[How to export different havok materials]

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?

[Why I am Thankful for this community.]

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.

[Legion-Specific Lore Help]

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

[Legion-Specific Lore Help]

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).

 

 

 

The Imperial Legion - A Disambiguation

 

by Tiranius Etticus

 

The purpose of this treatise is to educate the new recruit of the Legion on the organization of the Empire's forces and thereby stifle ignorance before it arises.

 

 

On the Heirarchical Units:

The basic and most fundamental unit in the entire legion is the individual soldier, the legionnaire.

Efficiently trained, heavily armed, and mentally strong for war; the legionnaire embodies the might of the Empire in a single personage.

Legionnaires are organized into Squads of eight standard legion troopers and two auxiliaries. Auxiliaries can come from the ranks of the Battlemage, Scout, or skilled Tradesmen such as blacksmiths, fletchers, and carpenters depending on the role of the squad.

There are ten squads in each Century, totalling eighty standard troopers and twenty auxiliaries.

Centuries are organized by six into Cohorts totalling four hundred and eighty standard troopers and one hundred and twenty auxiliaries.

One legion consists of ten cohorts totalling four thousand and eight hundred troopers and one thousand and two hundred auxiliaries.

Each legion also consists of legionnaires in command positions and sometimes accompanying cavalry or siege units depending on how they are deployed.

 

On the Rank and File:

To organize these units the Legion depends on strict adherence to the chain of command.

All Legionnaires begin their career as a recruit learning the usage of heavy as well as light armors, archery, blades, hammers, and polearms. Recruits are the lowest on the pole and are often given many tasks until they prove themselves through training or valor during wartime to become a trooper, which is the backbone of the Imperial Legion.

A squad is led by a trooper who has shown exemplary service, known as a troop champion. They are responsible for all of their squad members and lead each squad when they are on the march. If one or more squads are charged with garrison duty of a small fort or in charge of protecting a supply chain the most experienced troop champion is sometimes referred to as a Captain and is the highest rank over the squads while performing this duty.

All troopers and recruits may muster out after a period of service or after one full campaign. Those that choose to re-enlist in the Legion receive much higher pay than their first term peers.

A century is led by one of the knighted class. Many knight orders exist throughout the empire but are not affiliated with the Imperial Legion and are under the control of the many lords, earlships, and duchies of the land who raise and maintain their own armies by feudal right.

However, a knight in the legion's service is anointed by the authority of the Emperor himself. The order is officially known as the Order of the Legion and each knight is known as a Centurion, in reference to the century that he or she commands. There are four ranks of Knight that are organized by the rank and importance of each century. These are all known as and addressed by the rest of the Legion as Centurion. The ranks of knight are Knight Errant, Knight Protector, Knight of the Garland, and full Knight of the Imperial Dragon.

Knight officers may muster out and gain a small estate that is in ownership by the empire (much in the same fashion as Knights are landed gentry in service to their lords) or receive an equivalent sum in payment of gold.

Those Knights that choose to remain may be promoted to a Legate, which are in charge of the cohorts of an individual legion.

Those Legates that prove remarkable valor, exerperience, and knowledge of battle may be promoted to the rank of General.

A General is the commanding field officer of an individual legion and usually the highest authority present on a battlefield.

Generals take their orders of where and when to deploy military force from council with the appointed governors of the various provinces, the Imperial Battlemage, or the Emperor himself. If the emperor is indisposed, they receive orders from the Elder Council.

 

On Auxiliary Forces:

The auxiliaries are the forces that accompany the main forces. They consist of the Scouts, Battlemages, and skilled tradesmen (such as Blacksmiths, Fletchers, Carpenters, Alchemists and Healers) and usually have specialized skillsets.

Auxiliaries, being attached to a squad, are subject to the regular chain of command during battle but also have their own chain of command with the Scouts and Battlemages reporting to the Master of Scouts and the Battle Magister in each Legion, respectively.

The purpose of this altered chain of command is auxiliaries are often given special assignments once a fortification is garrisoned or a battle camp is established and are given these tasks from skilled and experienced soldiers in the field.

Also of note is that during peace time, Battle Mages who are enlisted in the Legion are currently trained at the War College at the Arcane University in the Imperial City due to the loss of the Battlespire. This puts them directly under the command of the Arch Mage of the Mage's Guild until they are assigned duties after their training and basic education.

All troopers are trained to at least a basic combat level in archery. Those who show especial skill in it are placed in Cohorts tactically positioned for ranged engagement and are often assigned to Forester duty (along with Scouts) to provide meat for the troops and patrol the area around encampments and fortifications.

Although it is rare that a soldier incredibly gifted in archery gets placed with the standard Troops instead of the Scouts.

 

On Additional Cohorts:

Additional cohorts may be mustered in time of need to perform special functions. There are currently two used in Imperial warfare: the cavalry and siege cohorts.

Most Imperial troopers are trained how to ride mounts and engage in battle with them and many Legions have a specialty in Heavy Cavalry such as the Eighth and Twelfth Legions. Although, due to the limits of animal husbandry and the sizes of armies fielded it is often useful to separate the truly gifted in mounted warfare into their own cohorts attached to the main legions that choose to use them.

Siege cohorts, the troopers known as Sappers, are usually composed of specially (and often newly) conscripted tradesmen and troopers skilled with ranged weaponry and alchemical explosives who can quickly and efficiently craft and use siege weapons when a fortification must be taken by force.

