Blender To HKX Development Thread

[RohZima]

Here is my problem:

 

Basically, in blender the animation is a smooth two part animation, legs go out then back in. Only the thigh and calf bones have been animated. It looks perfect in blender. In game it's just - wrong....

 

Edited April 26, 2022 by RohZima

[EngineGaming]

2 minutes ago, RohZima said:

 

Take a break man, no problem. I recommend testing that first before going ahead spending time on a rig. 

Thanks RohZima. Yea always first testing, ive thought it will be ideal to share my rig as modders resources on Nexus and as long as its meant to be public for everyone, i can also give permission to work extra with fixes together. Atm, not now with Nexus unless i put efforts on testing. On the same platform would be more rigs, including ZeX skeleton mentioned by Dagoba. Ill also need permission before making it, to make sure we are fairly working with permission granted.

[EngineGaming]

4 minutes ago, RohZima said:

Here is my problem:

 

Basically, in blender the animation is a smooth two part animation, legs go out then back in. Only the thigh and calf bones have been animated. It looks perfect in blender. In game it's just - wrong....

 

 

Fallout4_20220426_202550F.avi 85.2 MB · 2 downloads

And btw i checked it now, i got it. I hope it wouldnt be like that, sfor sure ill make a small comparison between blender and in game with my fixed rig.

[Vader666]

14 hours ago, infiniteone said:

can we have multiple versions of havok tools in one system?

 

Yes.

Just don't install your different version on top of your older one.

However you can only install one havok 3DSMax plugin per installation of 3DsMax, which dosen't matter if you're not using 3DsMax.

In addition the x64 Havok for FO4 is capable of exporting in 32bit aswell, so in theory you could use the FO4 version for Skyrim too.

Never tried that tho.

 

14 hours ago, infiniteone said:

Or is there already a preferred tool for getting fo4 vanilla animations into blender?

 

In the F4AK package are tools from DexesTTP which are capable to convert 64bit anims to 32bit and finally to fbx.

Does work for 3Ds, should work for blender too.

 

11 hours ago, dagobaking said:

Then export each character animation separately (delete the others, export, revert then delete the opposite others, export, etc.)

Deleting stuff in a WIP animation is a very bad idea if you're using linked IK targets, just don't delete actors, rename them

 

 

11 hours ago, dagobaking said:

Even better would be some fancy script that knows to export each char animation separately.

 

You mean somthing like the RigMap.txt Havok needs to know which bones it should export ?

Just name the bones of your 2nd actor different and use a different RigMap.txt for export.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Vader666

[RohZima]

3 hours ago, EngineGaming said:

And btw i checked it now, i got it. I hope it wouldnt be like that, sfor sure ill make a small comparison between blender and in game with my fixed rig.

 

I found out the issue - the in game FootIK was causing it somehow. I TCL'd into the sky and played the animation and there was no issues... I don't know why that's effecting me but it means this system works ok as far as I can tell.

 

I'll still need to learn a bit more about it though so I can hopefully make creature and robot rigs.

[EngineGaming]

9 minutes ago, RohZima said:

 

I found out the issue - the in game FootIK was causing it somehow. I TCL'd into the sky and played the animation and there was no issues... I don't know why that's effecting me but it means this system works ok as far as I can tell.

 

I'll still need to learn a bit more about it though so I can hopefully make creature and robot rigs.

So u wanna make creature and robot in blender as well? Nice!

K that footik in game is still strange, unlike TCL method but u can also type in console a code to disable. I have my batch file from my pose pack and i wanna make it auto executable when f4 starts.

[EngineGaming]

@RohZimaBtw what u think of joining with me? Working with rigs and sharing each other's work in a resource mod on Nexus? If that u meant to make rigs with me? That would be a good idea, tho.

[EngineGaming]

 
 

 

Ideas, tho. Having complex movements is common, only with FootIK disabler batch file is the way to make it work. F4 was set enabled as default, anyway. @RohZima

FootIKDisabler.txt Btw, my batch file u have to type bat footikdisabler, with ur character selected, instead of typing tcl and move away around.

