Animation Mods

[gregathit]

Using the vanilla skeleton is just a waste of time IMHO.  It doesn't have bbb nor will many armors work very well with it.

 

I highly recommend using growlf's universal skeleton, the controllable version.

[Myst42]

Ummm

1 - That bone rigging stuff, seems too complicated and seems to be somewhat out of purpose, it implies making changes to the skeleton itself and  

     some stuff i dont wanna mess with now, so maybe some day, Im limiting to what I need to change some idles for now

2 - Blender v2.49 as far as i know is the only one that works with Oblivion, since I could find no NifScripts for latter versions

3 - Im using vanilla skeleton because an idle doesnt necessarily need BBB, except maybe for breathing, but thats easy to correct if I dont like it once

     its done, just a matter of tiny tweaks in BBB bones re-importing the animations this time with Universal Skeleton

     I think animations with more action do require BBB as running, jumping, fighting etc... but an idle is just standing there with a weapon drawn and

     looking cool, its supposed to have breathing and some oscillations to look lively but BBB... I can find no reason for a standing position to make

     breasts bounce...

     An Im using Vanilla to create animation but I play with Universal, anything compatible with Vanilla, is compatible with Universal too

 

      Oh wait... Im saying this assuming one thing: Universal skeleton is vanilla skeleton plus a ton of many many other extra bones like wings, BBB,

      High Heels, etc..., thats what I thought...    

      But

 

nor will many armors work very well with it..

 

Are you implying that its different in the base bone structure too? maybe some more translations and rotations that make the vanilla part of the universal skeleton be different to the vanilla one?

 

While I take the enterprise of tweaking existing animations I must ask again cause it remains unclear

How do you move Bip01 to the ground position in Pose Mode without dragging the rest of the skeleton with it?

I noticed in Edit Mode, its still at the level of the hip, its only for Pose Mode its placed down

[gregathit]

As to skeletons, you always want stick with one and not mix and match.  If you alternate using vanilla and growlf's you risk something going wrong.  Some of the armors and clothes may be bbb enabled and if you don't stick to using growlf's you can fudge them up (loose the bbb)

 

Now if you are doing a vanilla idle that doesn't have bbb, I "suppose" you could use the vanilla skeleton, but honestly the mixing and matching is pretty pointless.  It is best to get in the habit of using just one skeleton so you never risk having a problem.  Plus the more you use the one skeleton the more comfortable you will be with it.

 

-------------------

 

Edit mod is for editing meshes and armors.  You do NOT go into or use edit mode for animations.

 

Pose mode is what create or modify your animations in.  Put Bip01 on the ground and then move Bip01 Accum so the feet are on ground level.

[Myst42]

Ok time for an update

I have many things to do, so I cant advance as quickly as I would like but The first mayor achievement is done

 

On my progress:

 

 

I managed to make the onehanded idle I intend NPC to use

The position is severely based on vanilla pose, BUT much better looking, is a mayor enhancement from the original

Character no longer looks frightened of wielding a sword, but instead looks cautions and guarded, but ready to fight

 

However, the first part (and I think the longest one because it implied all my training process) is finished, but this first part is ONLY for me to gain the ability to design any idle on a basic structure

Meaning I have not done the animation per se, but the structure, meaning the fix position of the idle is ready, now its only a matter of moving a few bones, adding some frames and make it look good in motion

 

 

 

On Inverse Kinematic

 

 

I managed also to add the IK and edit the animation in blender with IK, BUT

I dont know how to REALLY add the inverse kinematic

In blender looks good, but the conversion to kf does not respect it, and in game, the legs move in forward kinematic, making it look really weird  

This is the last thing I require help with regarding forward/invers kinematic... Ho do I make it work in game

 

 

 

I add the latest files, which include the blender file, with IK attached and the kf file with the same experiment on motion which is a complete FAIL but if you could see it to see what im talking about...

PS: the animation in blender is still experimental phase, only the overall structure is definitive, meaning start and end frame

 

OneHandIdle.rar

 

Oh and one last doubt

Does anybody know which bone controls the shield position?