 

On the Imperial Navy:

The Imperial Navy is composed of vessels especially built or conscripted by the Empire for nautical warfare. The Captain of a ship and his First Mate are equivalent to those officers of the Knight class in the regular Legion but not called Centurions due to not being in command of as many men,  while most sailors are considered specialized troopers. Captains receive their orders from Commodores (also of the Knight ranks) who are under an Admiral stationed in the Imperial City. Mostly they fulfill transport and supply missions but are usually armed in such a way as to engage pirate and opposing enemy vessels directly. It is rare for a recruit to be placed in the Imperial Legion Navy unless they are already a skilled sailor as drafts for the Navy are usually filled ad hoc during campaigns.

On the Imperial Watch:

The Imperial Watch is composed of the legion currently serving in the Imperial City. Of special note is that they provide policing services for the city proper, man the entrances to the city with large garrisons, and a special Century is chosen from the legion with the duty of protecting the Imperial Palace, the White Gold Tower of legend, and thus wear special white armor to denote their status.

 

On the Separate Legions of the Whole:

The Imperial Legion army is currently broken down into 18 legions, each with their own fighting style for the purpose of being better suited to their missions. Legions of particular valor and fighting prowess often have their own standard they wear on their armor and deploy on flags next to the Imperial standard as well.

First Legion: Also known as the Emperor's Legion, stationed in Cyrodiil, they are tasked with all recruitment and initial training of all other legions and the main protection of the province of Cyrodiil. The General of this legion is traditionally called "Lord Commander" from a more ancient time. They do not use a drawn standard but their officers often incorporate dragon wings into their helms, shields, or pauldrons, reiterating their primary importance to the Empire.

Second Legion: One of the original legions, now stationed in Valenwood. They have adopted tall rectangular shields in response to Bosmeri archery attacks. Their standard is a single eagle's wing spread for flight.

Third Legion: One of the original legions, now stationed in Morrowind proper. Their standard is two raised wings often on top of a pole or drawn with abstracted claws extended on banners and flags.

Fourth Legion: The legion stationed in Skyrim after Tiber Septim's consolidation of power. They are outfitted for cold-weather warfare, often incorporating furs into their armor, and are usually lightly armored to quikly respond to bandit threats and native uprisings in the rocky crags, although they maintain heavy infantry as well. Their standard is the wolf's head of the city of Solitude.

Fifth Legion: Disbanded and reformed during the disastrous invasion of Akavir, they now serve to keep the peace between the many factions in High Rock and were present during the great Simulacrum. Their standard is a vigilant trooper standing guard.

Sixth Legion: Stationed outside of Alinor in the Summerset Isles after the great Tiber Wars, finally bringing the High Elf province into the empire. They use a great deal of their funding to enchant their armor to protect against magical threats. Their standard is two falling leaves.

Seventh Legion: Known for their famous dual silver and gold horse standard, this is the legion stationed on the island of Vvardenfell in Morrowind.

Eighth Legion: The legion currently acting as Imperial Watch for the Capital of the Empire consisting of heavily armed and armored shock troops, foresters, and many mounted legionnaires forming patrols.

Ninth Legion: Tasked with keeping an Imperial presence in the archipelagos between Tamriel and Akavir leftover from the disastrous invasion of Akavir. They also act as the main force used by the Imperial Navy to bolster their numbers. Their standard is two abstracted nautilus shells facing each other.

Tenth Legion: The legion stationed in Hammerfell; trained in both desert and coastal warfare. Their standard is a shield with a crossed Hammer and Scimitar.

Eleventh Legion: A vastly downsized legion currently stationed on the island of Solstheim to the North and between the provinces of Morrowind and Skyrim. They deploy the heaviest armors lined with fur and have no cavalry. Their main duties are centered around protecting the East Empire Company in Raven Rock and garrisoning Fort Frostmouth.

Twelfth Legion: The legion patrolling the borders between Cyrodiil, Elsweyr, and Black Marsh. They often deploy from the city of Leyawiin for years at a time, but historically act as a reserve Legion to support any province under attack. Every ten years or so they trade places with the Eigth Legion to act as the Imperial Watch.

Thirteenth Legion: The other legion stationed in High Rock, just outside the city of Daggerfall.

Fourteenth Legion: The legion currently stationed at Soulrest and the immediate areas in Black Marsh. Their standard is two entwined serpents with one’s head above the other.

Fifteenth Legion: The legion currently tasked with the patrols of Southern Black Marsh. Usually lightly armored to facilitate movement through the undergrowth. Their standard is a winged serpent.

Sixteenth Legion: Northern Elsweyr's Pellitine is currently garrisoned by this legion, trained in desert warfare and consisting of a higher amount of cavalry than usual including the use of war elephants, which they also use as their standard.

Seventeenth Legion: Tasked with keeping an Imperial presence in the archipelagos between Tamriel and Akavir but is much smaller than the Ninth and mostly garrisons sea forts along the coasts to act as first warning of any activity from Akavir.

Eighteenth Legion: Southern Elsweyr's Anequina is currently garrisoned by this legion, lightly armored similarly to the Fifteenth for mobility, their standard is a tiger.

 

[Importing an animated Nif into Blender]

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?

[[WIP] SkyTweak]

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.

[Modders needed to complete Black Marsh]

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.

[How to create a single gender playable race]

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.

[Animation Kinematics]

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?

[Getting two objects to seam correctly]

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)?

[Need A Smooth Serpentine Rig]

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!)

[Need A Smooth Serpentine Rig]

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.

[Need A Smooth Serpentine Rig]

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

[Need A Smooth Serpentine Rig]

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.

[Need A Smooth Serpentine Rig]

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:

[From Arena to Skyrim]

Trailers were removed.

Youtube's explanation is it fell under scams and spam.

Wat.

[Creating a Daedric Prince]

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.

[Hello from MEEEEEE!]

Oh sweet a cookie!

[where your forum name came from]

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

[Hello from MEEEEEE!]

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!