Help Importing Animation

[DocClox]

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. So let me explain the problem:

 

 

I'd like this poor girl to be able to get her rocks off without having to first master the art of levitation. So I was thinking of setting up some sort of framework to offer some support. Something along these lines

 

 

Only horizontal rather than vertical. I figure Crazy's stuff is probably easiest, since the females are static and I don't have to worry about connections moving in the act. Ideally, I'd like to load the animation into 3DS Max, use the animation to pose the mesh, and then export the mesh as a static pose so I could import it into Blender. But I'd settle for being able to load the pose and work around that in Max.

 

Trouble is, I can not seem to load any animation files.

 

I have 3DS Max 2015, Havoc Content Tools, the niftools plugin for Max and everything else from ShadeAnimator's guide. I gather the thing to do is convert the hkx file with havok2fbx. As per the guide, I tried using havok content tools from Max to export the hkx as a 32 bit file first, but that crashes Max. I'm clearly doing something wrong, but I have no idea how to work out what.

 

Currently I'm working by making model parts in Blender, converting them with outfit studio, and then positioning them in nifscope. Which is fine until something needs to be rotated (I don't seem to be able to set rotation origin in nifscope) or have the geometry changed (at which point it's back to blender) and it's starting to drive me a bit nuts.

 

Any ideas, anyone?

[DocClox]

Typically enough, I no sooner post, than I try again and it works just fine.

 

So I have an FBX file, which I can drag into Max and get a set of bones. How do I apply that to a body or an outfit?

 

[edit]

 

OK. Use the F4AK RigConnector, which is a max script file included with F4AK. The resulting model is FUBAR, but I think that's because of my flailing around blindly trying to make things work. Let's try that again with a clean copy of the F4AK rig.

 

I'm beginning to think this might actually work...

[DocClox]

OK. So:

 

• Start 3DS Max
• load F4AK_Rig_Final.max
• Disconnect the rig by running F4AK_RigConnector_Human,ms from the MAXScript menu
• Import CrazyDDogF.fbx

 

• Result?

 

• Connecting back up doesn't help.

I've had it better than that. Just not sure what I did.

 

Seems to work better if I start from the biped rig that came with F4AK.

 

 

Except I don't know how to connect the skeleton to that. Hmm...

 

If I could get that pose, or a similar one (I think I'd prefer the standing doggy version)  and have it wearing the StumpZ outfit - or just have the stumps outfit in the pose, I'd be very happy indeed.

 

[DocClox]

For anyone struggling to get their head around such things. this page on Nexus looks to have a lot of very useful info from a variety of sources.