Fiddling with walk animations...

[QuiteTheTail]

I'm trying to replace the walkleft/walkright vanilla animations with my favorite walkforward animation (Woman's Move), just rotated by the appropriate angle, and without worrying about turnleft and turnright (for now). I think I've been partially successful, since attaching the .kf file in Nifskope the animation plays exactly the way I wanted. I can give you the details of what was involved, if you're interested. User Myst was a big help, explaining me the basics of the animation scene in Blender, a few months ago.

Now though, I'm having troubles bringing it into the game.
Since I had the walk mod enabled (basically a specialanim.esp), I thought of disabling it, and using Blockhead to set the new walking animations for my character, as I usually do for NPCs.

Well, now... my character is stuck in place and can't move.
Of corse I can restore the .esp and resume the game as if nothing had happened, but I wonder why it doesn't work. Take note that the esp was loaded after the Bashed Patch; besides this is not a matter of missing masters (the game loads just fine, aside from the usual warning).

I'd like to know what's going on.

 

EDIT

Restoring the esp alone isn't enough to return the game back to normal.

I had to remove the blockhead-controlled file I just added for testing:

walkright_BLKD_PERNPC_Oblivion.esm_00000007.7z

from the specialanim folder. So, one of the two:

 

1. something in the .kf file is terribly wrong (but it's fine in Nifskope).

2. there's something about the way Blockhead recognize custom animations that I fail to understand.

[QuiteTheTail]

First error found.

I had to change "Cycle Type" from CYCLE_CLAMP to CYCLE_LOOP after exporting (a common pitfall well documented in every tutorial). After the correction the freezing problem is solved, at least, but still the animation played is the default one. Back to the drawing board...

[QuiteTheTail]

Second error found.

Turns out that the (root) node NiControllerSequence has a Value field, the name of the animation, which is unrelated to the name assigned to the .kf file during exporting. For walkright it is simply "Right". I found this (and the previous error) comparing the exported file with the original walkforward-walkright files. One last thing needs to be fixed, the direction. Despite appearing good in Nifskope, when I press the right ("D") key in game my character walks... forward.

 

I can't help but feel a bit ashamed for wasting your time with posts like this. I'm sorry.

[fejeena]

What do you want?

Walk right or left and face forward ( Oblivion walk right and left. Camera always behind the character )

Or walk right and face right ( like pretty woman move)

 

I changed the "Womans Move BBB.kf"  ( walk forward) with NifSkope. ( you know I don't have and use Blender, I'm too stupid )

-----------------------

First a few explanations how I found out what to do.

 

Pretty woman move use the "same" Kf for forward, left and right.

walk left : the Bip01 moves left

walk forward: the Bip01 moves forward

 

The difference is

Walk forward : translations keys the Y axis is the movement

walk left : translations keys the X axis is the movement ( same value as the Y from the forward kf but - )

Walk right : translations keys the X axis is the movement ( same value but + )

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Now the Womans Move

Create two copies of the Walk forward and remame the NiControllerSequence to Left or right.

Change the Bip01  translations keys ( copy the Y axis value to the X axis . ! in the walkleft kf - value )

and the if there are values in the X axis copy them to the Y axis ( there are some 0.0001 or 0.0002 values )

 

Now you walk lef or right and face forward.

------------------------------------------------------------------

 

If you want the "no Oblivion" movement , you want the face in walk direction. 

first the changes above, then change the  Bip01 NonAccum

the Womans Move walk forward.kf has a value of 90 (89.9) in the Quaternion Keys

Change it in the Walkright kf to 0  and in the Walkleft kf to 180.

 

Now you walk left or right and face left or right

 

---------------------------

Example ( tested in game )

walk right examples.7z  Womans Move BBB.kf from the "WalkAnimSwitcher" Mod, changed to Walk right Kf

 

[QuiteTheTail]

Thank you very much fejeena, you have the talent of making everything simple and clear.

I was indeed considering a rotation of the head too (90 degrees is a bit unnatural perhaps) , because it remain consistent with the fist camera view. So the bone involved is Bip01 NonAccum, thanks for the information.

