Hey guys sorry to keep pestering you with Animation questions but there really does seem to be a lack of information the more advanced you get....

Im trying to add a static mesh to a pose animation but so far im completly stumped. By this I mean like when you see an NPC in game drinking from a bottle, how is this done?

I looked into a few .kfs just as Drinkidle.kf and it just has the animation and the bottle isnt rendered in nif scope. By looking at a few pose mods I can see that the objects are saved as .nif with the same name as the .kf. I have tryed a simple pose whereby the character is standing still, but I cant figure out how to make it work along side say a bottle.nif.

In blender, how do I set up the animation? Do I need to import the bottle.nif and join it to the skeleton/body? How do i export it once I have things set up? .kf only with a seperate .nif?

Also, would I need to link the .kf to the .nif in Nifscope somehow?

Ive tryed hours of combinations and tinkering to try to get this to work and Ive looked at many many various animations that contain static meshes trying to figure out how they were done.....

Any help or direction on this would be greatly appriciated,......cant wait to start trying my hand at some more advanced animations!

actually, you set up anim objects in the CS, not the nif/kf files.

The mesh is rigged to a bone (normally a single bone like a weapon) then saved like normal. Then in the CS you make it an anim object and tell it to appear when a certain idle animation is played.

see this page for more info: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Anim_Object


Dont worry, there is a lack of animation tutorials and infomation for oblivion, few exsist for blender and nearly all are outdated.

Ah my thanks to you again Da mage........once again you have shown me the way!


....I dont suppose there is a way of attaching a .nif to a bone in blender is there? So that you can fine tune the animation in blender, then delete the .nif once thats done and then setting it up in the cs.... getting the fingers to look like there wrapped around an object would be quite tricky if your having to guess?? (and it wasnt a weapon typed object)

Thanks you for your patience regaurding these questions

actually, thats how i do it, in blender.

You put it in blender, position it, rig it to a bone and make the animation. Because its rigged, it will movie with the bone when you animate it. Later on in nifskope you can make the settings on the nif right.

Ah in which case I have but one last question for you before I invest a few hours in this to get it working....

How do I actually attach a .nif to a set bone in blender? Sorry for the noobie questing but I used to use max, only just got blender yesterday lol, all the rigging tutorials are 40 odd minuted long and seem to deal with Armaturs and none really quite touch upon this....

I prepared a .nif as suggested on the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Anim_Object page but I noticed it does not automatically attach itself to the skeletal bone in blender when its imported. Is that because of the settings I used on import or more likly im guessing.....because I need to do that in blender? I can join it to the skeletal mesh but I cant seem to attach it to just a bone of my choosing....

I require your wisdom once more Da mage, I'l stop bugging you after this one I promise

Edit: Managed to attach it to a bone using Ctrl P. However when I export, even after deleting the .nif it comes out at 4kb :S

what? when your exporting the kf file? if so that size seems about right.

For future reference, when you want to rig a mesh to a single bone, make a vertex group with the exsact name of the bone. Then assign all vertices of the object to that group. Thats how i do it. Then parent the object to the skeleton.

Followed your advice but I was wandering what the extra step (Assigning the verts to the group) does to impact the animation process? Its a shame you cant 'snap' the imported .nif to a bone so you can see exaclty how the game would render it, as it is I'm having to use a bit of guesswork. If I try to export with the vertex group, I get an error about the bottle not having an weight.



Mwuahaha ! Got the animation side of it working though!


Thanks for all the help you've given me so far Da mage, really would have hit a dead end without your advice!

yeah, it would be good if a mesh would snap straight to the bone, but it just means you have to position it (in object mode) after you've rigged it.....kinda hard on some bones, but you get the hang of it, just try to get it into the right sort of position. Assigning them to a vert group and parenting to the object to the skeleton just tell it you want those verts to move with the same named bone, then as you make the pose, as you move the bone, the object will move with it.

No problem helping, I know how hard it is to get info on animations....few very modders who know how to do it effectively visit these forums regulary anymore.