Making or Modifying Bows

[Vince]

There was a recent topic in the Mods subforum of the OF about making or modifying bows. trollf made a post that was so informative that I'm posting it here since the topic will eventually roll off the forum. This is a direct quote from trollf.

I gave it a try and to me any modifications to current bow shapes are easy, and making bows with completely new shapes aren't that hard either. Now while the scripts can handle everything perfectly the most important thing is that we finally can focus on the look and design of the bow itself than to spend a lot of time instead to figure how it all exactly works.

This is my first quickly modified daedric bow - that's a POC so forgive that crappy design ;]

All modifications of the bows in Blender relay on Shape Keys. There are two of such keys respectively named Base and BowMorph. Former is the basic shape of the bow in its resting position, and the latter is the shape of the bow with its bowstring drawn to maximum.

The switching between the Shape Keys is done through the Shapes Tab. It's the tab in the same section as Modifiers tab - all accessible from panel in edit mode (F9).

To make this story short - you just need to import one of existing bows, chose Base Shape Key and modify this bow or replace its shape with the new one, texture it, etc. and then switch Shape Key to BowMorph and in edit mode reposition all necessary vertexes and edges to final morphed position. And there you go its all ready to export.

So altering existing bows shapes is possible quite easily, and replacing existing models with completely new ones is not that much harder.

But if you want to make a tutorial how to make bows completely from scratch in Blender I think that would be a waste of the time and it will be like reinventing the wheel for the second time. Utterly unnecessary.

My way of making new bows will be importing existing ones, and using their shapes as reference, then replacing the model with the new one. This way you already have all those bow and arrow morphs imported and present in your nif and you can focus on design solely which is the best thing under the sun for every bow maker ;]

[Johnn123]

thx for posting this vince, interesting read, even though i understood very little of it

i have a question though, how were bows modified before? i know ive seen some unique bow designs, like nicos dreadweave bow, it has a unique mesh, but i according to this only recently you can modify bows?

[Vince]

thx for posting this vince, interesting read, even though i understood very little of it

i have a question though, how were bows modified before? i know ive seen some unique bow designs, like nicos dreadweave bow, it has a unique mesh, but i according to this only recently you can modify bows?

Apparently, nicos had some other way of doing it and made a tutorial on it. That was referenced in the OF topic. And that's all I know about it.

[_echo]

Before, you used to have to go back to version .88 of NifSkope and basically copy the animations to your bow. It was a very tedious process. Hopefully they can get this all worked out.

[DaMage]

When you are importing a bow, make sure you have "Combine NiNode + Shapes into Single Mesh" off.

When you go to export, set it as a Weapon collision, in the Back slot, and select "Export Geometry + Animation (.nif)".

Blender fully supports Bow import/exporting now.

[LHammonds]

I will eventually be making a tutorial for bow-making using Blender. I just finished the armor assets for a mod I've been working on for a very long time and am now focusing on the weapons...the 1st one which is near completion is the custom bow. I've been working with Amorilla for some time now for the ability to import and export working bow morphs and now we finally have the capability to make working bow straight from Blender since Blender NIF Scripts version 2.5.4. The only other way to make custom bows before this was using Wendy's bow-making tutorial which involved exporting your bow in the relaxed state as an OBJ and another OBJ with the bow pulled back...then import the OBJs into an existing bow using a very old version of NifSkope (newer version did not work for some reason). This is how Nicoroshi created all of his bows...and here are their tutorials for reference in case anyone is interested:

Windy's Bow Morph Tutorial

How To Create Bows - by Nicoroshi

LHammonds

[InsanitySorrow]

Okay time to dig this thread up , So I made a new bow model (Can't show, private WIPz) and have looked around for tutorials, the ones I've come across are all for vanilla model edits and I've found nothing for creating new bows, does anyone know how to do it or know of any tutorials?

I'd rather not have to edit a vanilla model and remake my bow as a part of it