I am looking for help to create two bow-making tutorials for Blender.

Tutorial #1 - How to modify an existing bow.

Tutorial #2 - How to create a new bow from scratch.

The latest version of Blender NIF Scripts can now import and export working Bows and their morphs. I'd like to put together these tutorials on how to create bows with proper-working morphs that bend the bows back when the drawstring is pulled.

As it stands right now, you can take a vanilla steel bow, import it into Blender and immediately export to NIF and have the same working bow that you started with.

EDIT: I'm asking for help because I have yet to figure out how to modify a bow or create one from scratch using only Blender and NIF Scripts to create a working bow NIF file.

Thanks,
LHammonds

Same topic @ http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=216565&view=findpost&p=1899756

That's awesome news.

Unfortunately, I can't help you. I've never worked with morphs.

Looking forward to the tutorials, though.

When you're done that, do one for custom head meshes and face morphs/shape keys. :hehe:

It's quite possible nobody will be able to help and I will just have to figure it out by myself through trial and error. It usually helps being able to bump ideas of other people though. It is also a possibility that the current version of NIF scripts will not be able to handle modifications and that it can only take an existing morph and pass it through...or maybe it will only work if you initially import a working bow. Just have to dig into it and figure it out.

If you are careful to notice things, the vanilla Dwarven, Iron and Glass bows do not animate inside NifSkope but the other bows like Daedric, Ebony, Silver and Steel bows do. Another oddity is the Elven bow...the animation plays just fine in NifSkope but the length of the animation is 1.0 units whereas all other bow animation lengths are 3.333 units.

LHammonds

Nicoroshi is the only modeler I'm aware of being heavily involved in bow-work... but I have no idea if he's still around.

Nico has retired from Oblivion modding. His method was strictly in the use OBJ files being imported directly into an old version NIFSkope.

Nico's method of creating bows was detailed in http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=179 which is a modification to http://www.alys.org/gallery/Windys-Bow-Tutorial

I was curious if anyone has created bows using Blender yet...if so, I was hoping to glean some knowledge from them....or if there was anyone out there familiar with Blender animation that would like to figure out how to make custom bows work directly from Blender.

LHammonds

Ive made bows before using Nico's/Windy's method of importing into an old version of Nifskope, but its been a long while since ive made something for Oblivion.

This is specifically in regards to making bows using Blender and exporting it via the NIF scripts...not the ancient way of OBJ imports into NifSkope. Even though two tutorials exist on how to do the OBJ method, it is prone to problems and locked into old versions of software which don't work on newer versions.

The goal of this project is to document how to create and modify bows in Blender and export them into working NIF files without the need for NifSkope manipulations afterwords.

To my knowledge, nobody has exported a custom and working bow straight from Blender yet. It has been proven that we can import and export vanilla bows be we need to figure out and document what steps must be done in order to make modifications to an existing bow which will export correctly....and then figure out what needs to be done to create a bow from scratch and have it export correctly.

It is quite possible that the current NIF scripts cannot handle custom morph animations or that I just do not know what to do correctly in Blender to make it work.

The 1st step is to import an existing bow and simply export it to see if the bow works for the most basic process.
The 2nd step would be to import an existing bow and add some geometry somewhere such as a simple cube on the end of the bow and figure out how to make it "flex" with the bow during the animation and have it export to a working NIF file. Once this can be figured out, that proves that NIF scripts does not need to be updated to handle this and that a 100% custom bow from scratch may be possible.

LHammonds

I wish you luck with that; I really hope you can find someone to help, because that would be a pretty huge coup. There's a reason that Nico was the only person I knew to do bows; was rather difficult his way.

By the way, with respect to your signature, you might consider tinyurl.com or similar to help with the URL issue; it worked quite nicely for my signature.

Praise you Conan_Lon for the info!

I gave it a try and to me any modifications to current bow shapes are easy, and making bows with completely new shapes aren't that hard either. Now while the scripts can handle everything perfectly the most important thing is that we finally can focus on the look and design of the bow itself than to spend a lot of time instead to figure how it all exactly works.

This is my first quickly modified http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/9089/screenshot1za.jpg - that's a POC so forgive that crappy design ;]
All modifications of the bows in Blender relay on Shape Keys. There are two of such keys respectively named Base and BowMorph. Former is the basic shape of the bow in its resting position, and the latter is the shape of the bow with its bowstring drawn to maximum.
The switching between the Shape Keys is done through the Shapes Tab. It's the tab in the same section as Modifiers tab - all accessible from panel in edit mode (F9).
To make this story short - you just need to import one of existing bows, chose Base Shape Key and modify this bow or replace its shape with the new one, texture it, etc. and then switch Shape Key to BowMorph and in edit mode reposition all necessary vertexes and edges to final morphed position. And there you go its all ready to export.

So altering existing bows shapes is possible quite easily, and replacing existing models with completely new ones is not that much harder.
But if you want to make a tutorial how to make bows completely from scratch in Blender I think that would be a waste of the time and it will be like reinventing the wheel for the second time. Utterly unnecessary.

My way of making new bows will be importing existing ones, and using their shapes as reference, then replacing the model with the new one. This way you already have all those bow and arrow morphs imported and present in your nif and you can focus on design solely which is the best thing under the sun for every bow maker ;]

trollf my friend, you are awesome!!!!

I never thought to look at the "Shapes" tab beside Modifiers.

I had been trying to find Keys and the like under the "1-Animation" scene view. The most that I found was the NLA Editor which showed the "ArrowBone" and "ArrowHelper01" keys which did not explain how the bow actually morphed!

As far as completely from scratch, I think you are right. It probably is best just to start off with a base working bow and build from that...such as you said, completely replacing the model in each pose.

That tid-bit of info is probably all I need in order to create the tutorials.

Again, much thanks!

EDIT: You guys don't know how relieved I am that the problems I was having in Blender was just me and nothing to do with NIF Scripts!

I have a request. The information here is valuable to modders, especially how Troff explained the use of shape keys for bows. Is it possible to move or copy this topic to the Construction Set Forum?

LOL...the entire point of this is to create tutorials...which will be found on various sites such as TESNexus, my forums, the CS Wiki, these forums, etc.

Once the tutorials are done, this topic should be happy to die a lonely death. :thumbsup:

Awesome! I remember doing my Trollbone bow the old way. It was very frustrating trying to narrow down random bugs. This is awesome if it really does work as easily as trollf detailed!