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An introduction to 3ds Max and Skyrim


canderes

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Man im in love with your tutorials and nightasy ones, reall helps alot , im still learning, and not confident yet to mess with animations, but loved the physical breast animations wich you done at videos, i hope doing same in a near future, thanks alot for sharing and doing that great tutorials.

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Added a new video for creating a simple animation. This video creates an animation from scratch and uses a havok rig file to export an idle that you can use with FNIS. I attached some files to the description if your having any trouble. I suggest using the vanilla skeleton I included so you don't have to add anything to the scene except maybe the body meshes you want to add for previewing.

 

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Dude, I also have to chime in here and give my kudos to you for these. They're incredibly helpful in getting to know Max and how to use that new knowledge to work with game files.

 

I have to ask tho - have you ever messed with Oblivion files? If not, that's fine.

 

PS: You have a nice voice. ;D

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I tried making armors and failed miserably, but that was when I was a newbie to anything nifskope related. I haven't gone back to try making things again, maybe I will someday or for fallout atleast. I found Skyrim easier to pickup and make things for so that's why I'm sticking to it for now.

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I found this thread and it has been extremely helpful to me, but, i have a little issue that i hope some of you armor gurus can help me figure out.

 

to start with, i LOVE skimpy armor and clothes.  the more skin showing, the better, IMHO.  i also love the tera armor conversions.  unfortunately, those armors always change my body shape from what i have it set to ( i have a tiny little waist, and ample boobs and butt).  also, the heavy armors are a bit bulky and busy with all the lion heads and pokey things everywhere.

 

so, using 3ds max 2011, i edited one of the armors (xenocite) down to just the cuirass and panty.  i have it skinned and dismembered and i am using the original textures.  but, the body mesh looks a bit off.  depending on the angle of the light (sunlight) the shadowed parts of the skin turn really dark and sooty looking.

 

here are screenies of vilja wearing the armor, displaying the ugliness i need help with...

 

dirty shadowspost-136825-0-79838900-1367621998_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

i know i have seams at the wrists and ankles, i didnt have the hands and feet on the model when i saved it, but that is easy enough to fix later on.  everything else works as it should.  the cuirass chains track the torso, the panty tracks the hips, and the breast plate jiggles with the tbbp (i will most likely adjust that, though, because it makes the armor look like it is made of jello)

 

and that is my 0_weight body, btw

 

so, if anyone can tell me why i have those ugly shadows and how to fix it, id appreciate it very much.

 

thanks in advance!

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Update tangent space in nifskope (right click on your model in the viewport, go mesh->update tangent space) and check to see if your bs num uv sets in your nitrishapedata is 4097. I haven't had the offset body with any skeleton, maybe once, but I'm pretty sure you can just go add an edit poly above edit mesh, switch to element under the edit poly and use the snap tool to line up the body with feet and hands correctly. Then you just do "collapse to" on your edit poly.

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ok...  i "think" i section you are refering to...  when i open the armor nif in nifscope i select the nitrishapedata block for the baseshape.  then in the block details i see the folowing:

 

post-136825-0-85395800-1367628980_thumb.png

 

i hope this is where you are talking about because i cant find anything like that anywhere else in the blocks.

 

also, its greyed out and i cant edit it.

 

also, i didnt think about it at the time, but the hand and foot seems are because the armor model only has a zero weight, but my in-gamecharacter is set to 50% or so.  when i set the char to 0 the seams go away.

 

EDIT:

wait...  i missed it...  a few lines above there is a line that says BS num uv sets and it was set to 1.  i changed it to 4097 nad will test it in a minute

 

no, that didnt change anything...

 

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a bit off topic from my previous post, but...

 

do you know if it is possible to have chains in-game with realistic physics?   for instance, one of the coolest weapons that is missing from skyrim is the flail.  it would also be awesome to have armor or clothes with chains that flopped around when the player moved.

 

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The only other thing I can say is that may be caused by the normal map you are using for the body, but you could try retriangulating the mesh under edit poly.

 

Yeah it is definitely possible to have chains with "faked" physics. The game really only has physics for ragdolls, static models and projectiles. You would have to add some bones to the skeleton the same way SOS adds bones to the pelvis. The easy route to do this would be to export all the mace animations, add your new bones to the skeleton.nif, export those new bones the way SOS did for the private, import the mace animations on your skeleton with its new bones, to easily create an attack animation I would apply spring to all the bones in that chain and attach gravity and wind, export the animation only for those new bones, and then take the old mace animations and those chain animations into the havok behavior tool to mix them together as one event/animation, and finally use the creation kit to set each of your events/animations as attack/block or whatever.