I just rotate the entire hand and forearm, the off hand sword follows rotation and I discovered it may be linked to the "torch" bone but for some reason the shield doesnt follow changes on small scale

 

Here some pics of onehand idle basic structure

 

 

Another issue... I have installed BBB motions for walking but the breasts stop moving in whatever position. It happens for this Idle and some others too that I have installed

Is it possible that it happens because of the change from a BBB animation to a non BBB one?

If so I should include BBB bones to animation too no matter if they dont move at all

[DontBotherMe]

how did you create ik bones, are they now part of the full skeleton or did you use shift + C and gave it a temp target to function as constraint ??

 

if you made it part of the full skeleton these bones will not be exported and actually making your ik bones look like no IK bones.

 

The way i do it, is import 2 of the same skeleton, then i rename the first skeleton to Rig and the second one will be named Scene Root.C the second skeleton i use, is the one that will be used for export since it will copy rotation of the first skeleton. then first skeleton i will use to create new ik bones. once the animation is finished you need to use bake constrains so the ik constrains will be baked in the second skeleton and create a new skeleton with the baked information in it then rename that baked one to Scene Root And now you can safely export the animations.

 

You must use bake constrain or else everything will fail. Also keep in mind this process will be very tedious the bigger the animation become. I have not found an effective bake constrain script that will make baking fast. if you make 300 frames animation this process could take up to 3 hours. So not very fun to to.

 

I have looked at you idle, but why are you using lens chain 0 ?? it will not ik the skeleton correctly but move the entire body, you need to either set lens chain to 1 for the feet only or 3 to move upper leg leg and feet together. afterwards you need to go to script and use bake constrain so it will create new skeleton with baked in ik , now you can export it correctly, check your own blend i just included.

 

btw you do know there tutorial section right ??

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/10838-guide-blender-nifskope/

 

have you tried directing your questions directly here instead having multiple thread that all tries to do the same thing ??

OneHandIdle.7z

[Myst42]

Actually thats the first tutorial I followed, It has been posted a bunch of times already in this same thread

Dont know why you say "multiple threads" this is the only thread Ive been discussing animations...

 

I used this tutorial on IK selected feet ending bones, used "Shift+I" option "To Empty New Object" cause thats the only one that did what I wanted on first try

Then button "Auto IK" made everything look perfect

 

So basically what youre saying is I need to set another skeleton's bones as the target for IK, add every single IK constraint manually, plus adding extra "bake" constraints to make it work??

That really is a lot...

[DontBotherMe]

Actually that is why i said this is never the best way to start animating. start slow once you know what everything is this will become easier to do. If you have question direct them to That One, his topic is created towards noobies, what i pointed out is when you become familiar with animating then you will start rigging and get to the more advanced stuff.

 

 

So basically what youre saying is I need to set another skeleton's bones as the target for IK, add every single IK constraint manually, plus adding extra "bake" constraints to make it work??

That really is a lot...

no for the above i said that is how i do it, but method don't needs to be followed to the letter.

 

No read my topic again, i said you need to fully create the animation and once the animations is finished then you use the bake constrain on the skeleton by pressing alt tab in object mode. But this process will take sometimes to finish the more frames it needs to process.

 

Bake constrain is only necessary if you used any form of contrains in blender to bake it into animation before exporting.

 

 

To show you how a simple rig looks like this is very basic Zombie rig:ZombieTestRig1.7z

 

with everything labeled hlp_ in front of it will be able to move bones in group. the hand is to rotate the hand and finger also hs the bones attached to it to create quick fists etc.. with the feet you have footmack that will move the your feet and leg foot root will move or rotate the feet only and with knee you can move the upperfet for better placements. Bip01 NonACUUM is what you use to uppper body and bip01 you can actually move everything fully around. Keep in mind this is very basic rig and you still require to know how to use the controls in blender.

 

Also it seem bethesda was pretty sloppy, the lefthand mesh for zombie was never even weighted properly and hand and fingers does not even move with vanilla skeleton.

[Myst42]

WOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!       

