Invoking and Tweaking Animations

[labrat]

It took me far too long to work out how to call an animation "on demand" in a dialogue, and how to tweak animations to add a bit more depth, ahem, and responsiveness to the animation of the current squeeze. If this is old hat then apologies, but to save those like me a great deal of time I thought I'd share the fruits of me labours. Is anyone interested?

 

My character's current partner is a rabbit-type called (imaginatively) Bunny. Call her "bunnykins" and she'll have your bits for breakfast.

 

The menu items either use about ten lines of script based an early version of LoversProstitute which allow you to call xLovers with a specific sPos, so just the specified animations run on demand, or bespoke animations can be run through the idle animation trees. Dead easy to do, but it took weeks of headbanging (not too bright you see) to get it.

 

Bunny is short, so the animations have to be chosen carefully, or tweaked in Blender and translated back through nifskope. Bespoke meshes and skeletons I tweaked in blender and I edited textures in paint.net. Again, it's all really easy when you know how to do it, but it's a wrist slashing process trying to figure it out.

 

I've got some crude gifs from screenshots, and stills which I'll try to attach to a followup post, and if people want I'll go ahead and describe the various arcane techniques involved in getting your very own animations on screen.

 

 

[

SOURCE MATERIAL POSTS:

#21 COMPLETE ANAL ANIM_109, BODY, TEXTURE

#23 MASTURBATION ANIM

#24 SKELETON

{#46 ORAL ANIM_97x1. Superseded by #58)

{#54 ORAL+FINGER ANIM_97x1. Superseded by #58)

#58 COMPLETE ORAL ANIM_97, SKELETON, BODY, INI

#59 COMPLETE CUNNILINGUS ANIM_29 (BUNNYLINGUS), INI, SKEL&BOD

#62 COMPLETE BEAR ANIM_202

 

The above use the HGEC_S mesh

 

Link to other meshes and textures - HGEC_L and TGND:

http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=2370

post #6 #7 #15

]

[labrat]

One of the things I was trying to do was get bunny bits that moved and opened when played with or penetrated. And anal wasn't really catered for, so some jiggery pokery would be required.

 

The maximum compatibility skeleton has sort of got the relevant bones, it just turns out to be a question of taking the femalelowerbody.nif mesh, (I used the HGEC S), creating vertex groups for the relevant bits of the anatomy and saving that mesh.

 

So far I haven't mastered the addition of new bones to a skeleton so after much trial and error I stick with using what's already there.

 

When you use bones that weren't used in the original animation it gets tricky, but the trick is to keep a note of the new stuff and when niftools have done their work, copy the bits that you have changed into the original (which you had of course saved as a backup... oh).

 

Anyway I hope that I can attach some results. I'm sorry that the gifs are just "fast finger on the printscreen" stills inadequately cobbled together in unfreez gifmaker.

 

I'll have to spread this across several posts.

 

If people are interested I'll do that.

 

If people have specific questions about bits of the process then that'd be better that me spouting out a tutorial that reinvents the wheel.

[labrat]

To invoke a specific animation from a dialogue I put the following into the Results box of the TesCS Quest Topic.

 

 

Call xLoversCmnInitQuestInterface

set xLoversQuest.Offence to Player

set xLoversQuest.Defence to Getself

set xLoversQuest.DefNudeFlag to 1024+2048

set xLoversQuest.OffResetAnim to xLoversResetAnimNormal

set xLoversQuest.DefResetAnim to xLoversResetAnimStun

Call CDRRabStartSEX 109

 

109 calls animation x109 (a rear entry), but you just use whatever animation you want called.

 

The DefNudeFlags means "she" keeps whatever clothes she had on, on.

 

xloversResetAnimStun gives you that jelly on the floor orgasm, with xLoversResetAnimNormal you just jump apart as if faintly embarrassed by the whole proceedings.

 

CDRRab is just my mod name for the the quest that I embed the dialogue in and the script invoked is just this:

 

SCN CDRRabStartSEX

 

 

; Option

; spos (short) = position number

 

short spos

Begin function { spos }

set xLoversQuest.SPos to spos ;

Call xLoversMainSafeStart ;

RemoveMe ;

End

 

see, dead simple, but try working it out from the xLovers scripts!

