Anyone done animations in Blender and exported them with the .nif model? Is it hard to do?

I was thinking of maybe adding animations to the trees (the particle animation i've been using isnt that hot). Would be fun to learn something new.

You can't export particles from Blender atm.

edit: I read back over this and it sounds kinda blunt, so sorry about that. You can't export particles from anything except early versions of 3ds max atm. Normal animations as you probably already know are easily exportable from Blender, but particles are unfortunately unable to be exported. Particles can be edited in NifSkope with the right knowledge, but that's a little complex. If you want to try, I think someone posted an explanation for all the particle flags in NifSkope somewhere, I could try to dig it up and you could edit the existing particle leaf effect, though I wouldn't set your hopes too high.

Hmm yes i know it cant export or import particle animation, but does it have to be particle animations for leaves?

You do mean falling leaves, right? If so, technically you should be able to.
Animating is a lot more technical and time consuming than particle effects though (hence the lack of animators), so I wouldn't expect it to be too easy, no.

No, i mean the canopy of the trees moving slightly, like the particle effect, but better animated.

I looked briefly at a tutorial on how to animate in Blender (just a box moving around on the screen, it looked really simple). I bet doing good animations are hard though.

Alright then, I was confused as falling leaves are done by particles effects, moving canopies can be done with either UVControllers or Morph animations (at a guess I'd say morph would provide better quality but more fps loss).
Both are fairly easy, I think TheDayWalker did a small tutorial on UVControllers, and morph animations are common knowledge, there's probably a tutorial on how to get them in game, and if not ask someone like Chainy about it.

Ok, thanks. I manged to make the tree top move and it works in Nifskope at least, havent tested in-game.

Edit: doesnt seem to work in-game (it might be played back once, but it isnt looped).

I used Shape Keys, its the same as Morp animations, right? (i'm completely new to animations in Blender).

Yep!
The game wont play the animation (or not right at least) unless you tell it to, either through text keys, or in this case, NiBSAnimationNodes.

Open your tree in NifSkope, right click on your animated mesh->Node->Attack Parent Node->NiBSAnimationNode. If you have more than one animated mesh, copy and paste the others into the created node.
Hope that works for you.

edit: The flags for NiBSAnimationNodes are set to 42 on other meshes, not sure if this actually does anything, but you may wish to set yours at 42 as well, just as a precaution.

I already export it as an NibsAnimationNode, so i dont think i need that (it'll just be double parent nodes).

It plays back once, and then stop. But if i reload the game it doesnt play back anymore, strange. Maybe it's not set as a loop as default. Could be something that must be set in Blender too.

If you already exported with one it wont need another, nope. If you can't figure it out, upload the .nif so other people can see the mesh.
If you right click on the NiGeomMorpherController and click on flags, it should come up with a window showing loop settings. It's usually clamp, but I only really make creature and NPC animations.

edit: Alternatively, it could be that NiBSAnimationNodes and morph animations just don't play nicely together, that'd be a bit wierd, but another possibility.

Now it works, i set the flags to 42 on the NiGeomMorpherController. It sets it to "reverse", but it's looping it. Thanks for help!

Gonna see what kind of impact it has on the FPS, i hope it's not too bad then i can hopefully put together a decent looking animation.

Great to hear, hope that works out for you!

Have you seen this video for example? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWYGJMWGJYI&feature=related

Or this mod for you makes ideas : http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35590

Nice. Might try doing a falling leaves animation too later on, but it probably works best with particle animations which is extremely complicated to edit in Nifskope (i've done a falling leaves particle animation as you might know, but its not perfect..)

a sway to the trees would be sweet!

Ayse made a tree with falling leaves that was in Vibrant Morrowind 3.0 it wasn't that bad on FPS with my weak PC