hey there!

I've gotten bored of making simple weapons and placing them in-game. So I want to try my luck at animation.
So I've been reading some tutorials. Some basic Nifskope tutorials, and I took a look at SaidenStorm's Animation tutorial.
So far I've struck the wall multiple times.

SaidenStorm's tutorial says this:
"We now have an almost GTG Nif all that is left is to open the file in Nifskope and delete the "0(zero)" node -> Renumber the BSX back to being number 1 -> then assign the BSX to the new Node Zero Scene Root bone -> Num Extra Data List 0 to 1 -> Update the Array and expand it then add the BSX(node 1) into the array"

Beforehand the tutorial told me to change make sure I exported my NIF as NIF with manager

That took my breath away =O

My blocks/nodes looks like this, as I open my newly exported NIF:

0 NiNode scene root
1 BSXFlags BSX

2 NiNode Sphere01
-
3 ... sphere01
4 ... bone01

( The Sphere01 and Bone01 was underneath the NiNode SPhere01)
I deleted the 0 node.

So it looked like

0 BSXFlags BSX
1 NiNode Sphere01

Then I right clicked my BSXFlags Block and pressed " Move Down"

So it looked like

1 BSXFlags BSX
0 NiNode SPhere01

NOW I got problems ...
It tells me to assign BSXFlags to my new 0 node, which is NiNode Sphere01. mm...

I guess that means I copied the BSXFlags BSX branch, and deleted it, then pasted it into the NiNode Sphere01.
But no, from here on I got dead confused.
I then tried to go into my NiNode Sphere01 and go to that num extra data, but the number was already 1. I pressed the "Update Array".

Nothing happens ...

So yeah, I believe I've misunderstood a lot here ...

Can anyone tell me where I messed up, and what to do?


While I allready made an topic, could anyone just ... Tell me wheter I am wrong here.

Is it possible to get Particles into the game without the CIV4 Exporter?

If no, then tell me - where in the world do you get 3DS max 8 these days?

I've tried everything -.-

Well:

Cheers!
Matth80

Your nif was OK to start with.

The tutorial was written a while back, and it may be that the exporter available at the time would add a bogus node he was telling you to get rid of. The key point is that you needed the structure to have the BSX node as the first child of the scene root node, which is where you started. I think you can just ignore that part as having been fixed in the exporter.

M... So i've been havin a headache for hours for no reason =/ well, how can I make my mesh do the animation then? I try to play it in Nifskope, and nothing happens ...
Man, Nifskope gotta be the most complicated thing in modding =O

Thanks for the answer though!

Cheers
matth80

Upload the nif, it's easier to see what's wrong with it then.

Oh, sure. THough a white ball doing nothing isn't too much to look at =O

But .. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27211
I have not fiddled with this one. I just exported it an then here it is.

Thanks in advance, for any help!

For some reason I can't download anything. The download starts, but it's 0kb and doesn't even appear in the folder where I downloaded it to. Seems like a problem with TesNexus, happened with one other file as well today I wanted to download. It's better to upload things like that to a general filehoster like Rapidshare, Megaupload etc anyway. Please reupload.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DJPGT9T0
THink it should work.

Hmmm...not sure where to start. That is a pretty weird nif.

First of all you don't have any transform data/interpolator. Without that data there is no animation (at least of this type). The ControllerSequence doesn't have any controlled blocks. There are a ton of nodes floating around, some are linked, some are not. The MultiTargetTransformController has no extra targets. And probably a lot of other things.

Your best bet imo is to try to understand how animations in a nif work, how everything is linked, why it's there etc. Start small and use a simple animation like a gate, which has only one controlled node and two sequences (forward, backward). You should also read http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Basic_Animation_Tutorial tutorial. Once you know how to make a simple animation with Nifskope you can try to get more complicated ones to work with the exporter.

Well, I guess so.
Though I must wonder how hard an hard animation must be... as this was a ball moving at 4 directions =/
But yeah, i'll fiddle around with some built-in animation and stuff.

Thanks though!
But .. I bet 5 bucks I'll be screaming for help in a week =)

Cheers!
Matth80

I am sorry, but that tutorial didn't help me one bit ...

I downloded the package, and readed on.

It isn't working =O
For instance, there is a few EXAMPLE nif's in the download. Which is suppose to be how it is suppose to look. .. It doesn't work =/
And you can't really tell me to find what's wrong with something I got no clue about =O
Cheers!

Matth80

Actually the exporter still exports exactly as that tutorial explains (which is one of the reasons I have not updated it, its not really needing to be updated past one update which is that now the NifTools exporter is able to understand basic IK strings and export that data correctly).

If you set everything up in Max correctly when you export a single sphere animated to go up and down once your heirarchy will look like this:

Scene Root <-Node to Delete
-BSX <- node to re-assign as a child of the second Scene Root Node
-Scene Root
--NiControllerManager
---NiMultiTargetTransformController
---NiControllerSequence
----NiTransformInterpolator
-----NiTransformData
---NiStringPalette
---NiTextKeyExtraData
---NiDefaultAVObjectPalette
--Scene Root NonAccum
---Sphere01 (node)
----Sphere01 (mesh)

It needs to look like this:

Scene Root
-BSX
-NiControllerManager
--NiMultiTargetTransformController
--NiControllerSequence
---NiTransformInterpolator
----NiTransformData
--NiStringPalette
--NiTextKeyExtraData
--NiDefaultAVObjectPalette
-Scene Root NonAccum
--Sphere01 (node)
---Sphere01 (mesh)

Closed at the request of the OP.