Hi,

I am complete noob concerning animations of all kinds. I did look into some tutorials, but even then the whole looks like gibberish to me.

What I would like to know is, if it is possible to make a candle animation, that would make the candle go on and off - not just the flame node, but also the glow map and the emitted light. I know this can be worked around in the CS with a small simple script, but it needs a script for every single candle in the mod and the numbers get gigantic over time. It also makes it impossible to have an undefined count of portable candles, which could be placed and then switched on and off. Simply said, it's possible for small projects, but completely useless for anything big.

I think this could be done, since there does exist an object with animation close to what I'd like and that is the evil stone (artraqevilstone01.nif). I tried to look at the animation in NifScope to see, how it works and looks like and soon ended up like this :banghead: I really don't get what is written there at all.

I would really love to learn making animations in Blender and NifScope (I am a bit better noob in those, but definitely very far from a pro). Unfortunately the tutorials I have seen so far are made for people somewhat more advanced in both, thus not much help for me. :unsure:

The light on the object is controlled in the CS no in the mesh.....so i dont think it would be possible ot animate the light part out...only the flame.

Even if you have an animation defined in the candle nif to swap textures, turn the light off etc. you'll still need a script to activate the on and off animations via PlayGroup. But everything can be contained in a single nif and a single script on the base object. You shouldn't need a separate script for each instance.

If you want the candles to be manipulated in two ways (turning them on and off, as well as picking them up and moving them) then you'll have to test for an extra key when they're activated, such as the control key. So if you activate while sneaking, you pick it up, otherwise you toggle the light (or vice versa).

This is exactly what I would like to achieve. It doesn't need to be movable (though candles that can be picked up just as switched on and off would be a plus of course). The main point is to remove the need of a reference specified in the light switching script. The only way to do so and not use the PlaceAtMe function is to have an animation, which contains all the things posted above and the main point - switchable light emitting.

1) That stones uses a NiMaterialColorController -> has absolutely nothing to do with lights.
2) on the same coin what Ghastly was talking about a NiFlipController also has zip to do with lights.
3) True Animated Lights are possible though Beth did not create a single one and I have yet to see anyone else do it and doubt anyone other then myself even knows how to.
4) This is impossible to do with just Blender ! as it is incapable of exporting ANY Controllers other then NiTransformControllers and it has very basic support for NiGeomMorphControllers, only the CivIV exporter can export animated Lights with the correct controllers which means only Max 6-8 users can do this -> kinda easily, setup by hand in NifScope while not difficult without any examples available I doubt anyone without experience in Game Based Animation would have even the slightest clue as to how to get either a NiLightDimmerController or NiLightColorController working, which by the way are the only two Light Controllers available to Oblivion or FO3.

5) Using Get/SetLightRadius is a very poor solution considering it works on Base References and will require a ton of counter scripting on every light object that it gets used on, Add/RemoveFlames does not effect the light effects at all so its only useful for objects that are set up to use FlameNodes (Not All Are), this leaves the OP's original problem of how to set up a light to be turned off without Direct Reference Scripting.

Options:
->1) You can use Parent/Child relationship to have a light a parent of the candle and just move the light up or down several thousand units so its radius no longer effects the scene (requires the light to be Dynamic), Depending on exactly how you go about this it may also require you to script two different objects if you want it to be carriable.
-->Upside, Only requires one set of scripts -> Downside requires every light to be properly setup for this parent/child relationship, not difficult just tedious.

->2) You can use OBSE Get/SetLightRadius in combination with Add/RemoveFlames and you also need to Disable/Enable the object for the changes to take effect.
-->Upside, It Works about the only thing I can think of because the Downsides svck -> Downside Get/SetLightRadius works on Base References meaning it alters this setting FOR EVERY version of that object requiring you to counter script for this effect and its still prone to failures where versions of the object are not defaulted to the correct state when you reload games which in turn requires you to make even more scripts to counter this annoying aspect of going this route.

