Animation contained inside NIF

[bananana]

hello everyone,

 

i have some questions related to animating objects and saving the animation inside the NIF.

 

what i currently try:

animate a mannequin (i.e. apply normal idle animation to the static mesh by replacing the NIF with a NIF that has the idle animation in it and is weighted correctly (and uses the normal skeleton of course)). but there are others uses to it too like animating other static meshes like boats or banners.

 

i do know that this is possible (at least i assume it is), like demonstrated by (i believe) Valve:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=7375

 

the space core is animated and still is just a mesh (when you extract the file form the bsa you can see the animation inside NIFSkope)

 

i was wondering if some could tell me how to archive that. here is what i've tried so far

 

• exported (from 3Ds Max) correctly weighted mesh of the mannequin to NIF, then exported the idle animation (which was imported before an therefor got the required start- and end-notes in dopesheet) as KF. using NIFSkope, added the KF via spell->animation. this resulted in an error: root node is missing.
• export from 3Ds Max using "export as single NIF w/ KF. this creates a NIF that is animated but still does nothing inside the game (i somehow assume that this is the right attempt and i'm just missing some information like "loop-cycle" and animation type ("idle" or something). Also I added a BSBehaviorGraphExtraData node and names it BGED and a BSXFlags node and after that converted the root node to a BSFadeNode, but to no avail.

if someone know how to get this to work, i would really appreciate help (best would be a step by step guide as i would like to learn how and don't need to rely on other doing it for me).

 

thank you in advance

[Groovtama]

With animating a mannequin do you mean a default mannequin you can put cloth on or a custom mannequin looking static statue.

 

Because a default mannequin is nothing more than a common actor, which can recieve animation commands like any common actor does.

Take a look at the script from her http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10652/?.

The script should contain most of the stuff you need to animate a mannequin in any way you want.

[bananana]

oh, thank you, i wasn't aware of that. nonetheless it would be still interesting how to do it lets say for banners that wave in the wind (i.e. putting 2-3 bones in it, weight the mesh and animate the bones).

[Groovtama]

Ask the author form this mod http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48287/.

Would be the best source if you want to do statics with animations, or for banners/cloth maybe the HDT_PE modders.