Fluttering shop banners [wip]

[Razorwing]

I hope I can soon start on a job I've wanted to do ever since the game came out... namely animated Dunmer shop signs. The shop signs in Morrowind were made of pieces of cloth and had this cool effect where they swayed depending on the weather. Sometimes they swayed calmly, sometimes they swayed fast. It made storms that much more believable in my opinion.

As far as animation goes they're one step up the ladder for me because they need a skeleton with several bones. The Morrowind ones had four bones, I don't think I'd need more than that either. I'll tinker with it later on and read up on how it's done. Should be fun

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Razorwing
I'm glad you guys like it

I hope I can soon start on a job I've wanted to do ever since the game came out... namely animated Dunmer shop signs. The shop signs in Morrowind were made of pieces of cloth and had this cool effect where they swayed depending on the weather. Sometimes they swayed calmly, sometimes they swayed fast. It made storms that much more believable in my opinion.

As far as animation goes they're one step up the ladder for me because they need a skeleton with several bones. The Morrowind ones had four bones, I don't think I'd need more than that either. I'll tinker with it later on and read up on how it's done. Should be fun

You don't actually need animations for that, you just need to rig up the mesh to a chain of bones and then set up a series of constraints in NifSkope and allow them to be affected by wind.

I can walk you through the process in more detail if you want.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op
You don't actually need animations for that, you just need to rig up the mesh to a chain of bones and then set up a series of constraints in NifSkope and allow them to be affected by wind.

I can walk you through the process in more detail if you want.

Hmm... well you seem sure about it, so I won't dispute it I don't mind getting out of having to worry about the script that would have controlled it.

Yes please, I would like more information on the subject

It still needs to be "skinned", right? I haven't read up on that subject yet, but I will.

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Razorwing
Hmm... well you seem sure about it, so I won't dispute it I don't mind getting out of having to worry about the script that would have controlled it.

Yes please, I would like more information on the subject

It still needs to be "skinned", right? I haven't read up on that subject yet, but I will.

Yes, it still needs to be rigged.

I'll see if I can write up a tutorial for this and send it over in your direction. Then you can run through it, suggest improvements (or make them yourself) and send it back in my direction. Seemed to work pretty well with the animation tutorial. What do you think?

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op
Yes, it still needs to be rigged.

I'll see if I can write up a tutorial for this and send it over in your direction. Then you can run through it, suggest improvements (or make them yourself) and send it back in my direction. Seemed to work pretty well with the animation tutorial. What do you think?

Sure, I look forward to collaborating with you on another tutorial

[nick_op]

Originally posted by Razorwing
Sure, I look forward to collaborating with you on another tutorial

Cool, I'll get started.

One quick question - should the banners be a double sided mesh or should I use a NiStencilPropery instead? The reason I ask is that I have to remodel them to allow for them to deform, as in their current state there is no way for them to do so, but noticed that the ones that I have are double sided rather than stencil property'd.

[Sjors Boomschors]

I had planed to start a similar project a few months back. At the start I made an animated flag collection of al the animated flags I could find. Maybe you can use something out of it?

I can’t remember where I found then.

Download link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/218588948/An...n.zip.html

[Razorwing]

nick_op: Excellent

When I made the shop banners I think I was under the faulty impression that nistencilproperty caused shading problems and that Bethesda only used it on the sides of leaves etc that would rarely be seen by the player. (But as I found out later on it was just a graphical glitch of sorts in Nifskope and stenciled surfaces display just fine.)

I'm not sure which option would be preferrable in this case, but if nistencilproperties won't cause any problems then I think that would be best option. Because of the way the textures are made they can only be flat, so it would seem to make sense.

Sjors Boomschors: Thanks for your offer I don't think the flags you made would be a perfect fit for this particular case, but perhaps there are other cases in our mod where we can use your work on them.

[nick_op]

Just to let you know RW, I've started work on the tutorial. I'd forgotten how tricky it can be to plan out a tutorial - I can do the whole process fairly easily, but it's surprising how often I forget to take a screenshot or save the .max scene.

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by nick_op
Just to let you know RW, I've started work on the tutorial. I'd forgotten how tricky it can be to plan out a tutorial - I can do the whole process fairly easily, but it's surprising how often I forget to take a screenshot or save the .max scene.

Great to hear that! I look forward to reading your material

Video tutorials are even trickier I tend to do like twenty takes before I get all the way through a video tut hehe. Most of the time it's the language that screws up my takes, it takes awhile to warm up to speaking English. The rest of the time it's because I made a mistake, but yeah, speaking English clearly is the biggest challenge for me when doing that kind of tuts.