Tojay-Raht

[morcroft]

OK - now I'm getting cross!

Spent all evening trying to get the shackles to line up with the wrists properly and it's definitely stuffing up on purpose!

I've got the shackles weight-painted 100% to the Scamp skeleton's forearm bones - we want them to move with the forearm and not twist wth the hand, so I'm sure that should be right - and in Bender with the idle animation loaded they do exactly that. But when I export to nif and bring into the CS - the shackes float in mid-air!

I don't get it! Anybody seen this and can tell me what I've done wrong?

[Koniption]

I got your PM, morcroft.

Sounds like you forgot to "parent" the shackle mesh(s) to the armature, while in Object Mode.

See, the shackles will animate with the bones they are weightpainted to, in Blender, even if the meshes are not "parented" to the armature. But you need to parent meshes to the armature, regardless, else those meshes won't export with the NiSkinInstance data and such, in Nifskope for that NiTriStrip/Shape.

Try that, and see if it fixes your issue.

Koniption

[morcroft]

Hi KP

Thanks for looking but no, I don't think so: I have done the parenting (Par: under Objects and Links) and the shackles do move with the bones in the cs preview window - they're just in a completely different place from where they are supposed to be. The way they move is like they're attached to an invisible bone at 90 degrees to the one they're actually parented to!

I wondered if it's something strange about the scamp skeleton it's all based on but I'm guessing it's more likely something I've done.

[pero]

You'll check easy if it is parented properly. Simply Grab or Rotate the bone in Blender and the shackles should move with the bone. If you move the shackles, the bone should stay still but there should be -------- line connecting two centres.
Btw. ctrl+p parents the object, no need to go to those lines (sorry if you know all that already), and that's one awesome looking cat!

[Koniption]

Originally posted by morcroft
Hi KP

Thanks for looking but no, I don't think so: I have done the parenting (Par: under Objects and Links) and the shackles do move with the bones in the cs preview window - they're just in a completely different place from where they are supposed to be. The way they move is like they're attached to an invisible bone at 90 degrees to the one they're actually parented to!

I wondered if it's something strange about the scamp skeleton it's all based on but I'm guessing it's more likely something I've done.

Hi Morcroft,

If you can't find anyone else who can help you with figuring out what is wrong, you are welcome to send the necessary files to me: Blender scene, exported shackle nif, creature mesh & skeleton nifs, and the animations for the creature (unless I can use the "Scamp" animations).

Btw, good job on this creature. I'm happy that my morphs tutorial worked for you. And yes, weightpainting can be a pain in the arse.

Yeah, weightpainting can be a pain. But for what you are working with, you are probably doing it the hard way. If you have a base creature or race body to work with already that is weightpainted to your satisfaction, getting clothes & objects of similar shape to bend with the body, can be more easily done with a script located in Blender. What you do, is this:

1a) Make sure the creature/race has had any "skinned" body mesh pieces (the nude areas), joined together into one mesh with "CTRL + J". This won't delete the skinning, btw, which is good. You only need to combine the nude body meshes for the procedure below, but can otherwise use separated meshes for the nude body, for export of the nude body parts to use in CS/game.

1b) Then, click on that combined mesh, go to "Editing Mode", select all the faces of that mesh, press "W" -> "Remove Doubles". This will weld vertices together that are close enough, and makes the below weightpainting script I will mention, work more properly.

1c) Make sure the body clothing/armor has no weightpainting done on them. In other words, in "Editing" button panel selection, the "Vertex Groups" should not have any bones listed under it.

2) However, make sure each separate mesh piece has an "Armature" modifier. Be sure to unclick "Envelopes" from the "Armature modifier options. Make sure the Armature is named "Scene Root" (because most, if not all, actor skeletons have the root node named "Scene Root" <NiNode 0, in Nifskope>. Then in the "Armature" modifier options, make sure "Ob:" field says "Scene Root", too.

3) Click on a clothing/armor/accessory mesh, then click on the body mesh, in that sequence, until both are highlighted. While still in Object Mode, go to "Object" -> "Scripts" -> "Bone Weight Copy". A little window will pop up: set the "Quality" to "4" (best quality of this auto-weightpainting script). Then click "OK".