 

Still, I'm a bit confused about the export plugin provided for the old Blender. First, you need to rename certain fields manually in Nifskope or else things won't work straight out of the box. Then, as I just learned re-reading one of your fine tutorials, often you need to edit manually each and every quaternion key (-90 for Bip01, +90 for Bip01 NonAccum) or else you get the wrong orientation. The particular skeleton used may play an important role in this, as I read.

Certainly it's not a very appealing way to do things...

 

The method you illustrated is basically the same I did in Blender. For each frame, I changed " Bip01" angle from -90 to -180, then swapped the values of LocX and LocY(this one is constant and =0), but changing the sign of LocX.

 

LocY, -LocX

instead of

LocX, LocY

 

(LocX and LocY are equivalent to the "Translation" fields in Nifskope).

 

The preview in Blender is good, and in Nifskope too.

In game, well... it's a different story.

[fejeena]

Yes with NifSkope you must change all 32 translations keys and Quaternion Keys manually.

 

But I do it often. I have changed a masturbation with NifSkope, moved one arm and a leg, one Hand and all finger bones to fit a cucumber( no fingers in the cucumber )

Took a couple of days until I was satisfied.

 

I also added BBB breast animations with NifSkope to a kf file ( few hours work )

BUT I NEED NO BLENDER

 

---------------------------

Head: The neck bone:  Bip01 Neck1

And a high Priority prevents rotation of the head ( don't look to NPCs next to you. Look always in the same direction )

Priority setting is in the NiControllerSequence

 

EDIT :: ups sorry, high settings prevents head tracking !

[fejeena]

EDIT :: ups sorry, high settings prevents head tracking !

previous post and pic changed.

[QuiteTheTail]

EDIT :: ups sorry, high settings prevents head tracking !

previous post and pic changed.

 

Yes, I repeatedly edited my previous post too. As always!

 

[fejeena]

I noticed it.

( Think I will not edit this post  )

[QuiteTheTail]

UPDATE (for the Blender method):

Changing the sign of LocX values before swapping with LocY will make the animation look good in Blender, but after modifying the Quaternion Keys as suggested above, in game the character will walk to the right, but backwards (kind of "moonwalking"). So I changed back the signs of the X-translation keys in Nifskope, and changed the root block name to "Left", obtaining a working walkleft animation.

 

Since I had to use Nifskope anyway, the method suggested by fejeena is certainly better, as it doesn't involve the use of Blender.

 

 

[QuiteTheTail]

A few corrections to what me and fejeena said thus far.

 

1. There's no need to change the Quaternion keys for "Bip01" bone. The values in walkforward are fine, my mistake.

Only the Translation keys need to be adjusted, as described above.

 

2. True, the proper A(ngle) values in the quaternion keys for "Bip01 NonAccum" (assuming we're using the default Axis representation) are 0 for walkright and 180 for walkleft. But this has nothing to do with the head orientation. Just by doing this, the NPC is already facing the walking direction.

 

According to this article, head rotation is controlled by Bip01 Head bone (apparently Bip01 Neck is for altitude and location, while about Bip01 Neck1 the author is uncertain). To preserve the default Oblivion head orientation (compatible with the 1st person view) this is what needs a little editing (again the quaternion keys, I suppose). Rather than 90° I'd prefer a different value though, like 70°-110° depending on the direction.

 

3. Small values like +0.0001 or -0.0005 can be reasonably and safely rounded up or down to zero. These values are the results of calculations made by Blender, Maya or whatever software was used to create the animation.

 

The Blender exporting bugs I encountered are discussed in detail here.

I wish I had read it before.

 

I managed to apply the same method to the running animations, walkfastleft and walkfastright (they seem acceptable even without a custom turnleft-turnright). I'm thinking of uploading the files to Nexus, but first I want to see what kind of improvement is still possible.

[fejeena]

Ups , yes head tracking is the head. But there was a problem with some animations , if I set only the head Priority to >90 the head does not turn but there was a "deformation" in the body because the neck bone was turned.

Those were sex animations and I wanted to disable the head tracking ( they watched spectators instead of the sex partner. ...maybe the sex-partner was ugly  )

 

Shit again wrong...the neck Bips I always mix up.

 

the Bip01 NonAccum. Yes nothing to do with head. But I thought you want a head turn ( walk left and look to front. An enemy in front of you, you go to the left but still want to see him. Yes no 90° but maybe 45° , looking over your shoulder. )