->3) You can create True Animated Lights.
-->Upside, It can be animated to change colors, dim and move far more choices available to any of the other methods, also it works on individual references so no worries about altering Base Ref's or counterscripting, only requires one object/script -> Downside, you have to know how to animate this effect within NifSkope by hand or within Max (even with Max you still need to know how to do this in NifSkope because CivIV and Oblivion set up this effect differently so its not just an export = working situation).

There maybe other methods I am unaware of but after I started to use True Animated Lights I never went back to any other method as that method was vastly superior in every way to anything I have seen others do or anything I had done previously.

oh, nice to read something from Saiden again, quite informative as always :]




For static lights it can be done in single mesh with only one short "universal" script attached to it. So there's no need to use parent/child method here. As we have AttachLight NiNode which can be animated (moved) like any other part of the mesh.
Some time ago I did "simple" PoC, as still I consider to add such lights to my castle I'm working on. In one mesh there were two versions of the candle. One default (glowing, with flame and Attach Light) and another not glowing without flame and light nodes, which was 10000 units above or so. So if you triggered Forward animation then during one frame anim each candle was moved by 10000 units down, and vice versa with Backward anim goup. Though one of the drawbacks I see here is that AttachLight node in the mesh doesn't allow for much flexibility, and because Oblivion's light system has many flaws, often it is better to place light as separate bulb and position it slightly away from the candle, torch, etc.



well, NiLightDimmerController or NiLightColorController are indeed completely new things to me, but I made already couple of meshes with the lights that move. And those look so great that I am too very surprised that Beth didn't implement such nice feature anywhere...




True. Though NiTransformController data exported by Blender can be used to copy/paste its NiTransformData to NiTransformInterpolator which is used by NiControllerManager. That's what I did for few of the spirits I made for my castle. These aren't creatures but objects made from will-o-wisps, with light NiNode attached. They just fly around and brighten up the surroundings close to them. But I agree, that wasn't so quick to make for the first time, as I had to re-create NiControllerManager in Nifskope from scratch.

Thanks for all the input, this really was a candle lit in the dark, so to speak. Right now I am just trying to find out, if all what I have thought about would work or not. I have a lot of ideas and only very little know how, so any help is greatly appreciated.

I didn't know, you could use the parent/child relationship in a script without specifying the reference, :mellow: must have missed it when I was searching through the functions in Wiki. Unfortunately, it still may not work for what I have in mind. It's good for smaller projects, but with all I want to do it would leave me with hundreds or even thousands of persistent references. I am not sure, if that wouldn't affect performance or bloat the save games. And one more question - How does the Dynamic setting affect the visible light? (I don't remember setting any lights to dynamic yet.) For what I would like to make it seems the animated object is really the best solution so far.

Dynamic just means its a movable light -> All spell lights are dynamic as they move and the players torch is dynamic every other light is not as they are static.

If you want a light to be movable it has to be Dynamic or the light emittance will not update its position.

Strange. I have movable lights in my castle, but none of them is set as Dynamic in CS, yet those animate properly, and the light follows... and CS wiki says nothing about this option, so maybe that's true for FO, but not for Oblivion then?

FO3 does not have the Dynamic Flag -> Lights that move but are not Dynamic will have problems with shadows, emittance position and several other issues.

Saiden, have you ever tried NiSpotLight and NiDirectionalLight?

The game engine Null's both of those and replaces them with NiPointLight's (Onmi's)

I gave it some try. And figured out that you can replace NiNode AttachLight with NiPointLight, and you can animate (move) this block via NiControllerManager and its NiTransformInterpolator, and the other content of the nif file can stay as not affected by this anim. Well, properties for NiPointLight look very promising but any change I did to it (ambient light especially) didn't produce any results in the game (with the only exception - translation coordinates). So, is it NiPointLight the block in which we need to alter the settings to change the colour of the light or make it dimmer? Or is there something else?

Yes, for the most part you animate the NiPointLight -> though the only setting inheritable through .nif may be the only settings that are animatable (Translation, Color and Dimmer).