Let the script run, might take a few minutes, depending. When it is done running, you will see that the "Vertex Groups" under "Editing", now have bones referenced. Go into "Pose Mode" for your armature, and test out how the clothing bends with the body. It should already bend pretty well, though a little manual weightpainting tweaks are often necessary. But "Eureka!" - you've just had most of the work done for you!

Koniption

[morcroft]

Thanks again - I had tried that script out, though, and the result was just the most bizarre thing! It smeared the shackles out between the hand and the floating position I get when weight-painted exclusively to the forearm!

Two things really stand out.

First - inside Blender the animation is perfect - not just close but perfect - when weighted only to the forearm. After export it really behaves like the bones are at 90 degrees to where they actually are - the shackles are perfectly aligned and move in exactly the right way, just with the bones in the wrong orientation so the shackles float about.

If I weight paint the shackles only to the hand then again, it acts like the bone is at 90 degrees to where it really is - but being close to the bone (so to speak) the shackles are actually at the wrist - but spun through 90 degrees - they pass through the wrist not around it.

So I think something about the way I'm making the export must be using the wrong orientation, or base position or something.

Second - I was using the default values Blender put for the armature and its object name - "Scene Root.002" or similar - obviously derived from the fact that I always work on copies of stuff (a habit I may have to quit!). Anyway, Blender was exporting NiNode 0 with the name "Scene Root" and under that another NiNode 1 called "Scene Root.002" with all the stuff under that. OK - the CS told me off about that, so I've been deleting the root node and renaming "Scene Root.002" to "Scene Root" - all seems to work fine for the various body parts, so not sure if it's relevent to this problem.

Anyway, I stripped out everything except the armature and the shackles, renamed the ob: & ar: to "Scene Root" and re-exported. It still exports "Scene Root" as NiNode 0, but now there's a "Scene Root.00" NiNode under it with all the good stuff under that! So I still have to delete the root node and rename.

It all seems just a bit too much more like I'm stuffing up the export than that the weight painting is wrong! Screenie of my export settings attached.

Update: Aha!! Found it. Well, most of it, anyway. It was the initial load of the skeleton.nif into blender. I must have had "Realign Bone Tail Only" selected, instead of "Realign Bone Tail + Roll" - both of which I of course understand completely... NOT!

Anyway, I can make a guess that this had muddled the bone alignmnent somewhere along the line, which didn't show up until the export. Something I did when recreating my file also fixed the spurious Scene Root.00n problem as well - but I'm not entirely sure what!

Still, Kitty got nice new bracelets....

[Koniption]

I think you're supposed to have "Pad & Sort Bones" clicked as well, in Blender export settings.

Good to know you fixed the problems, somehow.

KP

[morcroft]

Ah! That'll be what sorted out the scene root problem I expect - because when I do an export now, it's remembered "Pad & Sort Bones" as on. So that explains that!

[morcroft]

Here's a middle class Tojay-Raht and a lower class Dagi - actually interchangeable body parts, the Dagi's just 0.7 scale in the CS. Leaving room for 0.8 and 0.9 for Dagi-Raht and Tojay respectively.





Need fancier pants for the middle classes - it's the same model at the moment.

I tried embedding the scale factor in the skeleton.nif but it didn't work, and I'm not mucking about with multiple body part models at this stage. It also may be worth retexing the Dagis to make the distinction obvious but there are probably better things to do with our time just now.

And yes, Bard, that's a flash of clipping on the Tojay's right shoulder. And I'm not fixing it: that scamp mesh is so bizarrely distorted it's a miracle it's weight-painted as well as it is!

Oh and after modelling, weight painting and everything on that pair of wrist-irons I realise there's a perfectly good pair of shackles for the scamp in the vanilla game. Aaargh! Oh well - we've now got two ways to chain up enslaved khajiit.

[The Old Ye Bard]

That's looking great Morcroft! And I don't think that clipping is anything to worry about, I've seen far worse on Bethesda's own models haha.

So in what manner is the Dagi being scaled down in the CS? Because I don't mind if it is being scaled down in the CS, however it does matter if we have to scale down individual Dagi references within the render window, because then it creates a problem in the instances we have Dagis spawn, or have in leveled lists, because they'd pop up unscaled at the same size as a Tojay-raht.