 

It is much more complicated than that, but that is what you would have to do in general. I am already writing something out for the behavior tool, but it will probably be a while before I have any type of tutorial/solid documentation for it. VectorPlexus probably knows more about it if you want to ask him. I've only been toying with hbt for about a week or two.

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Do you mean to fix the sitting in the horse problem or to make it do something else? I never really thought about that, but if you go look at the skeleton for the horse it probably has a bone where the saddle is. If the actor gets placed on that bone when you mount you can probably move that bone up in nifskope, but if the mount animation is independent of the horse then you would have to go and edit all the horse riding animations. You would have to move NPC COM or NPC Pelvis up, export, and then use those in the animations folder in place of the original ones. It would pretty much be the same process if you were just altering an existing animation, you just move the limbs out how you want the player to move and export; first case is if you want to fix that stupid problem with the custom skeletons sitting in the horse instead of on the horse.

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I was changing all the draw bows animations to fit the Belt Fastened Quiver from Frostfall, but the one when the player is mounted I couldn't get imported in 3DMax, it got all distorted. It is the mc_bow_drawlight from the horse-rider folder that comes with the update, I converted using the vanilla skeleton.hkx, since there is no new skeleton in the update. I see that the horse has its own animations in the horse folder, so I thought the horse-rider animations from the character folder would be only the player... but I can not get it imported, nor any other animations from the horse-rider folder.

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I was changing all the draw bows animations to fit the Belt Fastened Quiver from Frostfall, but the one when the player is mounted I couldn't get imported in 3DMax, it got all distorted. It is the mc_bow_drawlight from the horse-rider folder that comes with the update, I converted using the vanilla skeleton.hkx, since there is no new skeleton in the update. I see that the horse has its own animations in the horse folder, so I thought the horse-rider animations from the character folder would be only the player... but I can not get it imported, nor any other animations from the horse-rider folder.

 

yeah, that.

 

i also tried messing with the riding animations but everything was twisted and distorted

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ok, im gonna leave the texture issue alone for now, but i have another question...

 

as i mentioned, im currently adapting the tera xenocite armor to make it really skimpy, and to fit my body slide body.  the problem im having is with all the seperate little parts.  for instance, each link in the chain is completely seperate from the next.  the gems are seperate from the setting.  the spikes in the neck piece are seperate from the neck piece and from each other.  so, the question is...  can i set up a small bone rig and attach the chain pieces to each bone?  then use something like IK to make positioning easier?  AND, is there a way i can select each individual part (gems, setting, chain link, etc.) and move it out of the way so it doesnt get distorted when i alter the breast plate?

 

lastly, if i sent you either the max scene, the nif file, or both, could you figure out my texture issue?  that is, IF you have time?

 

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I'll look into it. Paired animations actually have a root+root combination and then a placeholder somewhere. I think paired animations are only possible with hbt, but it is possible to import the animation if you have the compound skeleton. If you look at the animation in xml form it should list all of the bones required for the animation to play correctly; its likely all the actor bones from vanilla up to NPC R Finger42 [RF42], something inserted in between or at the beginning of the list, then all the bones used by the horse.

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What I would do in the case of it being all separate meshes is combine all the meshes into one using edit poly and then edit the textures/uvw to fit on one image. Some of those parts may share a texture and would allow you to attach them together, but for those parts that use separate textures you would either have to keep them separate or combine the uvw/image. When you combine meshes if the material IDs are different then the nif exporter will crash.  Ideally you only want to have two pieces/two separate bslightingshaders: the one used by the armor and the one used by the body.

 

I'll look at the files if you upload them.

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What I would do in the case of it being all separate meshes is combine all the meshes into one using edit poly and then edit the textures/uvw to fit on one image. Some of those parts may share a texture and would allow you to attach them together, but for those parts that use separate textures you would either have to keep them separate or combine the uvw/image. When you combine meshes if the material IDs are different then the nif exporter will crash.  Ideally you only want to have two pieces/two separate bslightingshaders: the one used by the armor and the one used by the body.

 

I'll look at the files if you upload them.

 

actually, i discovered that i can position things a little better if i select "element".  it means i need to reposition each chain link one at a time, but i can rotate/move each into whatever position flows better without stretching or twisting the adjoining links.  it also made it easier to scale the breastpiece to fit bigger boobs without messing with the chain positions or the back plate.

 

however...  i DID find a few triangles in the breastpiece that were not attached to it.  so, i welded the appropriate verts and the loose triangles merged into the larger element.  i know i need to redo both armor weights now because the vert count is different, but im getting the hang of it.

 

i'll send you the nif files from yesterday's version along with the textures and file structure.  i had it set up as a wolf armor replacer for testing, but i backed up the vanilla. 

 

the following file is NOT intended for distribution.  it is only being posted so i can get help figuring out a texture issue.

