[3ds Max] Skeleton Controller Rigs - Draugr v0.13.2 (2015-09-22)

[Leito86]

Things are going to get...interesting.

[pornphile]

Things are going to get...interesting.

LOL

 

[rydin]

Thanks for the new rigs! Gonna help out great! Will try them at the weekend

[doan77]

omg omg omg omg

[ZaZ]

I Highly Recommend these Rigs to any Animator (Newbie/Oldbie) For Skyrim. Its  hard for me to switch over from Blender to 3ds Max , But these Rigs Makes it Ridiculously easier to work with and learn . And its really good for uhm..... LL sort of Animations    and more . In 3ds Max the Interpolations are quite Smoother and one has more options .

 

Again Awesome job pornphile, I was too Stubborn to switch over earlier , but its better late than never .

 

Cheers

 

Some Examples Using your Rig I was messing around with just to learn 3ds Max , both took less than hour to finish maybe even lesser 

 

http://gfycat.com/HeftyClassicBufflehead

http://gfycat.com/SecretAnxiousHarvestmouse

 

[pornphile]

Good to see you back, ZaZ. Got a machine that can run 3ds max now?

[ZaZ]

Good to see you back, ZaZ. Got a machine that can run 3ds max now?

 

Well , I'm still running with Old DDR2 Rams , But the 6950 2gb Card and and Q6600 Quad Processor are making a difference , What I have noticed is that the Newer Versions of Max are less prone to random crashes . Also Using the 64 bit versions make a whole lot of difference regardless of the RAMs.

Some Process Management is Required but I can Animate thanks to Rigs , Cause there is less Clutter of the bones and such too , Keeping them in Layers definitely makes 3ds Max Smoother

 

Cheers and thanks

[Leito86]

I'm running a mid tier machine and Max is still sluggish.  Constant mis-clicks, sluggish dope sheet selections, sluggish dope sheet/curve editor windows.

[pornphile]

I'm running a mid tier machine and Max is still sluggish.  Constant mis-clicks, sluggish dope sheet selections, sluggish dope sheet/curve editor windows.

Added some tips To improve 3ds Max rendering performance.

 

Now that I think about it, I had an instance where the curve editor was extremely laggy. I think the cause may have been from doing heavy scene manipulation(merge, xref) that introduced a bug from a bad scene. Now I always start new projects in a new scene. Viewport lag when animating seems to be a common theme with Max.

 

Here's another post that may help: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115072

 

[Leito86]

Hey pornphile,

 

Wanted to drop in and report an issue with the canine rig.  If you rotate the Canine Head Ctrl along any of the axis, the ears will get distorted.

[pornphile]

Hey pornphile,

 

Wanted to drop in and report an issue with the canine rig.  If you rotate the Canine Head Ctrl along any of the axis, the ears will get distorted.

Also affected tongue and tail. Fixed.

 

[Leito86]

That was quick.  Thanks.

[llabsky]

Just tried out the canine rig... pornphile you are a God. It is so much easier animating this way...

 

So far I've only relied on animating in wireframe mode and hoping things don't clip through each other. I can actually see the meshes while I work now... I feel spoiled.

 

Too bad I can't really get used to it cause I still have so much more work to do

[pornphile]

I don't think I could stand trying to animate with just a skeleton.

[ZaZ]

On the learning curve , the copy paste transforms are really awesome and a time saver

Pssst............................ would love that feature like how the hands Keyall/Copy/Paste for the foot toe/twist/heel etc ( I know I'm lazy ) just need to know how or else I would have added them 

 

Managed to Mimic a happy feminine run cycle sorta , it been fun to use the script 

 

 

Cheers and Thanks

[wishnot4]

Pornphile, this is amazing.  I'm wondering if you could help me figure out how to work on a project I'm doing.  I created a skeleton for a centar race based off of xp32's maximum skeleton.  It looks really good in game, but since there are no behavior files for it, the horse part just stands there and slides along behind the character.  I have a media fire link to what I've come up with so far, if your interested in checking it out let me know and I'll posted.  Anyway, what I'm having an issue with is, how do I animate it?  I think if I knew anything about behaviors(what I've researched claims that if you can edit the xml file you can work with behaviors - I can't make sense of the xml files) it might be a simple matter of combining the behaviors for a horse with the behaviors of the player character.  So, any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  I really don't want to give up on this project after making such a cool looking figure.

