Someone out there knows!

1. How can I slow a running animation while retaining running speed? I've got a bird that flaps its wings while "running," but it flaps way too fast, so I want to slow down the flapping. But when I try that, it also reduces the speed of the bird while running. I tried changing the Stop Time in NifSkope. That slowed the flapping but also made it "run" really slow. And I can't see anything in the CS that allows me to change it. The little Animation Speed slider looks like it's just for previewing. It doesn't allow any changes to be made. Any ideas?

2. How could I change the flying height of an imp (or other flying creature)?

Thanks

Well first of all these are probably KF questions rather than NIF questions

For 1 You probably don't even need to touch the KF for this. I believe you can edit the animation speed from within the CS for Creatures. Anyways if you want to do it in the KF you would need to change the frequency and ending time values in the Text Keys.


The second one can be tricky ... and a hell lot of work unless you can use blender\3ddmax.

I can't explain it with blender\3dsmax so I will just tell you what to do with nifscope ... its rather tedious but simple ... though I still hope someone can come and explain it to you with better tools.


You need to do the following with every animation of the IMP (walkforward, walkfastforward, idle .. etc. etc.)

- Open the KF in nifscope

- Select the first (top) item in Block List

- Under Block Details expand controlled blocks and select the second bone ... Bip01 Spine0

- Click on the curved blue arrow (see https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_p0qV_N8mdYs/TXHkdARkPzI/AAAAAAAAAGk/eXw_ZBUqkgE/s512/Block%201.JPG).

- You will be transported to the required Transform interpolator.

- Expand it and select the TrasnsformData

- In the block details expand the Translation Keys (see https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_p0qV_N8mdYs/TXHkddNJNZI/AAAAAAAAAGo/RjXZMNZbxQw/s640/Number%202.JPG)

- For ALL of the keys under translation ... you want to increase the Z-value by a constant amount (grab a calculator and add) ... this amount will be how much higher you want the IMPS to fly ... so to make them fly twice as high double the original values.

- Once you do this with all of the transaltion keys (41) save the file and move on to the other animations.

Note: You can actually save yourself a lot of repetitive work by sacrificing some quality.

Seehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_p0qV_N8mdYs/TXHn0j5bSfI/AAAAAAAAAGw/eFrmjLCw3pI/s640/Save.JPG. For the Spine0 controller ... set numder of keys to 2, Update Array, change the time of the second key to 1.333 (end of animation) ... and set the Z-values to same for both Keys.

-

Thanks for the help, but I've had no luck. I can't see how to change it in the CS. You can only preview it. And I've tried a lot of things in the kf file. Adjusting Stop Time, NiTextKeyExtraData/Text Keys/Keys, Frequency. But while messing with the kf does slow the animation, it also slows the horizontal movement speed of the Actor in the game. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying to change the animation speed without affecting the traveling speed. :banghead:

Hmmm ... the only way I can think of doing this in nifscope is similar to the one I suggested for the imps flying.

Very briefly you would reduce the frequency like you did before and then change the y or x values of keys for Bip01 so that they increment with twice the speed.

This will reduce the speed of animation but allow forward movement to continue at usual velocity.

Though I don't have time type a more detailed instruction ... maybe you can upload the files somewhere and I can do it for you. I would need at minimum the skeleton.nif and the animation you want tweaked ... as well as a rough estimate of how slow you want the wings to flap ... maybe a frequency you thought suitable in your test.

Hey thanks a lot, Hashmi. If I do that I'll let you know. I might try it myself a little more first so I don't bug you about it unnecessarily. I'll try more with the frequency and key values. Maybe there's a magic combination I haven't tried yet. Not sure what you mean by "keys for Bip01" - maybe those were the key values I was tweaking - keys each with a time value, spread across from the animation Start Time (0.0 of course) to Stop Time. When I increased the Stop Time to try an make it slower, I also increased each key value by the same proportion.

What you are talking about (I think) are the Text Keys present at the very bottom of the kf file ... right??

I am not talking about those ... yes you will have to modify the Text Keys to make it work with the new frequency ... but that will effect the whole animation.
After doing that I am suggesting that you modify the Translation Keys for Bip01 Bone ... Whereas Text Keys tell the animation when to start and stop ... Translation Keys tell a "bone" how much to move where (axis) and at what time interval ...

On the second post in this thread I told you how to modify the translation keys for Bip01 Spin0 for the IMP ... you can follow a similar process to modify the Keys for Bip01.

Here is an image of where you can find Translation Keys for Bip01 Spine ...

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_p0qV_N8mdYs/TXHkddNJNZI/AAAAAAAAAGo/RjXZMNZbxQw/s640/Number%202.JPG