Halp how to align weapon with an animation

[movomo]

So when you make an animation in blender, in particular a combat animation/pose, how do you make the weapon be aligned properly with the hands?

Maybe rig to the weapon node or something I presume, but how about the exact loc and rot transform, etc?

Help!!

[Vaelorian]

If you're making a pose, treat the weapon like any other idle object.

If you're trying to "rig" a weapon, look at how a different weapon is set up in nifskope - that should answer most of your questions.

[movomo]

What I did was to shift the weapon object to the weapon node position while not changing anything else. So the weapon is exactly heading the positive y direction in the rest pose and roughly follows the right hand's movement. But I'm not certain if this is correct or not. I think the left hand grip is slightly different in game.

[Vaelorian]

... I'm still not clear on what it is you're trying to achieve (Animation pose? Static pose? Combat animation? Trying to align a new weapon model? Something else?), so the most I can offer is vague advice, but good luck regardless.

[movomo]

Ok I thought I stated the problem in the op but maybe confusing. It could be an anim pose, or combat animation. But regardless of this it needs to be aligned properly. And not every pose with weapon uses an idle object. If it's a static pose I would just adjust the pose until it works. Hopefully this picture will help.

 

 

Before rigging the weapon for animating, I needed to reposition the object. What I want to know is the exact location and rotate amount for the weapon object in the "rest" position, and if there are other ways to see the position and direction of the weapon while in Blender, that too.

[Vaelorian]

Eh, I don't really know the loc\rot for that. Never tried to make a combat animation myself. Best advice I can give you is try to with with the NaRae2 3A pose; it uses the weapon node, but detached from the body. Should be possible to get a fairly close estimate on the rotation\location for weapons with that (since you have a starting point and an end point for a weapon, all you have to do is align it, then rig, then use that for your animation).

 

It's the best I have right now. Maybe after I sober up I can come up with something better.

[gregathit]

You should be able to see all of that when you load up the skeleton into your animation.  You would animate the weapon the same as any body part.  The weapon bones are labeled on the skeleton as Vaelorian is pointing out.  Just lock in your animations frame by frame (or if you skip and let it transition is fine too).

[movomo]

Cool thanks both. But how exactly the weapon's movement is related to the weapon node's movement is still not quite clear to me. Especially a two handed weapon's direction.

[Vaelorian]

Two-handed weapons move the same way (animation-wise) as one-handed weapons, unless specifically scripted otherwise. I believe bows behave the same way. They move one-for-one with the weapon node, and will have the (0,0,0) point in the mesh at the start of the weapon node bone.

Your best bet is to figure out the angle from the animation I mentioned above.