Blender To HKX Development Thread

[RitualClarity]

9 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

I think it's because there are multiple objectives people have at once: make an animation rig for zex, make an animation rig for vanilla, add annotations to animations via blender, make animation fbx from hkx files.

 

It all overlaps.

 

 

From here it sounded like there was a roadblock so far for zex animations but vanilla works: 

 

Perhaps it is time to make different threads for the different objectives, Say title of this thread with a dash + objective covered? It is nice to see people still working on tools and such to help the animation process

[BraveBunny]

I've been trying to figure out how to correct zex bone rolls in blender so they export/import correctly without a whole lot of success. However, by referencing the armatures in max I was able to put together a zex armature with the correct bone rolls (and positions as they do import slightly off into blender).

 

 

@EngineGaming has been helping me a lot so once I've made a control rig we'll upload it as part of their rig mod but I figured I'd upload the corrected skeleton here first as people might be interested. Note that blender uses y as the primary bone axis while fallout/max use x so you have to change primary bone axis to x and secondary to -y (or at least I do) when exporting from blender.

 

The rig exports perfectly into max. As far as I can tell every vertex ends up in the correct position (which I tested by overlapping with a model imported straight into max). As far as I can tell all test poses I've imported into fallout are also 100% correct (although I wont be entirely satisfied until I've done a lot more testing lol).

 

Lemme know if you want me to go into more detail regarding all the crap I've tried and how to figure out what the bone rolls should be by referencing max.

HumanF.blend

[dagobaking]

11 hours ago, BraveBunny said:

I've been trying to figure out how to correct zex bone rolls in blender so they export/import correctly without a whole lot of success. However, by referencing the armatures in max I was able to put together a zex armature with the correct bone rolls (and positions as they do import slightly off into blender).

 

 

@EngineGaming has been helping me a lot so once I've made a control rig we'll upload it as part of their rig mod but I figured I'd upload the corrected skeleton here first as people might be interested. Note that blender uses y as the primary bone axis while fallout/max use x so you have to change primary bone axis to x and secondary to -y (or at least I do) when exporting from blender.

 

The rig exports perfectly into max. As far as I can tell every vertex ends up in the correct position (which I tested by overlapping with a model imported straight into max). As far as I can tell all test poses I've imported into fallout are also 100% correct (although I wont be entirely satisfied until I've done a lot more testing lol).

 

Lemme know if you want me to go into more detail regarding all the crap I've tried and how to figure out what the bone rolls should be by referencing max.

HumanF.blend 8.86 MB · 2 downloads

 

Thank you. Nice work.

 

One way to test might be to bring up a vanilla and a blender export in nifskope separately and check to see that the coordinates are exactly the same.

[dagobaking]

11 hours ago, BraveBunny said:

Lemme know if you want me to go into more detail regarding all the crap I've tried and how to figure out what the bone rolls should be by referencing max.

 

PS: Just checked it out in Blender. Are the camera and various weapon nodes supposed to be floating around like that? I've never seen that before. In other imports I've tested, those bones were all overlapping on the location of the hand bone (and camera was more on the world center IIRC).

[BraveBunny]

2 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

PS: Just checked it out in Blender. Are the camera and various weapon nodes supposed to be floating around like that? I've never seen that before. In other imports I've tested, those bones were all overlapping on the location of the hand bone (and camera was more on the world center IIRC).

I think so. I copied them from my from my max rig but I can't quite remember why they were there. Its makes a lot more sense to me for the weapon bones to be spaced out like that since why put something like the left hand Ik target in the exact same spot as the right hand itself. At that point you can just use the right hand bone as your ik target. If there are any bones that a wrong it will be the weapon bones though since I didn't check them against an hkx skeleton import just an old rig I had.

[BraveBunny]

Just checked it against leito's max rig and that's where they are in that as well (but I may have just copied from that for my max rig). If you look at it looks like the weapon ik's for the right hand are all exactly where they shuold be. I'm a little less sure about the left hand weapon iks and the camera though.

[BraveBunny]

5 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

Are the camera and various weapon nodes supposed to be floating around like that? 

 

So I just loaded a imported a random animation into max and I'm pretty you are right about the camera bone being in the wrong place. Seems like it should just be up in the air in the middle somewhere. Weapon bones are definitely not meant to all just sit in the had though that doesn't necessarily mean I've put them in the right place. Now I need to figure out how to get an unanimated skeleton into max which I can't, for the life of me, remember how to do.

[BraveBunny]

Okay so I've played around importing various animations into max. The weapon and camera bones don't have a fixed position relative to root or RArm_Hand, which makes sense because the Ik point for the left hand or magazine or something is going to be very different depending on whether you are using a shotgun or a pistol. The camera is typically floating above the head at z120.48 (which, is inside of the head if standing in t-pose), but drops down and behind for sneaking animations (which again makes perfect sense and makes me feel stupid for not realizing earlier lol). I imagine that bone also pops up a bit for more upright animations but I didn't bother checking any. So I think the bottom line is that they are not particularly relevant for the purposes of AAF animation unless you are adding equipment so for now I'll leave them as is.

