I've got a custom creature with a pretty ghetto rig set up. it'll work well enough for any of the anims I want to do on this creature anyway.

So basically I have exported my mesh and skele via niftools. I've got rough idle, forward, back, leftturn, rightturn, and few more placeholders anims exported, updated and working. via civ4 and kfupdater etc. I am not at all certain exactly what anims are completely necessary for it to load...anyone know? The sequence names all mirror vanilla. I've not set any text keys for blending, nor really messed with priorities, besides idle is at 10. everything else is 30. I've not even bothered to set right tangents in the curve editor or anything, just there so I can test really. It all runs in the GECK alright, anims do what they are supposed to. its not barfing any errors at me previewing my creature or its anims.

But it'll crash the game on me.

I'm guessing this due to the skeleton and its constraints. And its ragdoll set up in the geck :/. Anyone know how to do this arcane magic and want to show me whats up? the rig is pretty simple, I think it has 14-15 bones, 5 of thoses are 'eyes'. So should be pretty straight forward. I've thrown in 1 collision capsule in the skele, trying to get it to not crash the game. been messing with ragdoll and bodypart lists... but I guess I haven't stared at it enough yet. I pretty sure the main thing is to get the skeleton setup first. ?

also somehow I must have fubared my max scene units set up, when I drop it in the world, he's fairly tiny(maybe about chiwawa sized ). that might be a problem? and why in the hell did that happen?- I'm using genaric units like always, system unit setup 1unit=1inch. thats right? I never scaled any of my rig or its bones. pretty sure I reset all my xforms on the mesh prior to skinning. weird. assuming I get him working, can I just scale him up in the Geck about 2.7ish- whats the max in F3, or does it start to get dodgey at some point? Edit: scatch that :hehe: NV!

With fallout kfs- can I just delete the nistringpalette from the kfs?

So how exactly would I go about sorting the ragdoll up?

files if anyone can take a look at it in its current state- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UU4SAJ8Y
max scene
skeleton
mesh
textures
some kfs
its all wipz atm. hold off critiqueing the art just yet, I'll be sorting out the normals/rebaking and crap after I get my head around this part. Just gimme technical nifskopery/geckery

danke

Wow.

This flew over my head so hard and fast that it took my hat with it. And nearly, my whole head, too.

You animator - bodymaking - etc - types are an amazing bunch :>

Hopefully you get the help you need - - there are a few here who can maybe say something helpful. SaidenStorm, if he peeks in, is I understand a professional at this sort of thing. Zenl would also be a good candidate.

in game :hubbahubba:
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/other/IdleInGame1.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/other/AttackInGame1.jpg
(low rez shots, I set detail to low when I am trying to barge through crashing- takes less time between loads )

it kinda works now. it's still messy as hell. but he's in there, you can hit him, he attacks back and chases you, and one of his legs pops off when he dies. The collision/ragdoll and dismemberment is still wip. I don't understand how to calculate the numbers in for the constraint parameters, like wha. and I have a couple errors I want to know whats up with. and how bodypart data, ragdoll, and dismemberment fit together is only somewhat clear now.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hhehe its cool!

Okay that's just completely awesome!

I want my own astrodroid!

lol :tops:

Luck with fixing it up!

Hello Ghogiel, THAT LOOKS AWESOME!

I don't know if 3dsmax has had any new plugins for FO3 in a while as I've been away. But this might help if FO3 vs Oblivion constraints are still causing you trouble.
http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2067

GL! You could probably get some help over on those forums, too.

cheers. I already looked over that. it was my first port of call- search niftools for the word constraint.

Saiden to the rescue, Helps a lot with constraints.
The big issue for me now seems to be the whole bodypartdata and ragdoll, and setting up the vats/dismemberment. things are slotting into place now though. a few more days faffing about and hopefully it'll be clearer.

And it is totally annoying I can't set up constraints within max. I am bloodly sick of doing stuff in nifskope- I've nearly left this scene several times, just so I have access to complete dev tools and developer support. Yeah niftools makes it all possible, and its awesome they do anything at all for nothing, we'll never get beth's export scripts, Guess I am a bit jealous of unreal or cryengine. and want to work with those for only the reason to have access to a real, supported, dev kit.
I started learning some programming and scripting for just this reason, so in like 5 years I might be able to actually contribute to the max plugin. I'm not doing so good on that front . its like they say, want something done.... /rant

:thumbsup:

Does it always crash or only when you're doing something specific?

I miss id's editor, where everything can be altered with notepad. Because it was all plain text (maps, models, animations, etc), importing / exporting was a breeze.

that was the good news- it doesn't crash anymore(sorta) . It did until I added a couple capsule collision shapes to the skele, along with a hinge constraint, then faffed with the bodypartdata, trying to make sense of that. the geck crashes when I try to do something stupid with the bodypartdata or ragdoll entry, but I reckon thats probably because a) have little experience with the setup B ) I'm a bit of a nub at this, and my constraints/collision/dismemberment on the skele and in the geck entries are incomplete/wrong.

I do get this error in the ragdoll menu- http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/other/ragdollconstaintsProblem.jpg
which I think is my contriant, or because my rigid body. more likely the constraint imo. :S

and I get this error in the ragdoll menu as well.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/other/ragdollAnimationwarning.jpg
which basically tells me my place holder anims were stupid. I have a few looping anims when they shouldn't be(because they are just copies of the idle )

Not sure what the second bit means, but is probably just because its a looping anim, when it shouldn't.
so thats not going to ba a problem hopefully.

This is a fair old bit more complicated than in oblivion. Though I am further now than I ever got in oblivion custom creatures.