(unless of course you're smarter than the average bear)

[labrat]

If anyone wants to adapt their own rabbit, here are the groin textures - vanilla on the right, spiced up on the left. The dds files are a bit too big to attach (just over 500k and 600k) so these are cropped out of the dds and the pink'un should match pixel for pixel with the texture provided by the original mod. if you paste it over in paint.net or similar. Then, when you do a UV unwrap in blender, the right geometry should fall exactly over the texture. I should point out that the pussy and anus don't gape in default poses, but the .dds is a bit "flattened out" and shows internal that will be used by the animations.

 

The gif is just a crude screencap of the pussy in action. The underlying animation was based on JoanaMast1bGround.kf which I think was part of a Slof pack from here, and tweaked in blender to add the pussy opening and closing. I created two vertex groups on the underlying mesh and bound them to the left and right pussy lips bones and then just played with them to get the best texture effects when they were spread and closed using the bones to push them around, scale and rotate them in Pose mode. To get some more depth I moved a central groin vertex on the mesh deeper into the body, (as with the anus). Then I saved this mesh as my default femalelowerbody.nif in _male (backing up the original, honest). I would really like to use shape keys and bone drivers for some of the animation, but morphing animation is still proving elusive.

 

The animation is called from the menu when I ask Bunny to show me her bunnyhole. A positive response (triggered by disposition conditions) gives Bunny an animation_token and calls pickidle. Pickidle runs through the idle animations tree until it sees one with this token condition then it plays the long version of this sequence until I ask her to stop (which takes away the animation_token).

 

You can see there's still a bit of clipping on the left hand/thigh to tidy up.

[gregathit]

Very good info!

 

Thanks!!!!

[billynye]

"Jelly on floor orgasm?" Is... Is that supposed to be default for most Lovers animations? I've never even heard of it until now.

[labrat]

@billynye Ah yes, jelly as in the popular european gelatine based dessert that quivers uncontrollably when prodded, as opposed to what you mix with peanut butter....the mind boggles slightly.

 

The pic shows the post-coital shagged out state, note that Bunny's bumhole stays slightly agape after a bumfuck until another animation kicks in. This is what they call "a feature", seems to be dependent on where the frames were when animations switched states with the E-key advance from x3 to x0. Could be sorted, but I don't mind it myself.

[labrat]

OK my first step in adding anatomy is to import the base mesh into blender and change the default texture so that I'm looking at what I will be working with. I use Blender 2.49 and the latest niftools to import. I have to assume that people aren't Blender gurus so just skip over the stuff that you already know.

 

1.1. Open blender and delete the default cube.

 

1.2. Go to the file menu and select import the netimmerse option, A filebrowser window will open.

 

1.3. In the filebrowser window that opens, browse to the mesh you want to edit and press the import nif button (upper right) when you've selected it. This opens a niftools import window.

1.4. select the import extra nodes option and nothing else here. press OK

 

1.5. after a short wait you should see a top down view of your mesh. Mine is my femalelowerbody.nif (HGEC S)

 

 

....CONTINUED BELOW

 

 

[labrat]

...CONTINUED

 

1.6. Press CTRL+Numpad1 to give you a frontal view

 

1.7. Move the model more central by holding shift and scrolling the mouse wheel (pan up/down). Holding CTRL and scrolling moves the model Left/Right. Select the bones and only the bones with an RMB click. If in doubt press A a time or two to select/deselect everything then RMB a bone. If they are the only pink outlined bits, press x and erase them.

 

1.8. Pull up the lower (buttons) window and select the shading button.

 

1.9. Select the flat preview

 

 

..TO BE CONTINUED

[labrat]

...CONTINUED

 

That shows the .dds, but it's the default imperial one. In this case, to ensure proper editing, I need rabbit.

 

1.10. Choose the texture buttons

 

1.11. Tell it that there's a new texture in town by editing the image paths window. Blender creates all the necessaries automatically.

 

 

1.12. The texture preview has changed, now we have to link it to the model. Split your 3D window roughly into two by right clicking the boundary between it and the Buttons window and choosing split area. LMB when the split line is about where you want it, and turn the right hand window into a UV editor

 

 

1.13. Tab into edit mode in the 3D window. The model should unwrap, but over the default imperial texture, so, in the UV editor select the texture you want

 

 

 

...TBC

[labrat]

...CONT

 

Now you see unwrapped rabbit

 

 

1.14. Tab back from edit to object mode in the 3D window and note that there is still no sign of fur, so go to View and choose view properties

 

 

1.15. Left hand side at the bottom is Solid Tex which means "display the textures when the model is in "solid" mode" (which it is). (If you can't see the button, grab the view properties menu box and pull it up, the lowest buttons sometimes disappear under the window below). Select this.