 

 

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ok...  i have had "some" success.  armor was edited for both min and max weights and it showed up in-game without exploding.  when i tested the max weight, i did not see the sooty shadow on the body, but the shiny, reflective quality of the armor was missing.  when i added in the min weight, the shiny quality was still missing, but the sooty shadow was back.

 

post-136825-0-88143100-1367751078_thumb.jpg

post-136825-0-13064000-1367751081_thumb.jpg

 

edit:

 

it seems that  the bodies for max and min weight had different vertice counts, so everything in between caused some ugly blowouts.  i replaced the bodies and reloaded the game...  all weights work now and the sooty shadow is gone too.  armor still doesnt shine.

 

is it possible the sooty look was caused by the different vertice counts?

 

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Yeah but the body portion of the model isn't using normal maps, it shows bs num uv sets as 1. What I normally do is check these things under nitrishapedata:

 

BS Num UV sets 4097

Has normals? Set to yes

Has vertex colors? Set to yes (when you export from max leave the box unchecked, just enable it using nifskope)

Press the green refresh icon next to Normals, Tangents, Bitangents, and Vertex Colors.

Then lastly right click your model in the viewport -> Mesh -> Update Tangent Space (You have to do all the steps before this or it will tell you that there is data missing.)

 

What was the difference between the vertices? It could be that the order of the normals was thrown off because of the num of verts; the normals are drawn in the same order as the verts so it probably was using something else to fill in for the missing points. The count was the same when I looked at both models. For the shine you want to do the same on the armor parts but if you look at the bslightingshader for the specular color, specular strength  and the emissive color if it has glow you can tune the way the reflections and shine look.

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If you look at the animation in xml form it should list all of the bones required for the animation to play correctly; its likely all the actor bones from vanilla up to NPC R Finger42 [RF42], something inserted in between or at the beginning of the list, then all the bones used by the horse.

I converted the animations from .hkx to .xml, but I don't see any bone name in the files except the NPC Root [Root] Male. If you could take a look if it is possible to import those animations in 3DMax, and how, I would really appreciate.

 

Thanks.

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I took a peek at it. That is really bizarre. I noticed that there are only 98 bones in the horse riding animations for the actor, but there are 99 bones in the standard vanilla skeleton. The only thing I can think of that may be causing that is a bug in exportkf which is distorting the animation because when you preview the animation using the vanilla skeleton and those animations in the havok preview tool everything seems to look fine. It could be that they have a different skeleton for the horse riding but I think the thing that may be causing the issue is that the horse riding animations were  only meant to use 3rd person views. It isn't possible to have first person on a horse without a mod is it? It could be that the skeleton it needs has to have the Camera Control removed; I tried that, but I still got the same result. I'll look around some more and let you know if I figure out whats going on with that.

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Yeah but the body portion of the model isn't using normal maps, it shows bs num uv sets as 1. What I normally do is check these things under nitrishapedata:

 

BS Num UV sets 4097

Has normals? Set to yes

Has vertex colors? Set to yes (when you export from max leave the box unchecked, just enable it using nifskope)

Press the green refresh icon next to Normals, Tangents, Bitangents, and Vertex Colors.

Then lastly right click your model in the viewport -> Mesh -> Update Tangent Space (You have to do all the steps before this or it will tell you that there is data missing.)

 

What was the difference between the vertices? It could be that the order of the normals was thrown off because of the num of verts; the normals are drawn in the same order as the verts so it probably was using something else to fill in for the missing points. The count was the same when I looked at both models. For the shine you want to do the same on the armor parts but if you look at the bslightingshader for the specular color, specular strength  and the emissive color if it has glow you can tune the way the reflections and shine look.

 

the difference in the vert could was 200-300. 

 

i have done all that you have suggested above, and the armor works in game.  weight slider works for all ranges, no more soot on the body, armor jiggles when i walk, etc.  the only issue left is the shininess.  it actually looks like its backwards.  for instance, when i am outside during the day, the armor parts in full light are dark and dull, but the parts in shadow seem to glow on their own.  however, i dont have this issue when i wear the original armor, and im using the same textures.  i even compared my version to the originals in nifskope and i cant find any differences.

 

here is the most recent version of the nifs.

 

delilah_current.rar

 

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castanic_f_h20_body_norm.dds has a really bright alpha channel. You can tune that down to be darker and the normal map will probably project better; sometimes that has an effect on the shine\gloss. The specular map you have castanic_f_h20_body_spec.dds doesn't have the specular map setup like the ones used by the game; you have to desaturate the image to black and white and probably tune the brightness.

 

You need to edit the images.  Ctrl+L in photoshop for that in the alpha channel of the normal map.

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