[pornphile]

Pornphile, this is amazing.  I'm wondering if you could help me figure out how to work on a project I'm doing.  I created a skeleton for a centar race based off of xp32's maximum skeleton.  It looks really good in game, but since there are no behavior files for it, the horse part just stands there and slides along behind the character.  I have a media fire link to what I've come up with so far, if your interested in checking it out let me know and I'll posted.  Anyway, what I'm having an issue with is, how do I animate it?  I think if I knew anything about behaviors(what I've researched claims that if you can edit the xml file you can work with behaviors - I can't make sense of the xml files) it might be a simple matter of combining the behaviors for a horse with the behaviors of the player character.  So, any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  I really don't want to give up on this project after making such a cool looking figure.

I've not really looked into adding custom skeletons that much. To animate from what I understand, at least 2 things must match: havok skeleton map(skeleton.hkx) and skeleton mesh(skeleton.nif). This would likely involve building your own custom skeleton hkx. Groovtama would be the person to ask in this regard. Don't know much about behaviors, sorry.

[wishnot4]

Thanks for the quick response.  I actually tried to contact Groovtama a while ago, but I haven't heard back yet.  I just recently got my skeleton into blender 2.49 to try to make the animations, do I need the skeleton.hkx still?  How would I go about making one for my custom skeleton?  Thanks again for your help.

[pornphile]

 

Pssst............................ would love that feature like how the hands Keyall/Copy/Paste for the foot toe/twist/heel etc ( I know I'm lazy ) just need to know how or else I would have added them 

 

I built the foot rig first and saved the hands until last while I researched for ways to manage the fingers. After doing the fingers, I didn't have the stomach to re-do the feet for fear of something breaking. Although something to considering if/when I revisit the issue.

 

Or are you looking to do it yourself? It might require a bit of rigging. Setting Custom Attributes and then using the Reaction Manager.

 

If you're just looking to copy/paste, another method to try is to use Graph Editors --> Track View - Curve Editor:

1. Highlight a controller. In this example, Toe Twist.

2. Controller --> Copy

3. Choose opposite foot and highlight Toe Twist

4. Controller --> Paste

This will copy/paste the entire animation track onto the new controller. Of course you'd need to adjust the timing if used for a walk cycle.

[pornphile]

Thanks for the quick response.  I actually tried to contact Groovtama a while ago, but I haven't heard back yet.  I just recently got my skeleton into blender 2.49 to try to make the animations, do I need the skeleton.hkx still?  How would I go about making one for my custom skeleton?  Thanks again for your help.

Skeleton.nif is used inside a 3d program to make the animations. Skeleton.hkx is needed to see the animation in game.

 

In very general terms, the process is this:

Decide what skeleton you want to edit. In this example I will use horse. We want to add a human torso to horse body therefore we will edit the horse skeleton.hkx and corresponding .nif:

-Use hkxcmd.exe to convert horse skeleton.hkx to xml.

-Make necessary changes in xml. Such as removing horse head nodes and adding human upper body nodes.

-Use hkxcmd.exe to convert xml back into hkx. The is our new centaur.hkx.

-Use nifskope to make necessary changes for horse-->centaur skeleton.nif.

 

New skeleton should now be ready for animation. These are very simplified directions. Actual process is not for the faint of heart. Start on page 3 of this thread and read all post by Trepleen to get an understanding of what's involved. If you have your own skeleton, you might have to build your skeleton.hkx from scratch. I don't know. This is not even mentioning behaviors.

[wishnot4]

Thanks again for your quick response.  I've never been able to make heads or tails of the xml files that I've read so far, but my research suggests that if I can edit the xml behavior files I can combine them.  Maybe after I check out Trepleen's post, I'll know how to work it.  Thanks again.

[wishnot4]

Well, trepleen's post did teach me a few things, but I still can't make heads or tails out of the xml file.  I tried to combine the horse behavior and defaultmale/female behavior, but since I don't know what anything is in the files, I'm just mucking about.  I can't even figure out the steps you told me to combine the human with the horse skeleton.  Is there some place where I can learn to read these xml files and understand what each part means - then I think I could maybe make the behavior files.  Anyway, thanks again for your help.

[pornphile]

 

Is there some place where I can learn to read these xml files and understand what each part means - then I think I could maybe make the behavior files.  Anyway, thanks again for your help.

I don't know of a comprehensive source. A lot of modding is people just mucking around and discovering things. Here a link from this thread that talks about parent indices: http://www.gamesas.com/havok-animation-converter-t207307-50.html

 

[wishnot4]

Thanks again for your help.  I'll check that out and see if it can make it easier to decipher xml.

[Leito86]

Hey pornphile,

 

Is it possible to scale the rig without breaking it?  Playing with the draugr rig and the model is a bit larger in Max than it is in game which causes alignment issues.  It'll be nice to be able to scale the entire rig via the global control or NPC Root [Root]_Ctrl_M controller.