[OBL] Problem with Blender breaking Animations

[KWITS]

Good Day,

 

I have never been able to import any animated mesh or skeleton into either Blender 2.49b or Blender 2.62 without breaking the animation upon export.  For example, I am working on a new texture for a Minotaur Lord. By simply importing into Blender the body for example or the head and changing the size or shape even in the smallest of ways, breaks the animation upon review in the Construction Set or CSE. However, everything appears correct in Blender or NIFScope.

 

Has anyone been able to import an animated mesh into Blender without any export issues?

 

Cheers,

KWITS

Developer of "Word and Void" mod for TESIV

[donnato]

I`ve had much the same problems in 2.49b when I made my windmill, and animated the turning vanes outside, and the rotating works inside. I forget exactly who helped, but they were able to get the nifskope blocks right. Never did figure it.

[DaMage]

Okay, a few important things you need to know about Oblivion .nif files.

 

The bone structure on the actual rigged objects is not complete, and trying to animate using them will no work. What you have to do: (this is written fro memory, so there might be slight errors)

1. Import the body meshes first

2. Delete the skeleton nodes that was imported them

3. Import the creature/character's skeleton model, with 'skeleton only' and the animation attached

4. Parent all the body meshes to the new skeleton.

5. Create your animation using the skeleton.

6. Export your animation as a .kf file.

 

Now some other important notes:

The last thing imported must be the skeleton.nif. If you start animating and see that you need another model, import that model and then re-import the skeleton and delete it. This set up some hidden value need for the animation export.

 

If you do not do this correctly your creature basically explodes in the CS/Game, even though it looks fine in nifskope. I was one of the first people to run into this bug, it was very frustrating to figure out the first time.

 

Another important note, do not manually change the scale of the bones in the skeleton.nif, this will destroy the correct scaling when you go to do animations.

 

 

 

 

I have a txt file that is my animations error FAQ, I really need to track it down and upload it somewhere.

[KWITS]

Thank you DaMage; this is all very useful information. However, since I am not yet experienced in animation modifications, I want to keep things simple. Here is the scenario that I am working on:

 

1. Import a Minotaur lord head into Blender 2.49b.

2. Import a left and right hornf

3. Rotate the left and right horn's axis

 

4. Export the changes

 

What has happened in the past by just rotating the horn axis that is positioned against the Minotaur head will break the animation as viewed in CSE.  I suspect that there is a vertex group issue or a positioning link for a .kf file that is broken.  What are your thoughts?

 

Cheers,

KWITS

[DaMage]

Oh! I know what you mean, the heads of creatures/NPCs have built in animations for the facial features. Is the animation that i going bad when you make your changes?

 

Geez, I dont know much about them.

[KWITS]

I have imported in just the meshes with no animation or skeleton to modify the UVMap and still the export breaks the animation in CSE.

[KWITS]

The effect under my scenario is a headless Minotaur. 

[syscrusher]

I've done object animations (that is, gates and moving platforms and such) in Blender, but not creature animations yet. But here's another possible approach you could try: Have you considered just using NIFskope to do your editing, and leave Blender out of the picture entirely?