You all probably know what I mean. It's the claws. And it's a problem with the original MW animations.

Is there anyone currently working on fixing the hands? I'm sure I've seen this discussed at one point, but has anything come of it? Fixing the hands in the basic standing animation and combat readiness (armed, unarmed, spell readiness), and in first person, would go a million miles in improving the visual quality of the game.

Im sure ive seen an update fo this on a smaller site, but i think i read that it screwed up some other things too. I'll have a look round quick an see what i can find

At the better bodies site forums I downloaded some new hand meshes a while ago but haven't tried them.

File is at home so can't give any more details sorry.

I'll see if I can waste some more company time finding them for you


edit - didn't take long...

http://www.psychodogstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5264


-kwm

I've downloaded and tried these out right away. They don't really fix the claw problem though. I'm definitely sure it's an animation problem at this point, and not a problem with the actual meshes.

I'm sure of this, because while Liztail's hands don't fix the claw problem, Dirnae's animations while running and walking do. It's kind of strange watching my character run or walk along with nice normal looking hands, and then watch them go back to arching talons when he stops running and assumes any standing position. It's particularly annoying how the thumb clips through the player or npc's thighs.

A full animation replacer would do the trick. Dirnae is the only person who has even sort-of attempted this too. We should get the guy who did the new animation for Fallout 3 over here...

For most the standing poses, only the hands really need work. Perhaps the arms as well, if they need adjusting. The leg positions are fine in combat readiness postures, and they're not really doing anything when just standing around. In fact, there's little actual animation actually involved in those animations. The hand and arm postures just need a bit of adjusting to make them look more natural. It's just a little detail, but it would really improve the game.

Of course, a full animation replacer would be totally awesome. But one step at a time. I think what Dirnae is doing is awesome. Those animations have already improved the game immensely. I can actually stand to play in 3rd person again, which I hadn't done since 2006.

I wish I knew how to animate, but I can't even modify a simple mesh in Blender. I've tried to learn how to use Blender for three years now, and I still can't wrap my head around its counter-intuitive interface. I've stuck to texturing pre-existing models in NifSkope.

LizTail did a great job: the improvement is very obvious. But you are right without changing skeleton structure (actually creating a global animation replacer of all MW animations, 206 sequences, ca. 5000 frames) hands’ problem cannot be resolved. Mesh/skin should be also redone (there is no way to achieve good results without that, it would be necessary to ad new rings, vertices, etc.). I am not sure that spent efforts would be justified.

I'm not entirely happy with Liztail's work: it's certainly an improvement that the hands don't look like claws anymore, but now I can see seams between forearms and hands while in first person mode. Sometimes it seems that the hands are a bit separated from the rest of the body. :shrug: Unless I'm doing something wrong I still think that the hands could use some attention.

I'm fairly sure that the seams were there even with the original BB. It's been a while since I played with it, though, so I'm not 100% on that.

Can't say that I've been bothered by the hands, since I have Liztails Fix, but I'd be interested in seeing something new

LizTail has fixed only third person hands, you are talking about first person meshes that are located in a different nif (original BB) and use different skeleton: MW game engine “assembles” these meshes (hands (bidy), wrists (body), sleeves (clothes/armor)) from different nifs that might not always fit each other. The described problem has nothing to do with Liztail’s work. I guess you are not talking about body texture of normals seams.

That explains a lot... I really thought that he had also changed the first-person hand meshes. :facepalm: Thank you for clarifying it!