Did some digging on what it means to "bake" constraints

As I said, my first attempt on IK constraints was experimental and it only had 3 locked frames, I did it to see if I could make constraints work

 

It didtn work the first time because the armature still had constraints, but on some pages says, "baking" is the process of creating a copy of an armature that mimics the animations with NO constraints attached, its a free armature

 

So theoretically speaking, that was exactly the last step I needed

Im using Blender v2.49b

Tried it on v2.66a and in "Object Mode" there is a menu in "Objects" -> "Animation" -> "Bake Action"

Saved it and then opened it on v2.49b but information got lost according to a pop-up message

As I needed need to be able to open in in v2.49b because v 2.66a doesnt have any "nif scripts" to export as kf, I did more digging

 

I found everything on this page, including a script to be run manually

 

   

It created the copy, it moves like the one I had with constraints, but it doesnt have attached constraints, so I exported it and it worked!!!

 

Now for the moment only simple questions remain, as which bone is related to shield position and is it a problem when a BBB animation is followed by a non BBB and if its that whats causing breasts to freeze after stopping running or walking

 

I was a bit confused by you instructions at first but after some googling, I got your point on baking, baking was exactly what I was talking of when I asked "How to make constraints work"

 

See it work if you like 

The 3 frame animation was a test, so now Im gonna do the real animation OnehandIdle.rar

 

[Myst42]

Oh damn it!

Maybe its too soon to celebrate:

 

 

It starts well, but then it progressively rotates the position forward

Any Ideas?

Nearly there...

 

EDIT: I was using lens chain 0 because by moving more bones it looked more complex

But maybe it moved something else thats not supposed to move?

Ill try it with lens chain 3

EDIT 2: I said nothing, doing that worked perfectly, so the celebration carries on 

[Myst42]

Time for another progress update: 

 

 

 

Phase 1 is finished. All the prototypes of Idle and blocking Idles are complete. Meaning the "pose" animations

All are fixed positions with only 1 important frame which is the "structure" of the animation

 

It was hell to make them, I was never happy with the way the looked, had to fix this and that... countless times I had to figure out a way to correct clipping.. GOD! I HATE CLIPPING!!! 

 

So for every Idle there is a block Idle, and there are animations for

- Hand to Hand

- One Hand/Shield

- Two Hand

- Staff

- Bow

- Alter PC Idle Versions for H2H, 1H, and 2H (second pic)

 

The most anoying one was the "Block Idle" alone, cause I had to figure out and try to find a way to make a blocking idle that worked well with both shield and dual wielding, that one was really hell to make

 

 

 

 

I have not yet done the "real" animation part, cause once its done, theres no turning back, but Ive made experiments on the Idles, adding breathing movement and they work. So breathing has yet to be added on both Idles and Block Idles

 

But first I wanted to make the other complemetary animations, which means

-Turning (left or right from Idle)

-Block Hit (when blocking and deflecting a blow)

 

 

 

 

And now the trouble starts:

 

 

For Blocking, everything was fine BUT:

 

Im experiencing some issues when it comes to overlapping animations.

For example all the block Idles, look good but when you move like walk or turn, they look aside and it looks awful

Its like blocking to the side instead of the enemy in front of you.

I think it may be related to bone priorities, but i dont know exactly how to fix it. What number should Put and to what number should I compare it

 

 

 

Im also experiencing issues specifically for the "Sword Blocking Hit anim" I designed it right in Blender but in game, it tilts forward and screws the entire idea. Think it might also be related to bone priorities but like I said, need help on this one:

 

 

 

Finally and the worst of all is I cant seem to repair this, thankfully these are all short animations (12 frames top, 31 the ones with turning, but I made a recipe for making a turn animation in 9 steps), but when I tried re-importing them to blender, everything was screwed up, like motions that wherent there before, bone priorities that werent assigned, and frames that didnt exist. so all I have to work is re-importing the only things that work, which are the prototypes of basic Idles 

 

 

 

I place all the working Idle and blocking prototypes here:

 

Prototype.rar

 

 

And the bugged experimental versions of other things here:

 

Bugged.rar

 

 

For people who are not demanding, Ive seen mods that at this level are already finished but thats not my style

So I would really and I do mean REALLY appreciate If you guys could take a look and point me in the right direction

Also Iwd be happy to hear your comments (constructive) on what do you think so far

 

Im sure you all know I plan on releasing this, and proper credit will be given to all who deserve it of course

I couldnt have even gotten this far without you guys' help

[Poontank]

Good work, congratulations on all the progress you made! I'll give this idle a try despite my main character being an archer.

