Adding Havok to a static mesh

[ThomasKaira]

I already tried reversing direction for the tutorials of jury-rigging a static item out of an already havoked mesh, but that doesn't work.

So, would anyone have any ideas as to how I could turn a static mesh into a havoked mesh?

[AndalayBay]

Yes. Assuming your object isn't a weapon. Open your mesh in Nifskope and follow these steps:

1. Click on the little flag next to BSX and select Bit 0: Enable Havok
   
2. Under the collision object node, click on bhkRigidBody
   
3. Change Layer to OL_CLUTTER and Layer Copy to OL_CLUTTER
   
4. Then change Motion System to MO_SYS_BOX, Deactivator Type to DEACTIVATOR_SPATIAL, Solver Deactivation to SOLVER_DEACTIVATION_LOW and Quality Type to MO_QUAL_DEBRIS
   

Now the fun part

Assign a mass to your object if it doesn't have a reasonable value already. For example, for a heavy statue base, I set the mass to 12. Set the three primary axes of the inertia matrix to values to get the behaviour you want. This is a little harder to describe and it depends on whether you want the player to carry the object around. I'm also assuming in all this that your object isn't a weapon, as I said before. If you want the player to be able to carry your object, but have it settle nicely when dropped, set the three primary axes to a value about 50 to 60 times your mass for the x and y axes and 10 times the mass for the z.

So with a mass of 12, you'd set:

m11 = 300

m22 = 300

m33 = 120

For my pedestal, I actually lowered the z axis inertia to that it would behave better and I left m33 at the calculated value from Max at 22.

[Vince]

Edit: Please disregard my post. I thought you wanted to turn a regular mesh into a collision mesh. Adalaybay understood what you wanted to do. I didn't .

If you have NifSkope version 1.0.22 or later, right click on the NiTriStrips block, then Havok > Create Convex Shape. You will need to add a BSXFlags block as a child of the root node, then, as Andalaybay noted, enable bit 1 in the BSXFlags flag (the flag will = 2). If you want it to be a clutter item (something you can pickup and put in your inventory), there are a lot of pit falls. If you try what Andalaybay suggests, note that you need both bits 0 and 1 set in the BSXFlags flag (flag = 3) for a clutter item. If that doesn't work for you, export it from Blender as noted below.

If you want to do it in Blender, see Blender2Oblivion Session 2 in our Modeling forum. If you export it with collision from Blender, the BSXFlags block will already be there and setup for the kind of collision you specified in the .nif exporter.

[AndalayBay]

I made the assumption he had a collision mesh already, but it was static. Nifskope's collision generator is a little coarse.

Edited April 23, 2011 by AndalayBay

[Arthmoor]

You'd need to be careful with that collision box generator. On a nif file with multiple strip/shape nodes it will wipe out any existing collision and only place a block on the current node you're generating for.

[AndalayBay]

To clarify the situation here, since there seemed to be a bit of confusion:

Thomas had an object that had a static collision mesh. He simply wanted to convert that collision mesh to havok. So my instructions were for doing that. When I said to set bit 0 on the BSX flag, I meant to check off Bit 0 in the flag dialog in addition to Bit 1, which was set already. This will change the BSX flags to 3.

Thomas reported that the switch worked just fine.

As Arthmoor said, if your object has a collision mesh already, don't use Nifskope's generator. Just simply flip all the flags and settings. You can also do the opposite of my instructions above to switch a havoked item to static. That's even easier because you just need to set the inertia matrix to zero, in addition to flipping the flags and the motion parameters.

[washington]

I think that it would be way easier to import it in Blender and then export it as clutter.

[ThomasKaira]

Well, I've finally managed to create a collision box in Blender, so I think I'm pretty much done with the learning phase, here.

Thanks for the assistance, guys (and gals).

[AndalayBay]

Well at least now you've got some options. And Blender and I just do NOT get along. However Max and I do and I have a hubby working on a NifTools plugin upgrade

[ThomasKaira]

Indeed, it took me half an hour to learn something that should only take me 30 seconds (and it will once I've practiced a bit). That UI is the most unintuitive and over-complicated thing I've ever seen.

And none of the mouse and key commands are what you expect them to be. Really, come on, guys, I want to move things with the LEFT button and select things with the RIGHT button, it's not that hard, but you have the left and right buttons doing BOTH, along with the left button moving that cursor around which never goes where it's supposed to, then you have to remember that undo is RMB rather then CTRL+Z... as well as selecting objects being mapped to RMB, as well.

Make up your mind, Blender! How do you want to work?!

There's, like, three ways for me to accomplish the same thing, and they are in incredibly intrusive places.

Edited April 24, 2011 by ThomasKaira

[Arthmoor]

Well at least you've managed to figure out how to do something useful unlike myself who can only manage to chop bits off of things and move vertices around

I sure hope the hype over the new Blender version with the "improved interface" is worth it.

[AndalayBay]

Just a caution with the new Blender: the NifTools guys seem to be a bit behind. They seem to be waiting to be sure it's stable and well received before doing the exporter. You can view their comments on the NifTools forums, here.

I took the plunge and bought 3ds Max 2011. Blender was just too frustrating.