 

 

1.16. Voila.

 

[labrat]

CONT...

 

Now for the fun part, adding the anatomy.

 

2.1 with nothing selected in the 3D window import a skeleton that has the relevant bones - I used a maximum compatibility skeleton as my base skeleton.nif - selecting only the skeleton in niftools. EDIT: an MCS with vaginalips bones, not pussy bones, not Coronerra's

 

 

 

2.2 now parent the mesh to the armature (the skeleton). First make sure nothing is selected, then select the mesh, then SHIFT-select the armature. So both are selected but the skeleton was selected last.

 

 

2.3 press CTRL-P and make sure "armature" is highlighted.

 

 

2.4 Blender asks if you want vertex groups with that say "name groups" (don't worry it creates a vast number but only those that you actually do something with get exported) as this will save a bit of typing later.

 

 

...TBC

[labrat]

CONT...

 

2.5 We can lose the armature for a while, so select only the armature and press H. this should hide it and leave the mesh intact.

 

2.6 Select the mesh and press TAB. The mesh should now be in edit mode, so be careful what you touch. If everything is glowing bright yellow, it means that those vertices are selected, so press A to deselect everything. Press Numpad-2 a few times to rotate the feet towards you and give access to the areas we're interested in. Zoom in and out with the scroll button on your mouse until you have a view like the pic.

 

The scabby red text says "press this button to hide vertices you wouldn't see, "occluded" geometry"

 

2.7 Select the vertices shown in this pic using SHIFT-RMB which allows simultaneous selections. Selected vertices glow yellow, and when they make a face it goes pink.

 

 

2.8 Drag up your buttons window and hit the "editing button"

 

 

2.9 On the left is a box called vertex groups, hit the browse up/down arrow box next to whatever name is in the box this pulls up a list of all the possible vertex group names, (though only a handful are real), and choose "Bip01 VaginaLips.R"

 

 

 

TBC...

[labrat]

CONT...

 

2.10 Now that the vagina lips bone name appears in the vertex group name slot press ASSIGN to link those vertices to that bone.

 

 

2.11 Do the same thing for the left lips, i.e. go into edit mode and select the lip vertices on the other side of the cleft - mirror them,

and with only those vertices selected choose the vertex group "Bip01 vaginalips.L" and assign.

 

That's the tricky parts all done, now to see what we can do with them.

 

2.12 Go back into object mode and unhide the skeleton by pressing ALT-H (if you hide stuff in a mode (object/edit/pose) you can only unhide it in that mode). Select it and go into pose mode.

 

 

2.13 Select SHIFT-Select the vag lips bones

 

 

We don't need to see the rest so SHIFT-H hides all but the selected bones.

 

2.14 Move the bones around to pose the pussy. R rotates selected bones RX etc means only rotate in that axis. G grabs (translates) bones GX means only in that axis and S scales them SX as you'ld expect. If you don't like what you've done ALT-G undoes translations, ALT-R undoes Rotations and ALT-S undoes scales. Go play.

This is a simple spread, with a hint of scaling in the x and rotation in the y

 

 

 

TBC...

[labrat]

CONT...

 

The observant might note that in the last pic I had spread the legs a bit - I unhid the bones selected x-ray on amature-editing options (if you can't see it hit F9 in the buttons window) so I could see the inner bones and rotated the thighs out a bit to give a better view.

 

Now to add a bit of depth.

 

2.15 Go back to edit mode and select a suitable candidate vertex for a vaginal opening.

 

 

2.16 GZ it back into the body cavity and lo we have depth.

 

2.17 go back into object mode and get the mesh and armature selected with no bits missing. Export this to e.g. femalelowerbody.nif, exporting geometry only.

 

 

If you look at the .nif you'll see two new ninodes added and when you use the body in animations, there'll be no hassle so long as the skeleton used in the .kf has the relevant bones.....and there are ways around that if it hasn't.

 

 

 

[labrat]

Here are a couple of shots, just playing with the two bones for a few minutes in pose mode, wrapping the mesh around a disembodied dick, (asbonerhardnormalskin.nif), to show how easy it is to make a more "realistic" penetration with those two vagina lips. I love how textures make a simple mesh seem really complicated and clever.