Hmm... I've been fighting with this since Friday... ;]

And my tests so far, show that it doesn't work for me.
I carried out a simple experiment - made almost completely empty nif with only NiPointLight block there. And attached it as light's model, set neutral gray as light colour and placed in game.
When I was changing values for Translation settings of NiPointLight in NifFile they were correctly calculated in game and the light changed its position properly.
But when I tried to change its ambient/diffuse/specular colours or Dimmer settings by hand - there were no any visible changes in the game. So how the animations are supposed to work here when direct approach failed with the results?
So, is there any way to change (set for good) colour of light in the nif file itself, in such a way that it will override any settings entered in CS for this particular light object?
Hm, so far I tried almost everything what I know - and I was successful at only moving the NiPointLight via static transform numbers in nif file, connecting NiTransformController directly to it with simple anim, and via NiControllerManager.


So, any further hints, Saiden? :]

Maybe you will have to stack a bunch of NiLightColorController, 1 each to target the ambient, diffuse, spec settings? No idea what targeting self illum does. lol i just confused myself thinking about that. anyway I haven't touched that aspect of it.

you can control dimming using the NiLightColorController. the value is color, just zero that and the light will be off.

with various numbers and negative numbers in the forward and backward seem to control a modifier, and you can get flickering. I don't know exactly what those are doing though. but you can turn the light off through that controller. but imo, using the NiLightDimmerController is just far simpler to be able to use one controller that hits that one variable and separate it from color control.

All you need to do is add a new controlled block to the nicontrollersequence pointing to the controller, as long as everything is pointing where it should it works for me, at least in fallout 3.

edit.. just thought about the forward and backward settings in the niposdata, < could those be ambient and spec or is it just modifying the diffuse color? I don't think it's the ambient and spec light settings tbh... just throwing my brain ramblings out there

Oh my, looks like the pros have gotten into discussion here, lol. Not that I mind, since it's the best result I could hope for after all. I just got lost in the professional talk a bit. So from my point of view (given what I would like to achieve), I understood this:



If I get it right, there seems to be a problem with the light behaving like a candle light should - flicker and the color of the emitted light. Is the problem the need to move the light? Would it work with the CS settings, if you can switch off the light just with changing this one setting through the NiLightColorController? Or would it break the CS settings of the light and thus need the full emitted light control made in the Nif file? If the later is right, it would mean a lot more different Nif files, right? And what about the light radius then?

Sorry that I am sabotaging your discussion with my newbie questions. :blush:

NiLightColorController targets the Diffuse as the other two settings are nothing and do nothing.



The difference between using a Dimmer Controller and Color Controller to turn a light ~off(technically neither of these turn a light off they just are non-emittant) are actually quite noticeable as Dimming a light keeps it at its original color so a white light will dim to zero as a white light while a color controller will draw the white light down trough all of the Grey spectrum until it hits black which is non emittant of course but the visual is quite different between the two.



The Controller targets ONLY one Color at a time and targeting the other two do nothing of value, you can not even animate the Ambient or Spec colors in Max to get a native export for those two settings on lights.

See Aisis?
What have you done? Just caused an avalanche of posts here... ;] Well, to save you some technical details - in short: that's not a problem to make a candle in one nif and with one universal script attached, that can be switched on/off in game - we're just trying to discuss here more elegant solutions with far greater potential ;]



Ghogiel -

so far everything I tested works for Fallout but not for Oblivion... today I even borrowed for a day or two the copy of Fallout from my colleague to inspect the structure of any light meshes from there. I took fxlightelectricarc01.nif from lights folder and deleted some unnecessary data from it to make the structure more cleaner to me. I tested it in Fallout and with its NiLightColorController inside it worked flawlessly. Then I recreated the same structure block after block in nif file for Oblivion. There are only three differences between these two files - Oblivion's nif has NiStringPalette block while FO handles it in different way, and there's some additional branch in EditorMarker object in FO nif.
And the third difference is that the name of main NiNode block is just different. For OB its named as NiNode, but for FO its called BSFadeNode. The point is while I change BSFadeNode in FO nif to NiNode then animated light doesn't work in the game at all -!- So for FO nif it seems that such name is critical for it to work. But while I change the name of NiNode to BSFadeNode in OB nif then it changes nothing as it still doesn't work at all and besides I get missing mesh error as well.