[Vader666]

2 hours ago, RohZima said:

I don't know why that's effecting me

 

You need to animate the IK target of the ingame IK.

The game skeleton has 2 bones around the foot area that are called something like FootL_IK / FootR_IK.

If you want to animate the legs of the character, you need to do it using these, or turn of ingame IK for the time your anim is used.

[dagobaking]

5 hours ago, Vader666 said:

Deleting stuff in a WIP animation is a very bad idea if you're using linked IK targets, just don't delete actors, rename them

 

I was just saving before the deleting. So, after publishing I would reload the entire scene and do same process for other skeleton.

 

5 hours ago, Vader666 said:

You mean somthing like the RigMap.txt Havok needs to know which bones it should export ?

Just name the bones of your 2nd actor different and use a different RigMap.txt for export.

 

It sounds like you addressed my above issue a better way with this...

[RohZima]

9 hours ago, Vader666 said:

 

You need to animate the IK target of the ingame IK.

The game skeleton has 2 bones around the foot area that are called something like FootL_IK / FootR_IK.

If you want to animate the legs of the character, you need to do it using these, or turn of ingame IK for the time your anim is used.

 

nice, thanks

 

11 hours ago, EngineGaming said:

@RohZimaBtw what u think of joining with me? Working with rigs and sharing each other's work in a resource mod on Nexus? If that u meant to make rigs with me? That would be a good idea, tho.

 

I'll always contribute if I can with community stuff. Now I'm going to make an animated poser for FO4 while learning AAF and about the FO4 skeletons and modding in general. Then I'll move on to doing the more advanced stuff specifically for use with AAF...

[dagobaking]

15 hours ago, Vader666 said:

You mean somthing like the RigMap.txt Havok needs to know which bones it should export ?

Just name the bones of your 2nd actor different and use a different RigMap.txt for export.

 

Following up on this to better understand how it works...

 

So, in the "Create Skeletons" step in HCT, you load the .txt with the bone list. But, I could change the bone list to put a prefix on every bone "actor1_pelvis" for example. And then adjust the bone names in the scene to reflect this. And then just switch between the different txt files to export different actors?

 

Wouldn't changing the names of the bones break the animation in game? Or does it ignore the bone names and perhaps just uses order?

[RohZima]

30 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

 

Following up on this to better understand how it works...

 

So, in the "Create Skeletons" step in HCT, you load the .txt with the bone list. But, I could change the bone list to put a prefix on every bone "actor1_pelvis" for example. And then adjust the bone names in the scene to reflect this. And then just switch between the different txt files to export different actors?

 

Wouldn't changing the names of the bones break the animation in game? Or does it ignore the bone names and perhaps just uses order?

 

According to andrelo the actual name doesn't have to be the same; but the order and hierarchy (presumably parent/child) does. That's what I got from one of his posts on nexus.

 

 

[kziitd]

3 hours ago, RohZima said:

 

nice, thanks

 

 

I'll always contribute if I can with community stuff. Now I'm going to make an animated poser for FO4 while learning AAF and about the FO4 skeletons and modding in general. Then I'll move on to doing the more advanced stuff specifically for use with AAF...

This is really good news.

In my personal experience, the energy of making Fo4 animation will eventually focus on a large number of XML files.

Especially if you're used to skyrim having tools like GenerateFNISforModders.

Join https://discord.com/channels/425389991481442307/439891216163930113 can get more help.

[EngineGaming]

4 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

Following up on this to better understand how it works...

 

So, in the "Create Skeletons" step in HCT, you load the .txt with the bone list. But, I could change the bone list to put a prefix on every bone "actor1_pelvis" for example. And then adjust the bone names in the scene to reflect this. And then just switch between the different txt files to export different actors?

 

Wouldn't changing the names of the bones break the animation in game? Or does it ignore the bone names and perhaps just uses order?