 

As they're just bone poses it's easy enough to make them frames in an animation, and once you've lined things up with the 1-2-3-4-9-0 adjusters in game I think the results are quite good, not perfect, what with occasional clipping and the odd bad angle, but definitely potential, and a better (more patient) animator could probably cure 90% of the few snargs there are.

 

Next the plan is to go step by step through the importing of one of the anims, tweaking it for scale and penetration and showing how to export it, explaining the Nifskope adjustments that you have to make in post-edit to ensure that it plays with your added elements.

 

Anytime anyone spots a cock-up, or knows a better way of doing things, please post.

[GrimReaper]

Old news for me, but kudos for you writing a nice tutorial for anyone that might be interested in working with blender. Reminds me a lot of Coronerra's tutorials.

 

[FusRoDah]

Ooh, Nice!

Are you thinking of uploading that bunny mod somewhere though?

[labrat]

@FusRohDah Thanks! Sure, just as soon as I work out how this attachment thing works. I'm a long time lurker, but have not been a poster so it's a bit of a game working out what and how to get the message across. I thought it limited me to 500k in 4 attachments for each shot and images only, but I see in other threads that it is possible to attach zipped files.

 

The Quest is that the character is partnered with a small feisty companion who is only moderately well-disposed to the PC, but obliged to work with them. The PC is attracted to the companion, but the in-house persuasion game is switched off, instead disposition is raised either in small ways by compliments and gifts, and in large doses by shared adventures with a successful outcome. As a reward for disposition increases dialogue menu items allow greater familiarity and sexual favours. Disposition can go down as well as up. Rescuing Bunny from a tricky situation good, using Bunny as a Rabbit Shield bad. Sharing loot good, stealing underwear bad. etc.

 

Why a Rabbit? I like them, they're cute and clever (in fiction) and the best partnerships are the Fafhrd/Grey Mouser, Laurel and Hardy, Batman/Robin, type where one is big and strong, and the other is small and quick, ('though I don't think any of these examples were having sex with each other).

 

I'm still working out the mechanics. The Rabbit race I got off n&xus but I've retextured the bunnybits as you can see above. The rabbit texture is a direct overlay of the imperial female .dds that is default, so anything that uses that as its base will work with it. I would like to post it here,

 

The body that I use is based on the HGEC S. I've modified the mesh in the way shown here and added 4 NiNodes, again I'd like to attach that to a post here.

 

I used Coronerra's Maximum Compatibility Skeleton unmodified as my default and I think I got that from n&xus too. Any skeleton with Bip01 vaginalips.r, Bip01 vaginalips.l, Bip01 Buttocks.r and Bip01 Buttocks.l - or redundant bones that could be renamed - will work, I think but it should be easy enough to get the MCS.

EDIT: 13/10/11 Now trying Growlf's Universal, as I had problems with SkeletonBeast.nif, might as well upgrade.

EDIT: 14/10/11 "upgrading" to Growlf to complicated, back to MCS, making sure to get the right skeletonbeast this time.

 

I have made new versions of the x06 and x109 animations to use the changes that I have made and compensate for a 68% scale model, and have a modified version of JoanaMast1bGround.kf. They're not perfect, but better something than nothing.

 

 

In short, I'd like to share the texture tweak, the body tweak, and the animations. I leave it up to folk to find the basic rabbit and a suitable set of bones. As I get bits of quest working I would like to upload .esps. [RESOURCES: BODY, TEX, ANIM_109 posted in POST #21 BELOW, MAST_ANIM in POST #23. SKELETON in POST #24]

 

 

 

[GrimReaper]

Why don't you just upload the stuff on mediafire or 4shared? Personally I prefer mediafire since you don't need to signup for an account or sth.

 

Also I really like that idea you got there. There is not really a companion mod that works well with xLovers. Sure you have Vilja and other nice companion mods but they don't really work well with Lovers immersion wise.

 

And that bunny is very cute.

[labrat]

Yay, cooking with gas as they say (don't they?). Looks like zip files can go where .nifs etc. can't, so:

 

1. here is the tweaked femalelowerbody.nif (delete the RAB and put it in _male and it replaces whatever your default was so use with caution if you like big butts as a default) This nif has the vaginalips, and bumhole and buttocks vertices are grouped to be controlled by the buttocks bones.