Edited June 7, 2022 by BraveBunny

[dagobaking]

14 minutes ago, BraveBunny said:

Okay so I've played around importing various animations into max. The weapon and camera bones don't have a fixed position relative to root or RArm_Hand, which makes sense because the Ik point for the left hand or magazine or something is going to be very different depending on whether you are using a shotgun or a pistol. The camera is typically floating above the head at z120.48 (which, is inside of the head if standing in t-pose), but drops down and behind for sneaking animations (which again makes perfect sense and makes me feel stupid for not realizing earlier lol). I imagine that bone also pops up a bit for more upright animations but I didn't bother checking any. So I think the bottom line is that they are not particularly relevant for the purposes of AAF animation unless you are adding equipment so for now I'll leave them as is.

 

There could be cases and ways to have equipment in hand during AAF animations. So, ideally, those things wouldn't be broken.

 

That said, I'm not sure if moving those bones around would break them. If maybe the game engine moves them to where they need to be anyway during the game.

 

I do think that the weapon ones are most likely to need position. To me, closer to the hand makes sense because that would allow artists to position assets relative to the hand rather than relying on wherever the skeleton put it. [But, I really don't know. You may have more knowledge about this than I do.]

Edited June 7, 2022 by dagobaking

[BraveBunny]

6 hours ago, dagobaking said:

One way to test might be to bring up a vanilla and a blender export in nifskope separately and check to see that the coordinates are exactly the same.

I don't know how to export a skeleton as a .nif. When I try with nifly it just tells me I need to select a mesh but exporting the mesh isn't going to be helpful. I'm 95%+ sure I've got it correct though. I've mucked around with poses like touching a finger tip to a toe tip as then very small offsets should still show up but everything seemed to still be correct. At this point I think I'm just going to add a control rig, animate some stuff, and see how it works out.

[dagobaking]

26 minutes ago, BraveBunny said:

I don't know how to export a skeleton as a .nif. When I try with nifly it just tells me I need to select a mesh but exporting the mesh isn't going to be helpful. I'm 95%+ sure I've got it correct though. I've mucked around with poses like touching a finger tip to a toe tip as then very small offsets should still show up but everything seemed to still be correct. At this point I think I'm just going to add a control rig, animate some stuff, and see how it works out.

 

Yeah. IIRC when I was testing it nifly wouldn't export the skeleton only. But, I believe the skeleton is actually embedded with other assets. I think both meshes and animations include them as references

[BraveBunny]

11 minutes ago, dagobaking said:

 

There could be cases and ways to have equipment in hand during AAF animations. So, ideally, those things wouldn't be broken.

 

That said, I'm not sure if moving those bones around would break them. If maybe the game engine moves them to where they need to be anyway during the game.

 

I do think that the weapon ones are most likely to need position. To me, closer to the hand makes sense because that would allow artists to position assets relative to the hand rather than relying on wherever the skeleton put it. [But, I really don't know. You may have more knowledge about this than I do.]

That's getting a bit above my head as to what makes the most sense. The animator in those cases might have to match the offsets to the specific weapon they want in the animation or fallout might automatically change the IK bones position to match the equipped weapon but I'm really not sure. The image below should give you some idea of how they are spread out in the PoseA_Idle1 animation (which isn't even close to what I have). They're easy enough to move back to the hand bone so I might just leave them as is. I've copied mine from Leito's max rig and they know a lot more about animation than I do so there may well be a reason for it. Once I figure out where those bones should be at relative to a t-pose I'll come back to it but for now I think I'm going to leave it at least until I've tried animating with the rig. If someone wants to look into it or try make a weapon animation in the mean time I'm happy to help, otherwise I think I need to give my brain a rest lol.

[BraveBunny]

I lied about leaving it lol. I figured out how to get a t-pose hkx skeleton into max so can now figure out where to put hand weapon bones (assuming the same relative location as some reference animation). I updated my rig using the unarmed version of PoseA_Idle1 (I'm assuming the relative position of these bones is identical across all unarmed animations) as a reference. It makes the most sense to me to use an unarmed version of an animation since that seems like the closest thing to a default state.

Human.blend

[BraveBunny]

1 hour ago, dagobaking said:

 

Yeah. IIRC when I was testing it nifly wouldn't export the skeleton only. But, I believe the skeleton is actually embedded with other assets. I think both meshes and animations include them as references

O awesome ty. I didn't check every bone but they seem to be almost identical with some bones ever so slightly off (Chest is off by 0.000033 on the x axis for example). Some of the axis are switched around coz blender and the YPR looks nothing alike but I kinda expected that coz again, different axis. Any slightly difference looks like it should be well below what will ever be perceptible. The coordinates I pulled from max all go out to 6 significant figures and blender seems similarly precise so I guess that means a coordinate in the hundreds could be off by up to .001 + whatever happens during export but I think those are unnoticeably small deviations.

