Help with furniture animation?

[nosdregamon]

I'm dabbling with animations and wanted to create some furniture. For my first experiment, I wanted a chandelier for slaves to decoratively hang in.

 

 

The animations (entering, hanging around and exiting) need finetuning, but basically work (I've tested them as mt_idle). However, I can't get them to be played on the chandelier.

 

For the chandelier, I edited a vanilla mesh in 3dsmax and in nifskope added the new mesh via copy-and-paste to a copy of it's old nif. I also added a furniture marker there(which should be the center of the animation from what I understand). The animation itself is prepared in my Fnis-Defintion:

fu -a xHangingChandlierIdleEnter xHangingChandlierIdleEnter.hkx

+ xHangingChandlierIdle xHangingChandlierIdle.hkx

+ -a xHangingChandlierIdleExit xHangingChandlierIdleExit.hkx

Then I need to create a furniture of said nif and add the animation-stages in CK under  Gameplay->Animations.

 

 

Looks pretty good in CK, and looks pretty much like what I can see in ZaZ-Animations, but in my game, upon activating the chandelier (which is possible), the Dragonborn sits atop it, currently overlooking Farengar Secret-Fire's workspace...

 

 

Complete experiment with all files in the Attachements.

 

Anybody, got a clue what I did wrong?

xHangingChandelier.7z

[fore]

The first of your conditions which checks for the key word has to be against the target (furniture), NOT the subject (actor).

[nosdregamon]

Thank you very much, that was it.

 

Now, I've got some tinkering with the position of the furniture-marker, I guess, but the animations are played:

[nosdregamon]

So, I tinkered a lot with the "bsFurnitureMarkerNode", and I can position the animation with an offset on the X- and Y-axis, but could not add an offest for Z. This seems strange because pretty much all normal Chairs have an offset in the furniture marker. At first, I thought it was because I was working with a negative Z (the animation should start below the chandelier), but even a positve Z had no effect. Did I do anything wrong there?

 

In the end, I kinda got what I wanted by giving everything, except for  the bsFurnitureMarkerNode (and the root BSFadeNode) an offset.

 

 

I think, next time in 3ds Max, I simply leave the furniture at 0/0/0 and move the characters below zero before the start, that is, unless someone has a better idea.

xCandleHornChandelier.nif

[nosdregamon]

I think, next time in 3ds Max, I simply leave the furniture at 0/0/0 and move the characters below zero before the start, that is, unless someone has a better idea.

 

Just in case someone wants to try something similiar: I learned, that this is a bad idea. The animation (playing below the chandelier) will still exit at the origin of the Furniture marker, 0/0/0. Leaving the character on top of the object, instead of under it chandelier...

 

 

In short. Bad idea. Don't do it. Better this way:

 

[nosdregamon]

If someone is interested, my current stat of work is in the attachemnts. It's all pretty basic, no fancy naming scheme, everything's just named after the file it responds/belongs to.

 

 

Next step: Animation Objects, but I guess that's good for another thread...

 

Btw:

 

Animations were done following Pornphile's tutorial:

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/39996-3ds-max-skyrim-video-animation-tutorial/?p=1002628

 

xHangingChandelier.7z

[nosdregamon]

One last thing I noticed: When using the furniture my view distance get's locked (can't switch between 3rd and 1st person), and if started in 3rd person the zoom is locked as well). Also the viewing distance is set to zero if I go above a certain viewing angle in 3rd Person View.

 

As a sidenote in 3rd person, I see entering the animation from behind, as if drawing weapons. Is this because I'm "equipping" animobjects?