So far I feel that I tested it inside-out. That's not a problem for me to build a working animated nif in Nifskope from scratch, but while I usually have no problems with all those transform/visibility/alpha/texture controllers, those Dimmer and Light Color ones behave as stubborn donkeys ;]


Well, http://www.4shared.com/dir/7oQczETL/light.html, which I created. That one for FO works well in game, and that for OB, while it has the same* structure and settings, doesn't work at all. (* almost, as there are some minor differences between FO and OB nifs). So if you want to test it, or give it a go, feel free to do so ;] I just need to rest from this for a while, and take care of other things instead ;] In fact anyone can look at those, maybe I missed some very tiny but important detail....

Anyway, if Saiden says that it works for Oblivion, then he's probably right, as no one knows so many about anims as he does, but if he doesn't want to share a bit more knowledge on this then we are stuck with far less elegant solutions ;] hm... if I could grasp my hands on any working Oblivion's nif with this.... *dreams*

Saiden, that all makes sense, cheers.


BSFadeNode is critical for most nifs to work properly in fallout. Its not particularly related to lights or animated nifs. You'll never get a result trying to use one in oblivion- I don't think it knows what it is.

as for your ob nif. i don't have ob installed and tbh it been a couple years since actually doing anything, i haven't a clue if this one will work at all, I don't think it will, but it's worth a shot I suppose http://www.megaupload.com/?d=E7CGVVC8

well, it actually crashes the game ;] alas I'm going to sleep, so can't investigate the cause today any further. But very much thanks for trying... though this nif is not different from those I tested before... but will take a brief look tomorrow I think... good night :]

bum. I only spent 15mins on that nif I'm not surprised it didn't work, was a shot in the dark.

Have you tried just setting up a light with a nicolorcontroller but without any manager and sequence? I guess that should work.

the only thing that jumps out at me as to why that nif crashes, is I forgot to set up the point 3 value in the NiPoint3Interpolator, iirc I have done that before, and that will insta crash.

also I think I mixed up the start and end time in the NiMultiTargetTransformController

After pillaging my Oblivion.nif's it seems I did have issues getting the NiLightColorController to function correctly it has the tendency to shut off and after testing every .nif I have that contains one its not recommended to try to use them as Oblivion does not properly override the CS Light coloring, though it does work I suspect I just have an incorrect setting somewhere -> on the other hand here is an test.nif I created real fast of a http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7MM848RQ that works as its suppose to, I use these almost exclusively as I prefer my lights to stay the same color I set them to when turning them down or off.

Praise you Saiden! This one works :hehe: Though its structure doesn't look much different from that how I imagined it ;] I somehow just haven't tried to work with dim controller yet (though it's more suitable for things requested in this thread), I only was staying focused on that pesky color light controller... a pity that it doesn't work well, as I had some nifty ideas for it... anyway, thank you very much for reference file Saiden, now I can continue this quest for the ultimate candle ;] ...and to see diminishing lights for the first time in Oblivion, that's... something memorable ;]



Ghogiel -
I tried that approach without NiControllerManager, and with direct use of NiColorController alone - no any luck there as well. I think I will put away this thing for a while, and will focus mainly on stuff that can benefit from that dimmer controller as I see some uses for it.... Thanks for help there.

So, how is this coming along? I am really excited to see a nice working animated candle in the game, it would be like a dream became true.

I wanted to try and make the version, with only scripts using the GetParentRef function, but I don't really get how it should be used. Although there are some traps using it and a small thing on Wiki (not really helpful there), it's still definitely not enough to make me understand the stuff. :confused: I feel pretty dumb about it, but scripting isn't one of my strong points either. :huh:

By the way, this is what I want it for (only a proof of concept WIP - used References for this one, so for lagrescale projects it's a no-go). http://s262.photobucket.com/albums/ii98/Zaris/Video/?action=view¤t=UsefulSpells01.mp4