[dagobaking]

2 hours ago, BraveBunny said:

O awesome ty. I didn't check every bone but they seem to be almost identical with some bones ever so slightly off (Chest is off by 0.000033 on the x axis for example). Some of the axis are switched around coz blender and the YPR looks nothing alike but I kinda expected that coz again, different axis. Any slightly difference looks like it should be well below what will ever be perceptible. The coordinates I pulled from max all go out to 6 significant figures and blender seems similarly precise so I guess that means a coordinate in the hundreds could be off by up to .001 + whatever happens during export but I think those are unnoticeably small deviations.

 

Great. Sorry to lead you into looking at the weapon bones. It might be a non-issue.

[BraveBunny]

1 hour ago, dagobaking said:

 

Great. Sorry to lead you into looking at the weapon bones. It might be a non-issue.

Nah its great to have someone making sure I've not overlooked anything ?

Edited June 7, 2022 by BraveBunny

[Vader666]

10 hours ago, BraveBunny said:

When I try with nifly it just tells me I need to select a mesh but exporting the mesh isn't going to be helpful.

 

A skinned mesh gets exported with all the bones it is skinned to.

Skin the mesh to every bone of the skeleton, export the mesh, delete the mesh in nifscope.

[BraveBunny]

1 hour ago, Vader666 said:

 

A skinned mesh gets exported with all the bones it is skinned to.

Skin the mesh to every bone of the skeleton, export the mesh, delete the mesh in nifscope.

Yea I figured that out. Thanks all the same ?

[poblivion]

Bad Dog is working on something that might interest you.

 

https://github.com/BadDogSkyrim/PyNifly/releases/tag/V10.2

 

"Animations!

This release supports import of animations:

• Skyrim animated clutter, chest lids and such;
• KF animation files

Only import so far. I'm working on export now.

See the animations section of the wiki for details.

Please play, and report any issues you find!"

 

[South8028]

Tried the direct hkx import script in 3ds. Works great. I'm not a pro at rigging so I don't know if zex bones can be added. Editing animations is done with biped, which comes with the script. When transferring animation through fbx to a zex rig, control knobs are knocked out of zex, but the animation itself is exported without problems. For re-export I used hko and txt for hct from f4ak. Of the problems... After installing the script, there is a small problem with the bgs exporter. bs materials began to disappear from the saved models. You have to reassign these materials. The rest of the script works flawlessly. I easily edited some mixamo animations and exported them back to fo4.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/69177

[dagobaking]

On 7/16/2023 at 3:41 AM, poblivion said:

Bad Dog is working on something that might interest you.

 

https://github.com/BadDogSkyrim/PyNifly/releases/tag/V10.2

 

"Animations!

This release supports import of animations:

• Skyrim animated clutter, chest lids and such;
• KF animation files

Only import so far. I'm working on export now.

See the animations section of the wiki for details.

Please play, and report any issues you find!"

 

 

Awesome!

[Predator-RJ]

On 7/16/2023 at 7:41 AM, poblivion said:

Bad Dog is working on something that might interest you.

 

https://github.com/BadDogSkyrim/PyNifly/releases/tag/V10.2

 

"Animations!

This release supports import of animations:

• Skyrim animated clutter, chest lids and such;
• KF animation files

Only import so far. I'm working on export now.

See the animations section of the wiki for details.

Please play, and report any issues you find!"

 

I don't know if it can help, but there is a file that's been on the net for a long time, "animation tools N3" it has an HKX export, there's no import, but there's an export script, maybe you guys can use something from the existing script, I don't know who created this, if it was the colligon, or if it was Distar66\TKTK\skySA, I really don't know...

 

edit- here is the old colligon post 

 

Animation Tools N3+28.7z

Edited July 17, 2023 by Predator-RJ
post link

[dagobaking]

On 7/16/2023 at 3:41 AM, poblivion said:

Bad Dog is working on something that might interest you.

 

https://github.com/BadDogSkyrim/PyNifly/releases/tag/V10.2

 

"Animations!

This release supports import of animations:

• Skyrim animated clutter, chest lids and such;
• KF animation files

Only import so far. I'm working on export now.

See the animations section of the wiki for details.

Please play, and report any issues you find!"

 

 

Updated yesterday to include exporting animations!

 

https://github.com/BadDogSkyrim/PyNifly/releases/tag/V10.5

 

I couldn't figure out how to use it in a basic test. Got errors when importing the skeleton xml and (maybe related) errors when trying to import an hkx onto an armature.

 

I think a package of working demo files along with a walk-through tutorial/video is needed.

[EngineGaming]

?

[Bad Dog]

Re upthread, I posted a tutorial video on YT: 

 

 

Works fine for LE animations. There are tools to convert LE to SE. 

 

What I don't have is a way to deal with FO4 animations. Are they different? Are there tools to convert them to/from KF or XML formats?