So for having 2 rigs imported but w renamed bone prefixes to each actors, and 2 rig txt files with havok. And it will be exported 2 actors which it should be extracted 2 hkx files. One of them corresponds all the actor 1 bones and actor 2 will skip, and for the second txt will be actor 2 and 1 skips.

I get ur point, in game when playing animations, those bones result from rig txt files within havok if those names are correct. And supposed to be followed from bones in blender if both names are the same if thats logical. Sure ill see if i can include 2nd rig as duo in blender, too and with 2 rig txt files they should work.

Edited April 27, 2022 by EngineGaming

[Vader666]

6 hours ago, dagobaking said:

ignore the bone names and perhaps just uses order?

 

Exactly that.

The names of the bones only matter on export so only the bones found in the scene AND the rigmap are actually used to export the animation.

The names do get written into the animation but they don't matter, just the bone order, the bone IDs, matter.

 

 

 

[RohZima]

1 hour ago, EngineGaming said:

So for having 2 rigs imported but w renamed bone prefixes to each actors, and 2 rig txt files with havok. And it will be exported 2 actors which it should be extracted 2 hkx files. One of them corresponds all the actor 1 bones and actor 2 will skip, and for the second txt will be actor 2 and 1 skips.

I get ur point, in game when playing animations, those bones result from rig txt files within havok if those names are correct. And supposed to be followed from bones in blender if both names are the same if thats logical. Sure ill see if i can include 2nd rig as duo in blender, too and with 2 rig txt files they should work.

 

It might not actually be necessary with FBX because you can just export Selected, however it does seem to export all actions at the same time. So you will have two sets of actions inside the .hkt file, one with .001 or whatever. That should not be a problem for HCT as far as andrelo said in the thread on nexus... The skeleton must be the same but the names don't need to be identical. So if that is true we only need one bonelist  

 

Edit - So you would export from blender once but then run HCT twice.

Edited April 27, 2022 by RohZima

[EngineGaming]

Not sure if i can put a link here (Also threads name is still related), but the thing is that i left my fixed rig public, and it's meant to be a modder's resource... As long as i am resting after that, u can check out by my name on Nexus, shortly.

[infiniteone]

19 hours ago, EngineGaming said:

Not sure if i can put a link here (Also threads name is still related), but the thing is that i left my fixed rig public, and it's meant to be a modder's resource... As long as i am resting after that, u can check out by my name on Nexus, shortly.

I found your file and tutorial on the nexus, thanks for sharing that! ❤️

 

Edit:

Im curious about Zex-extended skeleton version. Looking at your files I see the FO4_Human_Preset.hko might be where the additional Zex bones get added, but perhaps also the bonelist.txt from fbximporter? Then there's needing to get those bones into the blender rig.

 

On another note I had to uninstall the previous version of havok tools or the installer wouldnt progress, not a big deal though since switching is painless and quick when needed.

Edited April 29, 2022 by infiniteone

[EngineGaming]

5 hours ago, infiniteone said:

I found your file and tutorial on the nexus, thanks for sharing that! ❤️

 

Edit:

Im curious about Zex-extended skeleton version. Looking at your files I see the FO4_Human_Preset.hko might be where the additional Zex bones get added, but perhaps also the bonelist.txt from fbximporter? Then there's needing to get those bones into the blender rig.

 

On another note I had to uninstall the previous version of havok tools or the installer wouldnt progress, not a big deal though since switching is painless and quick when needed.

Because it's used for 'basic' human rig, btw i got permission for ZeX extended, and it's also noted in my to-do list. That would happen soon once i finish my pose pack first, it's long and lots of work for almost 2 years, i need to work with it. Thanks!

[dagobaking]

On 4/29/2022 at 5:08 AM, EngineGaming said:

Because it's used for 'basic' human rig, btw i got permission for ZeX extended, and it's also noted in my to-do list. That would happen soon once i finish my pose pack first, it's long and lots of work for almost 2 years, i need to work with it. Thanks!