 

My reason to keep on using the vanilla idle in the form of Fore's breathing BBB stance is the breast reset function it provides, otherwise moving around with BBB walking animations oftentimes results in deformed breasts when standing still in 'mid-breast swing'. This is for the normal unarmed standing idle. That's why I didn't bother with the new tweaked idle that came out recently, no BBB support means deformed boobs - even in the inventory screen!

 

Since BBB is not such a big factor to me while fighting (only looking at the back of my character anyway), your stance might be a welcome change.

[Myst42]

Right...Oops   Sorry for that, I haven add the BBB function yet. But I noticed the deformation so Im bound to do it at some point. Its nothing really, just have to reload the prototypes with Universal Skeleton and fix positions and bone priorities to BBB bones. If you want I could re upload those here. The reason Ive been using Vanilla Skeleton is because having less bones makes it easier to work the first phases, but in the end everything is gonna hava BBB I promise.... just not yet, I have to figure out how to solve all the issues first

 

In the meantime I really need help looking at the issues I mentioned earlier... 

 

 

Time for another progress update: 

 

 

 

Phase 1 is finished. All the prototypes of Idle and blocking Idles are complete. Meaning the "pose" animations

All are fixed positions with only 1 important frame which is the "structure" of the animation

 

It was hell to make them, I was never happy with the way the looked, had to fix this and that... countless times I had to figure out a way to correct clipping.. GOD! I HATE CLIPPING!!! 

 

So for every Idle there is a block Idle, and there are animations for

- Hand to Hand

- One Hand/Shield

- Two Hand

- Staff

- Bow

- Alter PC Idle Versions for H2H, 1H, and 2H (second pic)

 

The most anoying one was the "Block Idle" alone, cause I had to figure out and try to find a way to make a blocking idle that worked well with both shield and dual wielding, that one was really hell to make

 

 

Anims.jpgAlter.jpg

 

 

I have not yet done the "real" animation part, cause once its done, theres no turning back, but Ive made experiments on the Idles, adding breathing movement and they work. So breathing has yet to be added on both Idles and Block Idles

 

But first I wanted to make the other complemetary animations, which means

-Turning (left or right from Idle)

-Block Hit (when blocking and deflecting a blow)

 

 

 

 

And now the trouble starts:

 

 

For Blocking, everything was fine BUT:

 

Im experiencing some issues when it comes to overlapping animations.

For example all the block Idles, look good but when you move like walk or turn, they look aside and it looks awful

Its like blocking to the side instead of the enemy in front of you.

I think it may be related to bone priorities, but i dont know exactly how to fix it. What number should Put and to what number should I compare it

 

Bug2.jpg

 

 

Im also experiencing issues specifically for the "Sword Blocking Hit anim" I designed it right in Blender but in game, it tilts forward and screws the entire idea. Think it might also be related to bone priorities but like I said, need help on this one:

 

Bug1.jpg

 

 

Finally and the worst of all is I cant seem to repair this, thankfully these are all short animations (12 frames top, 31 the ones with turning, but I made a recipe for making a turn animation in 9 steps), but when I tried re-importing them to blender, everything was screwed up, like motions that wherent there before, bone priorities that werent assigned, and frames that didnt exist. so all I have to work is re-importing the only things that work, which are the prototypes of basic Idles 

 

 

 

I place all the working Idle and blocking prototypes here:

 

Prototype.rar

 

 

And the bugged experimental versions of other things here:

 

Bugged.rar

 

 

For people who are not demanding, Ive seen mods that at this level are already finished but thats not my style

So I would really and I do mean REALLY appreciate If you guys could take a look and point me in the right direction

Also Iwd be happy to hear your comments (constructive) on what do you think so far

 

Im sure you all know I plan on releasing this, and proper credit will be given to all who deserve it of course

I couldnt have even gotten this far without you guys' help

 

 

[gregathit]

For an easy to use skeleton that is compatible with the universal skeleton just use the skeletonmin.nif from here: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/13516-lovers-animation-workshop-skeleton-mark-ii/

 

ONLY use the skeletonmin.nif while animating and don't use any of the others found in the package as they have issues.  The skeletonmin.nif is a stripped down version of growlfs universal skeleton with all the scaling bones removed and many of the other bones that are seldom used as well removed.  This skeleton makes it really easy to manipulate things in blender.  It is what I use for the LPK animations.

