I think i know the source for out of sync animations.

[D_ManXX2]

At least my testing seem to reveal why my animations seem to be out of sync when playing in new vegas. I was messing with some settings in the action editor it was set to nearest frame it should have set no snap:

 

 

 

 

 

I still need to recheck my previous animations i hope by just setting no snap it would fix them but these where already created with nearest frame so maybe i will need to recreate them from scratch..

 

Does any one know what these options are under action editor:

No snap:

Nearest Marker

Nearest Frame

Frame step:

 

And when to use them ?? So i don't make the same mistake twice ??

 

[prideslayer]

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/action-editor-improvements/

 

About halfway down the left side.

 

• No Snap - auto-snapping is disabled. (same as using no modifier keys)
• Frame Step - keyframes are snapped to 1.0-frame intervals, regardless of NLA-scaling. (same as holding down the Ctrl key)
• Nearest Frame - keyframes are snapped to the nearest frame. This is the default mode for all newly created Action Editor instances. (same as holding down the Shift key)
• Nearest Marker - keyframes are snapped to the nearest marker.

   

 

[D_ManXX2]

I was using Nearest Frame no wonder they where terrible out of sync. At least now i know what not to use anymore. I will see if can still salvage some of my advanced work. hopefully just telling it no snap should fix the frame before exporting again.

 

So in the end it wasn't sexout at all. Maybe this can help new and old animators not to make this mistake.

[D_ManXX2]

Even though the action was created with snap to next frame i could not salvage the action itself i was forced to first convert it to NLA Strip with no snap in order to fix it the good news is i can do this with all other once i previously fucked up due to the snapping:

 

 

 

newvegasAnimation601BigFixedOnly.7z

 

 

All i need now is Bake Constrain script that works faster then the once currently supplied by blender 2.49b Few i was worried that i needed to redo every single animations i made previously.

[prideslayer]

Should not be using bake constraints. I don't remember the details but I had a discussion about that with Donkey back in December. IIRC all it does is make it more difficult (or impossible) to edit the anims later if somebody needs to, but doesn't have your .blend file.

 

edit: this thread talks about it a little bit.. None of the animations Donkey created, which there are many of in sexout, are baked.

[D_ManXX2]

yes i know, but i use a rig. and in order to bake animation for it to export correctly i need to use bake constrain script. or else or constrains created by my rig will not be exported correctly with the Scene Root. And so the animation won't move at all.

 

If i don't use a rig i can export the animation normally without using bake constrain script.

 

Bake constrain all it does is create new Scene Root Armature with everything in it but it is doing it by rendering every single frame. So that is why it is difficult to fix. But that file should not fixed unless you own original blend that way all i do is fix it up in my blend and re-export again by using bake constrain.

 

 

If i will be creating new animations with 1500 frames and people wants to convert it to different game without my blend file they will have a really hard time doing it. Especially if they want to change the rotation lets's say my animation file is 1500 frames and they want to rotate this animation to -90 then they need to change every bone named Bip01 NonAcuum 1500 times. 1 for every frame.

 

Unless you can make script to do this for you it will be animators nightmare.

[prideslayer]

It's not always fixing.. donkey went through most of the original animations that did not have BNB and modified them to bounce. We do not have the .blend files for those that came from sexus or other sources, and the baked ones were nearly impossible to update since you had to go through them frame by frame. The same thing may happen again with other parts of the anatomy that we now support in the combined skeleton.

 

Just giving you a heads up. If you bake them, people are going to curse your name later, unless you put the .blend/max file up as well. I don't understand what the rig has to do with it, but I'm not a (gamebryo) animator either.

[astymma]

An animation rig is a forward and inverse kinematics assist for animation. Makes animations infinitely easier to create. It also exists under the hood as a constraints system within Blender/MAX so baking is required. It's why so many animations end up baked. TBH, the pain editing later is not sufficient to warrant not using a rig imo. The rig allows animators to release animations more often and faster. Editing them later is rare. I think we can handle the pain tbh. Especially if animators keep a repository of the original .blend files.