 

**** PLEASE NOTE ****

If a mesh has actually got some vertices in a vertex group, then the skeleton it uses has to have a bone with that name.

 

E.g. if you use a mesh with "bip01 vaginalips.r" vertex group and there are vertices assigned to that group then there has to be a bone called "bip01 vaginalips.r" in the skeleton or you will get textures zooming off.

 

The default SkeletonBeast doesn't have these bones so Argonians and Khajiits would suffer distortion, and other skeletons that just have a "pussy" bone would distort there too.

 

 

 

femalelowerbodyRAB.zip

 

2. here is the tweaked footfemale.dds (replace the vanilla rabbit texture with this one (remembering to backup) in rabbit/female).

 

 

3. here are the tweaked 109 animations for Def (Bunny)

 

 

4. here are the tweaked 109 animations for Off (PC)

 

 

just backup the originals and put these in ani2. If your character's skeleton has the vaginalips and buttocks bones and vertices in your mesh are grouped to them (i.e. like in the mesh here) then they will run those bones.

 

If you're not using the mesh here I don't think it breaks anything, I think it just ignores the extra instructions, and everything else moves as it did before, but the butt stays rigid. I tested that by running the anim with an untweaked body, the anim ran fine but without a link to vertices those bits of the animation just didn't show.

 

IMPORTANT: It shouldn't make any difference but just in case you need it SkeletonRab.nif is attached to POST #24. Point your NPC at it to use.

 

 

[labrat]

OK. Here's how I ask Bunny to play with herself.

 

which if she feels like it leads to

 

 

I go through the following steps.

 

1. In the Construction Set (CS) make a Quest, I call mine CDRRabbit

2. Take a look at this view of the Topic window I have for this Quest.

 

I've added a topic, CDRRPlayOn, and in the TopicText field I put the line I want to appear in the menu.

 

 

You need to create the animation token before you can do the next steps - see 3. in post below.

 

I give Bunny a couple of responses. I add conditions, two basic ones so that these only apply to Bunny, that she's not already doing something else, and a disposition one that determines whether she's up for it or not. I also add an "off switch" topic (CDRRPlayOff) at this point.

 

If she's in the mood, I give her an animation_token and call pickidle in the Result Script box.

 

 

 

Don't forget to tick "goodbye" in the response options.

 

TBC...

 

[labrat]

CONT...

 

3. Create a new MISC item to act as an animation token.

 

 

The name isn't important, and CDR is just my quest prefix to help me find stuff.

 

Now to attach the animation to the menu.

 

4. In the construction set go to the main window and pull down Gameplay - Idle Animations. I see this.

 

 

At the level of xLoversIdleAnims I've added a "sibling" CDRBunnyIdles.

 

I leave it as a special idle and add a condition that this idle will only activate if one or more CDRAnimationTokens are detected - note that one or more.

 

I make a child for CDRBunnyIdles and call it CDRBunnyPlay.

 

 

Here I hit the Select Animation File button and browse to the file I want to play - note that it is in IdleAnims (not ani2)

 

I put a condition on that this will play if Bunny has exactly 1 token.

 

Now if I add another animation here, another child of CDRBunnyIdles, I can put a condition that Bunny must have 2 tokens, and in the topic Result Script box I give her 2 tokens, and in the relevant "switch off" topic I take away 2 tokens.

 

So now when I hit the menu choice in game the dialogue ends (goodbye) and the action begins.

 

Here's the animation, thank-you for your patience. Thanks to Slof for the original joanamast1bground.kf

 

 

[labrat]

QUICK UPDATE on x109

 

It occurs to me that I developed the def animations on a separate skeleton SkeletonRab.nif as I was playing with adding bones, (which I gave up on for the minute). It's not likely to be a problem, but best to have all the bits and pieces to look at if it is.

 

If you're not seeing the animation on your NPC you might try putting this into the _male folder (as SkeletonRab.nif) and setting your NPC in the CS to point to this as the NPCs skeleton, as I did when developing it.

 

The off animation was imported attached to a Deedes (I think) MCS and should be fairly stable.

 

Apologies for not thinking of this earlier and including the skeleton in the post.

 

 

 

Next on the agenda

 

[Poontank]

Impeccable tutorial, competently explained! I salute your efforts to enlighten the lesser tech-savvy such as myself.

Best thing is: No tedious browsing the CS or Nifskope wikis! It's all happening right here on our doorstep... Continue, please.