 

Cheers,

Greg

[Poontank]

I had no idea there are many other stances already included in that archive! A nice surprise.

 

For now I have only tested the one-handed idle and I must say I'm very pleased with your work. I will keep this stance in any case. Looking forward to even get BBB for it at a later time. Since at the moment I'm having a quest sword stuck in my inventory anyway it's all the more a reason to use a blade now.

 

 

 

 

If that's too colourful, here are more neutral shots:

 

 

 

 

Normal frontside view.

 

 

TAI-stopped character, head slightly tilted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll be having a blast checking out the other idle poses!

 

Edit: Now I've taken a look at a few of the other stances... I'm extremely satisfied with the bow idle!

It seems clearly derived from the 'Silver Ranger' I was using for ages, but with the bow held at an angle. This indeed looks much better. And it does mix well with the other 'Silver Ranger' animations still showing when turning and walking.

 

The h2h stance isn't bad, fists raised to guard the face. It might be the fact that my player character is from an x117 race with a larger head - my girl's right fist is touching her eye as if she was rubbing it with the back of her hand. Something to consider - making the idles compatible with any race.

 

The first two-handed stance I have tried has the weapon held close to the body. Quite a difference from the twohand idle I was using before, it was that bonus file which is included with 'Pretty Woman'. The new stance looked a bit silly with an ebony warhammer I was trying the pose with, along the lines of "I luv me hammar and wanna cuddle it aaaall day..." A long-bladed claymore probably makes the stance look less 'snuggly'.

Going to try out the alternate twohand idles next.

[Myst42]

Ok this thing couldnt possibly advance more slower... Im officially very annoyed with it cause every mayor breakthrough i make, I still have lot to go. I decided to make some tweaking on the basic idles and blocks... again and that took forever. But once I finished, I wanted to know what to do next.

 

On progress: (Skip it If not interested, explaining things helps me organize my thoughts...)

 

 

So from that point I was left to:

-turning

-block hit

-breathing for idles

-breathing for blocks

-running

-walking

 

Thank god I have a plan on making single animations and then pasting the upper body structure wielding the weapon in said animation, that way, I only have to get a good base animation as canvas for all running and walking, and then breathing. I called this method, preparing a "canvas" animation

 

This "canvas" technique worked wonderfully for "turning" animations which are by now, already done (YAAAAAY!!!!    )

The canvas for moving is gonna be DMC Stylish consisting in

-4 fast moving anims (forward, backward, left, right)

-4 walking anims (forward, backward, left, right)

 

So, making a long story short, Im down to preparing 12 canvas for pasting the rest in them, and making block hits directly edited from block idle poses

Sounds like a lot but its not so much... 8 of the canvas are animated perfectly already and I only need to prepare them and the other 4 are easy to make as they will be done from my own poses. Once a canvas is functional, pasting the rest takes no time, I made 4 turning canvas and in a matter of minutes I had 16 animations ready. 

 

 

 

But I had Issues....

I was getting the "canvas" animations for ready for use and the whole file got corrupted...

Dunno what I did wrong, I remade everything to get to that point and the file worked fine the second time, I use some constraints, but I only pasted the results back into the original one, this worked perfectly the second time I tried it

The corruption consists on every single bone going crazy, making animation into a dish of spaghetti. This happens after export, so playing or re-importing shows the effect

Could anybody pleas check these blend files and tell me why are they corrupted?

 

 

Anims.rar

In this file:

-Uncorrupt file containing all the Idles, I used this so I can then Import the walking animation, prepare it as canvas, and then pasting all the relevant aspects of my idles into it

-Corrupt file containing the edited fast-forward "canvas", nothing wrong in plain sight, export and all hell breaks loose

-Example of re-imported file, where all hell broke loose

 

 

 

I managed to made everything for second time and this time It didnt get corrupted, but I still dont know what went wrong

Now pleas pleas please...

I need an answer so I could work faster instead of having to retake my steps every time it gets corrupted

Why is it corrupt?

Is there a way to un-corrupt it?

