Animation Porting Issue

[Kuroitsune]

About two months ago I posted here about a Horse in Fallout New Vegas, and it's ragdoll going haywire when the creature died. You can find that topic here: Fallout Horse

 

I have fixed that issue, but have come across another one, this time in the animations. I could've sworn that they worked in the last version of my work, but I maybe imagining that. This particular issue only affects six of the twenty or so animations. Whenever the GECK loads these animations, it throws an error telling me the animation was exported with the 'animate in place' from MAX. When it plays the animation - in particular mtforward.kf - the horse plays it's animation, but does not move forward like the other creatures when animating the same animation (for their models). I used the kfupdater on the Nexus to convert the animations, and like I said, I thought it worked the first time I did it.

 

My question is how do I fix this? I imported the animation into blender and it works like it should, the horse moves forward, but when exported, the GECK and game do not play them correctly - it animates, but does not move forward. Did the kfupdater break the animations when converting them? Or is there another tool that can do a better job than the kfupdater?

[Kuroitsune]

Update: Seems to be the skeleton. The animations will work on the dog(albiet in a humerous fashion), but not the horse.

[Halstrom]

Sorry can't help but hope you get it sorted, would love to see anything that leads to a horse being possible for New Vegas, I'm sure even if we got a stick figure horse or ButterCup ti work, someone would then get motivated into making a Horse Mesh

[Kuroitsune]

I have solved the problem, and the problem was my own fault. I forgot to add a TransfromController to the Bip01 bone, this was breaking the moving animations and confusing the GECK into thinking the animation was broken. I spent two days looking for the problem, it was so obvious, yet I ignored the obvious and thought it was deeper.

 

Well, the Horse Skeleton I have is scratch made from the Brahmin Skeleton, it's not a port of the Oblivion Skeleton because that thing never worked. I want to upload the skeleton, but I doubt the nexus would let it stay around considering the numerical data (translation, rotation, ragdoll, etc.) is the same as it is in the Oblivion Skeleton. It's a Brahmin Skeleton beaten and hammered to look like a Horse Skeleton. It works very well, I'd upload it here in a heartbeat if someone could make use of it.

 

Once I have gotten all of the animations ported and fixed (some of them have both the human and horse skeleton - for ridding it), my horsey is complete. Except the transparacy of it's mane and tail, Skyrim Transparancy works MUCH differently than it does in Fallout. I'll take that over not having a horse at all.

[Halstrom]

I'm not sure if there's an issue using a New Vegas Skeleton for a a mod in New Vegas at all, so don't see why it couldn't be uploaded there or here, we have a couple of animators that may get interested, There's a Robot Pony called Buttercup in a Monster resource pack on Nexus that maybe could be adapted to use it somehow for now

[Kuroitsune]

I'll consider it, especially if animators and modellers get interested, everyone can have a horse instead of just the select few that made their own.

 

It works in game (after it decided to do the Moon Walk, which was hilarious, but I fixed it.)

[Guest]

I'll consider it, especially if animators and modellers get interested, everyone can have a horse instead of just the select few that made their own.

 

well you know why people don't release it usually. Reliability or it uses some ported assets. It's not a matter of selfishness

[Halstrom]

well you know why people don't release it usually. Reliability or it uses some ported assets. It's not a matter of selfishness

Which is why it's a pity we can't get it happening with any crap mesh we can, so other people can work on it too, myself and others here would be in to do any scripting we needed for this to work, we got the best New Vegas Scripters on the internet here on LL, sooner or later someone with mesh experience will make a decent horse it's not rocket science, but it is beyond my ability to learn to do everything.

[Guest]

 

we got the best New Vegas Scripters on the internet here on LL

 

 

...but you still miss something, from the engine, a script won't help there. Anyway if you want to give a try I can give you my assets and my scripts, but if you hear me it's a waste of time until there won't be done some serious changes which are definetely time consuming. And not even sure they could work until I try.

[Halstrom]

...but you still miss something, from the engine, a script won't help there. Anyway if you want to give a try I can give you my assets and my scripts, but if you hear me it's a waste of time until there won't be done some serious changes which are definetely time consuming. And not even sure they could work until I try.

