UV animation

[South8028]

The authors of many mods used uv animation. This is an easy way to animate objects by moving the uv coordinates of the textures by frame. I don’t know if I’m using a similar method or a different one. Because there is no normal description of the vanilla way. None of them wanted to write a textbook or article. 

I am doing this in 3d max 2013 with official plugins. I assign bsLightingFx, or bsEffectFx. I assign textures. Textures represent one texture D, or 3 textures D, N, S, containing several or many animation frames, replacing each other when uv is displaced. If there are a lot of meshes in the nif, then I can immediately assign a material to the rest of the meshes. But I do not assign material to the mesh with uv animation. Textures only.

Next, I either create collisions and sequences in the animation manager, or immediately export to nif. It depends on what kind of object it is. If this is a static art object, then I do not create a sequence, only a collision. Clothes don't need collision, don't need sequences. The clothes can be directly exported as a pe weapon. If it is a pe anim object, such as doors, or lights, or triggers, or contains annotations, then sequences are needed.

Next, I run the meshes through elrich.

If I animate uv (or animate mesh, or particles, or whatever) and don't create sequences in the animation manager, then I go to nifscop. In nifscope I find controllers. In the case of uv animation, this is bsLightingShaderPropertyFloatController. I select the flag, and select cycle (in the event that I do not need an effect, but a looped animation). If I animate the mesh, then I find niMultiTargetTransformController and also select the flag type.

In addition, in Block Details, you can change settings for controllers such as Frequency, Phase, start / stop Time.

Having saved the file, I can insert the nif into the game, or if it's clothes, then work with it in outfit studio.

I want to clarify that this is not only an educational article, but also a question. The bottom line is that exporting uv animation from max does not always work well. Half the time, I cannot open the file in nifscop because a controller error (BSLightingShaderPropertyUShortController) occurs. This bug is floating. I could not find any regularity. I know it has something to do with the unwrap UVW. But how exactly, I would very much like to understand. 

If the animation has a sequence (for example, SpecialIdle), you can ignore this. In this case, a nifskop is not needed, and the mesh works fine in the game itself, regardless of whether a nifskop can read it or not.

But in the case of clothes, this is critical, because clothes do not work with sequences in the same way as static meshes.

In general, I would like to find the cause and completely eliminate this error.

 

[Stormer]

Something like this would be amazing. I always wondered why nobody made a "chameleon" skin/bodysuit mod, that would cycle colors or change them like chameleon deathclaw.

[South8028]

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/lKAJZX5s0cMOMw