these copies points to female meshes and voices. But then there's still the problem of how Oblivion likes to mess with the base meshes. And then of course of the problem of the player being able to use the switch for male/female gender which further messes up the models. I've seen this done in a few older mods before but for the life of me I can't remember how they did it or even if I'm remembering right lol.

Hi guys I have a problem with the kinematics of one of my rigs (the one I mentioned in the Smooth Serpentine rig thread). For some reason when I initially created the altered Bethesda armature to have a multi-segmented neck everything worked perfectly when I hit the Auto-IK button and would grab the head to make animations. I ran into a problem later on though when I stretched some of the bones of the skeleton out to make a digitigrade leg system and then created a model for the legs. When I parented the legs to the rig it stretched the model out as well. So I saved the skeleton separately and re-imported it then I parented all the models back to the skeleton. This worked fine and all the models were parented correctly this time to the armature... however the IK chain of the neck I was working on I'm guessing somehow got broken. If I rotate any of the bones in the armature the child bones follow the rotation as usual. But when I click Auto-IK and grab a bone (like say the head) it doesn't do the Kinematic animation like it used to and the head bone just moves around completely independent of the rest of the armature whereas before when I did this it would do an Automatic Inverse Kinematic calculation of the parented bones and rotate them all accordingly to where the head bone was being grabbed to. An amazing time saver. I don't know what I did wrong and it's extremely frustating as many of my animations for this monster I really need to use the Auto-IK function or at least something similar (I have no idea how to set up manual constraints in an already existing armature). Any help?

Currently I have having trouble matching an upper body mesh I made to the default Oblivion head. It's actually quite frustrating! I have tried a few different tactics... I increased the size of the Oblivion head neck area to go around my upper body neck area and then used the shrinkwrap modifier (in Blender) on it so that it fit snugly around the neck area. I then tried to match up the vertices... one by one... until they were exactly in the same place on both meshes. I then exported and there's noticable gaps in the model in-game. I then tried a different tactic and tried to simply merge the meshes, merge the vertices and then delete the upper head but there's still something going wrong when I move the model around in pose mode the seam opens up again even though the weighting shouldn't be off (both sides of the seam are weighted to the same neck bone)?

Hey thanks was just checking back in to see if anyone had a solution. I've more or less found a working rig by doubling the bones and cleaning up the neck (the Robert's neck area is actually kind of a mess) mesh into more loop-type structure. I didn't however, know about the engine needing them all to be assigned as weight 1 when added up so I will definitely keep that in mind and go back and re-weight them properly for the engine! Should probably save me some big future headache. Once I get the rig working 100% I can manipulate the model some more with the sculpting tools to add neck muscles and... other various stuff (this creature is kind of a big secret, but he's going to be some kind of chimera haha!)

Ok here is the results of removing the extra weights from unnecessary bones that happened when I extruded that part of the mesh and also assigning a weight of .25 to the mesh around the relevant bones. As you can see there is still a lot of crunching of the mesh. What do I need to do to prevent this? I was looking at some other meshes and they have some small overlaps with their weights, but trying that didn't do much.

I guess I'll just assign a weight of 25% to each bone vertex group in the neck and see what happens from there. I downloaded someone's shark rigging that they had done (although I think they may have rigged it in 3DS Max as it's completely unfamiliar to me how they did the bones) but I did see how they weight painted it and most of the weights were 25% or less with a few spots having the darker 100% and 80% (orangeish) with a gradiant from those to the 25% (light greenish blue). I have some time tonight so I'll see what I can do and upload an image of the results

Ok I checked it out and they are all weighted to the base of the neck so I removed those vertices from the vertex group of the base of the neck that weren't supposed to be there. I was still having the squashing problem though. I did check their weights and they are all Red (weight of 1.0 in edit mode). Should I have them as a different weight to achieve a better rig? What weight should I be aiming for or is it more of a gradual thing? Sorry if the questions are too noob, I always just used the bone weight copy when making new armors and such.

Hey guys I have modified one of the races to create a particular monster that has a long serpentine neck. I am using Blender for this particular project because I still haven't gotten around to learning 3DS Max yet (I own it even, my time is just reallllly tight). However, if there is an easy solution in 3DS Max by all means let me know! However, while I'm not new to animating I am kind of new to the process of rigging (I can animate already rigged models just fine). I set up several more neck bones by stretching out Bip01 Neck1 and then subdivided that bone into 8 bones for a neck that can move kind of snakelike. I then, as a test, extruded the top of Robert's male body neck over those bones and then assigned the areas that were next to the bones as a vertex group. My problem is now when I go into pose mode to see how the rigging went I've run into several problems. The biggest right now is the neck kind of squashes up into itself as it is bent one way or another. If I make an S-curve the problem is really awful as you can see here:

Trailers were removed. Youtube's explanation is it fell under scams and spam. Wat.

An easy way to make clothing from the statues is to import the meshes into Blender or 3DS Max and remove the extraneous parts (the body, weapons, et cetera) and then take the clothing, smooth it out, and then rig it to an Oblivion body. I've done it before. It's a bit of a lengthy process, but not so bad once you get used to it and rather than do a lot of guesswork you get something that's exact . Of course you have to retexture it as well.

Oh sweet a cookie!

My name is a combination of jabberwocke (my favorite monster) and jamocha milkshake from arby's (my favorite indulgence), lol!

Lanceor had suggested I check out this site as a place to hang out with other modders and possibly host completed works. I ended up having an account here from long ago I used to download some files. I used to mod all sorts of games but then decided to take on a HUGE Oblivion modding project to use as a portfolio piece to present to Bethesda Softworks and/or other gaming companies (but really, I just want to work for Bethesda). Basically, I figured since I was spending all my time doing modding on games I might as well just be making them (which is something I have always wanted to do since I was a kid). Making this mod will help me learn all of the tools I would need to get started in the gaming industry. The scope of my mod, Vanilla Drops, is to completely expand the original game of Oblivion to include tons of new content all based on the lore and happenings of what was going on in the 3rd era during that game's timeline. It also includes many adjustments to things I felt were awkward (design layouts, character designs, clothing designs, character dialogue options to increase roleplaying, combat animations, et cetera). Basically I just want to polish the game until it shines but still make it feel like a Vanilla elder scrolls game for the most part. I've spent years and years getting all the permissions for resources, learning the software required, and putting my mod together but at times i still feel like a worthless newbie hah! I hope I can learn a lot here and also help the community out where I can. I look forward to getting to know everybody!