Well it's probably above my ability, still PrideSlayer Jaam & Gerra may have better luck and ideas how to get around any major roadblocks.

[Guest]

It's mainly serious and dirty work on meshes and skeletons, there's not many people around here who could take that job, or would even try that if even they could do that

[Kuroitsune]

After a couple more mishaps and figuring out the engine some more, I have the whole damn shooting match working. Ragdoll could use some work -it's too stiff in some areas, or too loose in others, - and the transparancy on the hair is broken, but aside from that, it works like a normal creature. Becuase Fallout likes to adjust run animations on the fly to catchup to a target, it sometimes looks otherworldy while running, but no more so than a dog or Brahmin when their animations are forced.

[Guest]

 

 

... and by the way, nice to see you found back your horse and solved your issues with ragdoll. We spoke about it some time ago on Nexus, after I saw your muffin

[Kuroitsune]

I have uploaded the Skeleton after a go ahead from the nexus admins. They saw no problem with it. It's a start.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/55995/?

[Kuroitsune]

Fallout2AM. Took a minute, had to check in my inbox, which is a mess.

[Guest]

yep

I delayed for now. The "right path" I figured in correctly riding a horse would require me spending a lot of time in a new skeleton and re-weight the whole thing. I'm not sure I want to spend weeks of work in that right now.

[Kuroitsune]

I haven't even started to see if I can make it a mount. I took a look at the rideable creatures mod on New Vegas, but I cannot make heads or tails of it. The author did not keep his scripts clean, organized, or easy to read. It looked like it used a package on the creature to force follow the player at 0 distance while the script constantly moved the player to said creature, but I can be completely wrong. Looks like I'll have to figure it out from scratch, possibly a similar concept if I can make heads or tails of that mod, maybe make an singel frame aniamtion of an NPC sitting on the horse, and allowing it to blend into combat animations and such, but god if I know where to start on all of that.

 

Maybe I'll play with ponies instead to clear my mind.

[Guest]

I agree the script could have be optimized a little, I rewrote mine entirely, but the concept below is much more easier than you think. You restrain the creature, so it can't move, then when IsKeyPressed you invoke a PlayGroup Forward / Backward etc.etc. on the creature. Basically with WASD you invoke the movement animation of the creature. Your character is restrained too and it's in first person because it doesn't control animations, it's stuck, and it's stuck inside the creature itself with a setpos, while controls are disabled (so havok won't push / pull creature and character). Of course this script must be executed quite fast, if in a quest you must use a very short delay time, I use 0.0x usually.

 

My horse wasn't that different as concept, I just did some steps further with animations because I couldn't suffer riding in first person, I find it very dumb. But while it's already "something", it's not reliable on NV world

[Kuroitsune]

I'll look into that. Not sure how you made it work in Third person yet. I've been meaning to ask, where is that location you were testing the horse in? I can't figure it out, I'm thinking Point Lookout but not so sure.

[Guest]

Doing it in third person was essential, if you ride in first person well ... it wouldn't make difference in riding a brahmin or a horse or a ... rock... but really, third person and first person are not that different when you can handle animations. So horse was moving with WASD while mouse was moving freely the camera, it was the solution I was aiming for, but... not playable at all. You have other kinds of problems with that, which are present even in first person but you can't see them because first person helps a lot to mask them. The solution I figured on my mind, for these problems, would require a LOT of work with meshes and skeleton, and no certainty that it will work, it's just a feeling.

 

The place is a small worldspace I did in half hour, just to test the script with all that fog and the ENB, to see if it was reliable under stress. It has creepy trees from... from... some resources from Vurts, I think, with no collision, not sure where they come from. And these nice pumpkins resources I found on Nexus, they are wonderful, I love them. And well, nothing else, it's a 3x3 cells, very little, it's just a kennel for that horse.

[Kuroitsune]

We should continue this via steam or PMs, I don't want to keep bumping this topic after the issue has been solved.