 

[kosukosu1]

It's hard to tell what's going on, I usually only work with one scene at a time - sorry :/

 

Did you look at these:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/How_to_fix_your_animation_FAQ

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Avoiding_Blender_animation_pitfalls

[D_ManXX2]

sorry but my previous account was disabled. but using multiple scene should be no problem. if the animations goes dish of spaghetti, then bake constrain did not do it's job correctly and you should try again.

 

just make sure nothing overrides the text file BoneExMat and FullNames by accidentily importing 2 skeleton in blender.

 

if you have one skeleton just use Shift F1 to import a second one. And you should have no problem.

[Myst42]

I think I have a possible answer... I tried to import an armor mesh to use as reference an minimize clipping, but as all my animations were named differently from "Scene root" I imported the full skeleton and mesh, thinking if I delete the skeleton all would be fine, guess Its not... Maybe I didnt see it coming, maybe a noob's mistake... maybe it could have happened to anyone lost among the thousand tutorials and posts that you have to dig in, to find the answers you seek

 

Anyway Im taking special care of checking every step so it doesnt repeat again

 

Im happy to say from the last post there are 10 more animations ready 

[Myst42]

Its almost done!!

 

Suffered a little delay cause the IK didnt work the way I wanted, but now they do. Big THANKS to D_ManXX2 for helping with it

Finished the 40 moving animations for H2H, OH, 2H, Staff and Bow... maybe Ill add some changes but they are functional and look way better than the vanilla ones.

The whole circus for IK thing was to create casing animations. Now there are 8 new ones (some repeat) but there is one of my versions for everything

 

All that's left now is add breathing and oscilation for Idle and block cause turning is finished now.

 

I also have to do some mod installing for Skyrim and Fallout 3, so its still slow, but with some motivation, willpower and TIME, It will be finished between this weekend and the other one. Then released here, and hopefully on Nexus too (have to check If I actually can place everything there...)

 

 

 

Coming SOON...

[Myst42]

<Insert sound of GIGANTINC relief sigh here>

 

Its over...

Its finally over.. Finish, The end. Caput. No more

 

Just wanted to share the good news. Every Idle works with slight movement, blocking idles, some cast animations, turning animations and moving animations.

Im gonna post it somewhere between the next days at Nexus, but only the ban-safe part

 

The rest of it im gonna place it here as full package.

But its not going out right away. I want to take some nice screenshots first and put everything in order before release somewhere between the next few days, probably friday...

 

But ITS OVER!!!

I might end up adding some modifications in the future, perhaps a few anims more, but the larger part... never again

I sincerely hope to never see an animation again

It has been weeks of cursing at blender and its complicated mechanics, but I finally managed to learn what I needed.

Thank you all who supported with ideas, links and teaching. Ill be putting all of you guys in the credits

[Myst42]

Its placed at:

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/18511-combat-stance-reanimation/?do=findComment&comment=428056

 

Also Nexus but the better version is here 

[RitualClarity]

<Insert sound of GIGANTINC relief sigh here>

 

Its over...

Its finally over.. Finish, The end. Caput. No more

 

Just wanted to share the good news. Every Idle works with slight movement, blocking idles, some cast animations, turning animations and moving animations.

Im gonna post it somewhere between the next days at Nexus, but only the ban-safe part

 

The rest of it im gonna place it here as full package.

But its not going out right away. I want to take some nice screenshots first and put everything in order before release somewhere between the next few days, probably friday...

 

But ITS OVER!!!

I might end up adding some modifications in the future, perhaps a few anims more, but the larger part... never again

I sincerely hope to never see an animation again

It has been weeks of cursing at blender and its complicated mechanics, but I finally managed to learn what I needed.

Thank you all who supported with ideas, links and teaching. Ill be putting all of you guys in the credits

You know what they day elalquimista..

 

Never say Never.....

 

[Poontank]

Thought of putting a link to the download/release thread in here as well: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/18511-combat-stance-reanimation/?do=findComment&comment=428056

 

Since that one is in the probably less frequented non-adult mods section, it might get missed once the MCS thread or any other gets bumped...

The tech support area, well-frequented, might offer an additional lot of people the chance to notice that great animation mod if they read this thread here.