 

Been watching this series: 

 

 

 

Has some good info on how to make the controls, etc.

[dagobaking]

I somehow missed these replies earlier...

 

On 4/27/2022 at 4:06 AM, EngineGaming said:

So for having 2 rigs imported but w renamed bone prefixes to each actors, and 2 rig txt files with havok. And it will be exported 2 actors which it should be extracted 2 hkx files. One of them corresponds all the actor 1 bones and actor 2 will skip, and for the second txt will be actor 2 and 1 skips.

 

Yes. This is what I was thinking would work. Not only that, you could also make one HKO file for each actor prefix (I think you can actually export multiple actors in one HKO setup but havent tested that). And then make a batch file that automatically runs all this and does cleanup for many files in one click. This way you can just focus on animations and exporting FBX once. Run a publish batch command later to process all of those files.

 

On 4/27/2022 at 5:43 AM, Vader666 said:

Exactly that.

The names of the bones only matter on export so only the bones found in the scene AND the rigmap are actually used to export the animation.

The names do get written into the animation but they don't matter, just the bone order, the bone IDs, matter.

 

Makes sense. Thank you.

 

On 4/27/2022 at 5:45 AM, RohZima said:

Edit - So you would export from blender once but then run HCT twice.

 

Yes. With either one HKO for each custom prefix or potentially you can make one HKO that processes multiple in one pass. Then, as noted above, you can run HCT via batch command on a whole folder of animations and select the right HKO to use based on a naming convention ("single_female_settings.HKO" for animations starting with "f_" or "male_and_female_settings.HKO" for animations starting with "mf_".)

 

 

 

I've run into a new problem though. The example.blend that andrelo gives includes bones like "WeaponExtra1" and "WeaponIKTargetL". These appear needed to complete to an HKX. But, in nifskope and importing via pynifly those bones do not appear to be part of the vanilla skeleton (or the zex skeleton).

 

So, where do those bones come from? How can we add them correctly to the zex skeleton for rig-making purposes?

[RohZima]

9 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

I've run into a new problem though. The example.blend that andrelo gives includes bones like "WeaponExtra1" and "WeaponIKTargetL". These appear needed to complete to an HKX. But, in nifskope and importing via pynifly those bones do not appear to be part of the vanilla skeleton (or the zex skeleton).

 

So, where do those bones come from? How can we add them correctly to the zex skeleton for rig-making purposes?

 

I was surprised to see those bones as well. I can't find them in the skeleton.nif I looked at briefly. It seems very surprising he would add extra bones though, since he doesn't even have Fallout installed and was just making that mod as a favor. I can't think of any reason he'd do it.

 

Either way, they can easily be added in blender and then hidden, or surely just removed from the bonelist.txt. Or something on those lines.

[RohZima]

9 hours ago, dagobaking said:

How can we add them correctly to the zex skeleton for rig-making purposes?

 

Literally just add bones with the same dimensions (head + tail) as WEAPON, parented to WEAPON so they follow it. Then simply hide them. I ca understand if they are needed for moving parts on the weapons...

[dagobaking]

1 hour ago, RohZima said:

 

I was surprised to see those bones as well. I can't find them in the skeleton.nif I looked at briefly. It seems very surprising he would add extra bones though, since he doesn't even have Fallout installed and was just making that mod as a favor. I can't think of any reason he'd do it.

 

Either way, they can easily be added in blender and then hidden, or surely just removed from the bonelist.txt. Or something on those lines.

 

Andrelo got back to me and pointed out that the correct list of bones to work with comes from skeleton.hkx. Not skeleton.nif.

 

I was able to convert skeleton.hkx to XML and confirm that the bones in there are the same ones as bonelist.txt. But, I'm not sure how to convert from XML to Blender.

 

It's probably true that I can just manually add those bones as you say. But, I worry that something about my addition will be off. Maybe that's a product of my lack of Blender experience...

Edited May 7, 2022 by dagobaking