[prideslayer]

Eh I understand *what* a rig is, I just don't understand why the constraints on the rig have to be baked into the output of the .kf. MAX can use a rig to generate an animation that still uses keyframes with interpolated intermediate frames, I assume Blender can do the same. The end result you get is just the difference between that (a normal animation), or a series of keyframes with no interpolated data (baked).

 

I don't understand though how not using a rig, or using one but not baking the output, results in animations that don't play. Then again, I never got niftools to work right with MAX anyway so who knows what's going on in there.

[astymma]

Oh heh, gotcha. For Blender you can do what's suggested here.

 

Specifically...

 

Generally if you want to re-sample Keyframes you go into Motion -> Trajectories -> and Collapse the transforms by Start Time, End Time and Sample Rate, you then have to open the Curve Editor and set the key to key easing to linear so that only the keyed frames gets exported -> doing this will give you an evenly spaced keying this is also the method used to Bake animation Controllers, Constraints and Curves into real keyframes.

[astymma]

I think as far as animations that won't play goes, the fallout engine uses pure keyframes only. If you've exported anything else, like a path anim or whatever, it may not work in fallout...

 

In Blender it's...

Bake arbitrary transformation (parent/constraint/track/path-based) into key framed transformation

Inputs to this procedure are an object, a sample frame rate and a frame range.

Triggered by pressing Ctrl-I in a 3D view with an object selected, appearing as "All animation to key frames" on the Animation Baking popup.

• Within the frame range, a matrix is recorded once for each step on the frame rate;
• The object is unlinked from all entities that could produce transformation (Ipo, parent-child, constraints, etc.);
• A new Ipo is created, with keys every sample frame, based on the recorded matrices.

But then you're back to an animation with a shitload of keyframes and an editing nightmare...so...meh...

[astymma]

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I may just be talking out of my ass. I am a very experienced animator, but not for the kf format... other games is where I did a ton of animating. And while I know Blender/nifskope like the back of my hand I don't have any actual experience with the full import-animate-export-cleanup process myself so... meh, I'll just shut up now, lol.

 

EDIT: Take Donkey's advice way before you take mine with regards to animating with kf files... always, much more experienced.

[prideslayer]

That... can't be right. I think that's true of oblivion, but not FO3 -- certainly not FONV anyway, as all the .kf's donkey created himself are 'normal', not baked. This is why he was throwing such a fit.

[astymma]

No, I was explaining the baked constraints process. Not advocating it I should stop posting while under the influence of opiates.

[D_ManXX2]

I think i need to explain this part better. You see, normally if you start animating and just the i locrot technique this frame is imbedded within Scene Root Armature Then you can just use the export and no bake constrain is even needed. When you start using Rigs or better named constrains, the only way to have this Scene Root exported is by using Bake Constrains, This script will Actually create a fully new Scene Root Armature with constrains within it. So when you click on this Scene Root you will actually see it as a clean Scene Root with all movements corrected.

 

The only downside is it needed to render frame by frame.

 

This principle is also there when you check Gerra script. if you add breast movements to your Scene Root you will actually see it render all frames your animation currently contain.

 

When you see Donkey Animations he did not use Rigs so his animation works perfectly fine when exporting this way. If he was using Rigs or Constrains he would also need to use bake technique.

 

I am not sure but his latest work on wolflore before he went AWOL actually where also Bake constrain Since he was also using rigs now.

[prideslayer]

I see. It's up to you how you want to do it, I was just throwing up a word of caution as baked animations have already caused us some problems when later on we wanted to edit them, and the original animator was unknown or gone. You can just ignore the warning if you so like; if it ever causes a problem, you won't be around to see it, because that's part of the problem. Just don't lose your .blend file.

 

As long the animations you're putting out don't need adjusted offsets or angles (actor A starts off facing actor B, and C if present, at the same x/y/z coordinates) then I don't care if they're baked. If they do need manipulating, I can fix that myself with nifskope, but it's a *massive* pain in the ass if they're baked.