The ease of creature creation

[Loony]

Hello Everyone,

I'm trying to decide whether or not to add new creatures to a mod Im creating. The problem is I dont know much about the actual process of bringing a new creature into oblivion. I heard that its an annoying process. The easiest thing to do would be to retexture the creature but I was hoping to take this a step further. What if I load the model of the oblivion dog into Max, give him a couple of horns, and export him out again. Instead of making a creature from scratch I hope to take an existing model and add a few things to it. Can someone tell me what exactly I need to do to make this creature (for example a dog with horns) run smoothly in oblivion? Do I need to re-rig it? Are there any tutorials on that?

Cheers

~Daniel Loony

[donnato]

Hello Loony. Don`t know alot about Max myself but it seems to me that if you`ve got a vanilla dog, he`ll retain his native mobility. Someone here can surely help you if ya want to alter the AI, I`m sure. Thing is, you`re in the right place.

[PacificMorrowind]

that would be the wrong way to add horns... waste of disk space. It would work fine but the best way to do it would be:

-model horns,

- rig them to the bip01 head bone (IIRC)

- save in the mesh in meshes/creatures/dog

- in the model list in the CS select them as well as the head, eyes, body.

A full new creature on the other hand will take a fair while and a fair bit of skill... because then you have to do a lot of rigging, modeling, and animating.

Pacific Morrowind

[Loony]

Alright, that was actually what I meant, create the horns and add them to the dog folder, but I know nothing about rigging or how to do it, can someone kindly point me to a tutorial or let me know how its done? I use maya then export what I model into max since im better acquainted with maya but the max nif exporter is more advanced. I wouldn't mind rigging in either.

Thanks a ton everyone, look forward to your replies.

[PacificMorrowind]

well for the head it is pretty easy (for body it is VERY hard)

(max instructions)

- import the head.nif from meshes/creatures/dog/

- import your horns

- move horns to right position in relation to that head

- export (just the horns)

- open in nifskope

- copy and past the nistringextradata block from the head.nif to your new nif

- save as whatever.nif in meshes/creatures/dog

- in the CS select that file as well as whatever other meshes you need for the dog/wolf (in the creature details pane).

(that works for skeletons... and certainly should work for dogs but I haven't tested so if it doesn't just report back).

Pacific Morrowind

[Loony]

Hello Again,

Thanks for that, does it work the same way for bodies or creatures that are all just one large nif? I'm not really adding horns to a dog was just using that as an example. I'll experiment and let you know the results but if there's something else I need to know please inform me.

~Dan

[PacificMorrowind]

for most of the heads that should work for whatever. for heads on complete bodies I don't know... havent' tested

for in the body region rather than head it will definitely require "real" rigging... way more complicated. in short:

1. import body,

2. import Your Object (YO here after)

3. position YO in to right position (doh too many positions in one sentence) in relation to body

4. select the skelton

5. enter edit mode

6. find the bone closest to YO... select it and note it's name

7. select YO

8. enter weight paint mode

9. in links and material (under the editing pane (f9), create new vertex group and name it the bone name you noted down earlier (f.e. bip01 neck)

10. weight paint YO to full 1. for all the verts for that bone (vertex group)

11. if YO is close to only 1 bone test else, you have to paint the areas that are closest to each bone 1, decreasing towards the next bone... I'm not really the person to ask if this is a multibone object

Pacific Morrowind

[Loony]

Hello Again,

Thanks for the helpful replies, I haven't tried rigging a body yet but while examining some creatures I noticed that some have add on models for the body nif. For example if we take the scamp creature it has left shackles and right shackles that can be added. Can I, similar to how I would create a model for the head, add models for the hands easily without needing to re-rig the creature in Max?

Cheers

[SickleYield]

Only one way to find out - try it.

[PacificMorrowind]

You only need to rig the stuff you edit(depending on the magnitude of the edit)/create... it can go anywhere and you don't need to rerig the rest of the creature - for example you could create a dog (or scamp) backpack and you would only have to rig it (and position it right to go on the creature) and no changes needed to vanilla stuff, bracers/hand changes absolutely fine - unless you have to edit the arms to avoid clipping if they are a significantly different shape, in which case you would have to edit (but probably not modify the rigging) of the body.

Pacific Morrowind