A question on morph animations

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op

Originally posted by Razorwing
I had a go at it but I don't think I did it right. I've attached a copy of the scene with the morph and am grateful for your help. Who knows, maybe we can work together on a tutorial of this subject too? =)

Could you export it to .nif format, please? I'm unable to open that .max file due to it being from a higher version of Max than I use. Then again, I'm unsure of how well morph import might work. Export works exactly the same as any other export, though.

I guess to be on the safe side, you could export the scene in it's complete form, but also export the morph target as it's own .nif. That way I could piece the two together even if the morph import doesn't work correctly.

Yes of course =) I've attached an archive with the main crane and a few different versions of the pulley.

• "crane - static.nif" is the main model which has bone animation and other things for the main structure of the crane. Ideally I would like the morphed pulley to be a part of this nif.
  
• "crane - my botched pulley morph.nif" is the nif from the video with problematic uvw mapping.
  
• "crane - pulley morph origin C1.nif" is a static nif of the pulley in it's original state.
  
• "crane - pulley morph target C2" is a static of the morph target.

Thanks in advance!

[nick_op]

Cheers, I'll take a look at it tomorrow.

[nick_op]

Ok, looking at the current animation has made me realise that this is going to be trickier than I had anticipated. For the current animation SaidenStorm's suggestion would definitely be the best option. The reason for this is that the morphed part of the rope is part of the same mesh as the static part of the rope. However, there are other options:

1. The animated part of the rope could be made into a separate TriStrip, thus making my initial suggestion feasible. I imagine that the gap between the static rope and the animated rope would be fairly well hidden by the pulley.

2. We could animate the entire rope by skinning it to a string of bones. This would mean that we would create the rope from where it is wrapped around the handle and would animate the entire length of it. This would be pretty easy to do using a Path Interpolator, but might be more expensive due to the fair amount of bones that would be required to make it look smooth.

I'll do an example of each animation and send them your way explaining how they were achieved. This could be a good opportunity for you to learn some of the more advanced animation techniques that can be used for Oblivion.

[Saiden]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5OKTZBOA

I took a look at the file and exported a working version similar to what I was talking about.

I altered the setup a bit in that I seperated the Pulley from the rope just to have them seperate in Max and I did not want to Bloat the exported file with needless morph data for the pulley plus with this new setup you can if you choose break the pulley into its seperate parts -> brackets pulley wheel hooks and animate them seperate as well if desired.

The 7Z includes an in-game working.nif of the rope and pulleys -> you will have to change the texture paths. -> I am not sure at which build of NifSkope they messed up its ability to have Sequences override node controllers but the backward anim is not viewed correctly in NifSkope but it will work in-game.
2 Anim.kf's Forward and Backward.
Your original Max Scene.
My Altered version of your original Max Scene.

at the very least you can assign the textures and see if this is the path you want to go with this activator.

[Razorwing]

Thankyou for your suggestions nick_op, and for your kind offer Though Saiden has found a technique that seems to work best for this particular case, I would be very interested in that information as I'm sure the techniques will be useful to me.

Saiden: Thankyou for your help

I checked out your Rope Extend Animation.nif in NifSkope and I understand what you mean about it not looking correctly when viewed there. I.e. first everything descends, then the pulley rises up again with the rope staying in place. But I tested it in-game and, as you said, I found that it works flawlessly. The uvw mapping is stretched out though, and I think that an attempt to change it is well beyond my knowledge at this point. Would the texture I used be useful? If so I uploaded a copy of it.

Do you assess that it would be possible to combine the pulley you worked on with the main structure, which is "crane - static.nif" from the attachment in the post above? It would be handy because the animation of "crane - static.nif" is intended to play at the same time as the morph animation you worked on =)

[Razorwing]

...the part about "an attempt to change it is well beyond my knowledge at this point" I mentioned basically equals - does anyone know if and how I can increase the uvw map's tiling inside NifSkope? Since I don't want to re-export it when a) it's already working and b) I don't know how to get it to work again.