» Sun Aug 08, 2010 2:31 pm If your stuck on how to get your creature working, this tutorial may help.
Ok with the mesh modeled, textured, and rigged export with:
Geometry Only
Export Skin partition
Flatten skin
Shader options, click on Skin.
Make sure BSFADENODE is NOT pressed in.
Collision option does not matter at this point, as this will be mesh only!
CHECK LIST
0. Be sure your weight painting is correct or the GECK will improperly display your critter.
1. Did you assign a normal map? Did you select map input uv and map to Nor?
2. The main texture was mapped to COL and map input was UV?
3. From Top View the Mesh should be facing forward.
4. From sideview the mesh should be facing right.
5. Armature is named Scene Root in object mode. In edit mode, the Scene Root Bone, is named Bip01.
6. The next bone, Bip01 NonAccum is the child of Bip01 and they cross each other horizontally when viewed from the Top.
7. All Bones begin with the name Bip01!
8. Be sure the Armature bone is above the ground and that no part passes the line. Watch your rotations to so they don't pass it.
Next with the exported mesh opened in Nifskope:
Find BSShaderPPLightingProperty
- Make sure shader type is default.
- Shader Flags that need to be checked are, SF_ZBUFFER_TEST, SF_SHADOW_MAP, SF_EMPTY,
SF_UKNOWN_31
note: The shader flags are the same from the blowfly.nif found in the fallout meshes bsa.
If your Material property has a name, erase it and leave it empty. Remove NiStencilProperty and NiSpecularProperty if you have it.
Optionally, it may or may not help if you copied the NiAlphaProperty from the BlowFly.
Lastly, adjust the texture paths to point to the path within the textures folder you plan to keep your texture for this creature at.
TIME FOR SKELETON!
Back in Blender, select the armature and go into pose mode. From here on you need to choose simple collision shapes for every important
part of the body. Too many kills performance! Anyway you want to put these settings for every collison object for it to export right,
Object Mode-> Bounds Drawtype, and DrawExtra Wire.
Under the DrawExtra and underneath the Bounds button, you can also use a drop down to select a shape .
Go to the LOGIC menu by pressing F4. Here just click on the Bounds button, and then use the drop down to select a matching collision.
Do not scale your individual collision objects outside of Edit Mode! Only in Edit mode is it safe. In object mode you will need to translate
the collision objects to cover every bone of interest.
The bottom of your creature absolutely needs collision or the mesh will sink into the terrain .
Moving on... because you are in pose mode, you can select each bones, as well as objects outside.
You want the bones to be the parents of your collision objects. So select a collision object, shift-right click on the bone it goes to
and if both are select press Ctrl-P and make parent to bone.
Next you need to add constraints. We use RigidBody joints only. Ball is more flexible I believe, while hinge is more limited.
Knowing that, try to link the collision objects in the most sensible way possible.
If your creatue was a bird like the one I am making, the collision base of a wing is linked to the torso, the middle of the wing is linked to the base, and the end of the wing to the middle.
Because birds have two wings, you will need to do another wing. So it is the same thing in the case too, the base of the wing is linked to the torso etc.
Ok once you are done with that, just remember any part of the body that your collision objects don't encompass will pass through anything .
You are almost ready for export! Finally you will need a Bounding Box that completely surrounds your creature, but in an a optimal way.
Create a cube, set the draw type to Bounds. All you need to do then is, scale it appropriately to fit the creature, and be sure it is above the
origin or ground. Name it BSBound. For joining this to the skeleton, you just select it first, shift-right click on Bip 01 (the main bone of the armature) and ctrl-p and make parent to bone (not to armature!).
Because we chose to do it this way, there will later be an issue we need to correct in the .nif file . In my experience, making the Bounding Box a child of the armature itself, creates problems too. So we parent it to the Bip01 bone instead.
Ok so before exporting, you should delete your mesh. The mesh is no longer needed because all we want is a skeleton from our export.
Once the mesh is deleted, select your entire armature in posemode by pressing A, or in object mode, I don't think it matters if you use either one.
NOW EXPORT!! But follow these settings...
For the name of this file we want to export, input Skeleton.nif
Geometry Only. (for custom creatures, we only use both Geometry Only and Animation only. However, Animation only is used
for the animation files (.kf).
Press in the Creature button for the Collison type.
Make sure that this time, the BSFADENODEROOT IS pressed in.
click ok!
We are now on the last steps.
Open up the skeleton.nif file we just exported. First thing you will notice is in the preview window your BSBound box has the wrong dimensions.
Second the BSBound isn't in the right branch, it need to be under BSFADENODE (Scene Root) and not NiNode (Bip01).
So first select the Bip01 NiNode.
The BSBound is an extra data type, so in the Block Details window, Click on the arrow to expand the Extra Data List for viewing.
You will see one thing is listed, Extra Data: (BBX). This is the BSBound. To free it from our Bip01 NiNode, look just above the Extra Data List, and change the value
of Num Extra Data List (number of extra datas) to 0. This will unlink the BBX and anything else in the data list. But before this takes
action you need to refresh Extra Data List by right clicking on the green arrows, Array->Update.
Select BSFadeNode in the Block List Window , and in the Block Details window you should now see an Extra Data List visible for the BSFAdeNode. Great! Change the value for
its Num of Extra Data to 2 . Array->Update.
Expand the Extra Data List and input the number for BBX. Mine was 3, so i just inputted 3. It should say BBX when you click out of the input box.
One last thing and we are completely finished with a basic skeleton, select the BSBound. Somehow it usually
gets bloated to different dimensions than what we made it with in Blender.
Luckily it is easy to fix most of the time! Change the XYZ values to be as close to half of what they are as you can.
So my X is 138, Y 80 Z 120, becomes 69, 40, 60. It should be just perfect now! If cutting the values in half don't quite do it for you,
just adjust the numbers until the box in the view looks right from all angles.
That ends this tutorial. If by chance you opened your skeleton, and the collision shapes are in the wrong positions in the preview window, you either for got to parent one or more of them to a bone or you forgot a constraint.
All in all this tutorial turned out larger than I planned, but for the sake of clarity I try to include most of the process of making a creature GECK ready.
I actually, spent the time to do a creature alongside this tutorial. It isn't the best textured, but might inspire you.
THE END (this tutorial does not cover making animations)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIW85su1fk0
