I'm trying to create a simple pose animation in blender. I'm sure I have done something horribly wrong, but it's probably just something simple I am missing. I uploaded the blend, and kf files if anyone has a few minutes to take a look. The animation seems to play fine in blender and nifskope, but when trying to preview it on an NPC it just does nothing. I still want to reset the hands a bit so I'm not asking someone to fix it for me, just if you can point out what I am doing wrong I can try to fix it from there. Thanks for looking.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tzgo0xmnjkz

while I can't tell you what you are doing wrong in the export area. I can say that you have a load of basically blank NiFloatInterpolators trying to control the HeadAnims:0 object like 20 different times or something.

and your 2 text keys, should just read "start" and "end". not "Idle: Start Idle: Loop Start". I don't think that is valid. < probably why (one reason) it doesn't play. it can't pick the text key up for start.

Ah ok thanks. Fixed the start and end so now it at least does something. Makes the character look like a twisted mess in the preview window. Not sure why all those head movements are there, all I moved was the arms, fingers and feet slightly.

blender must export stuff in kfs, even if you don't make keys for them, cos they don't have any. you should just delete that object from the scene anyway.

Deleting the head from the scene didn't fix things. I've tried 2 different sources to try to get this right but it seems they are lacking some info, or I am just not following it well. Each kf just twists the npc into a mess when viewed in the geck. I used these two as a guide

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Blender/Custom_Creature#Creating_Animations

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/articles/article.php?id=55

Are there any other comprehensive guides I could try?

I never said anything about the Bip01 Head bone, if that is what you deleted. I only mentioned HeadAnims:0 = it doesn't even import as a bone in max, it imports as an object. 2 entirely different things. Either way, as the hierarchy stands, deleting the head bone won't mess anything up, as long as yo delete whatever comes after it.. HeadAnims and HeadAnims:0.

as for tutz for blender, not a clue.

Only thing I noticed was that in the tools needed, Backsteppo mentions the kfupdater. but makes not mention to actually use it in his pose tut. Have you ran your kf through it?

I tried the kfupdater with the same results, actor is all deformed. He says in that tut "The location and rotation of the NonAccum bone is same as character's location and rotation in game." Doesn't say what the game numbers are though, so maybe this is contributing to the problem. He seems to skip over some things, but obviously my lack of understanding of animations isn't helping. Getting the bones where I want them seems to work ok in blender so maybe if I can reposition them to the game location it would fix things, but I have no idea what those numbers should be set to.

that actually makes perfect sense. but its not quite right.

what he really means to say is you will want to accumulate certain transforms if you are doing an animate in motion type anim. so basically those transforms are kept on the bip01 bone, and are not passed onto the nonaccum. the games wants to see that any X and Y translations, ie location forward/backwards of the skeleton in an animation are accumulated. The nonaccum should contain only the rotations and the z translation.

but you aren't doing animate in motion so you should have zeros.

I have vague recollections of blender anim exporting fubaring the pelvis bone rotations, so the character is doing some contortion or something. I remember there are solutions as well. I just never payed any attention.

Well, after some tinkering I think I found out what was causing the error. I was able to get a decent pose to show up fine in the preview, so I assume it will look that way in game. I think the problem I was creating was that I was rotating some bones incorrectly and causing the mesh to deform. I want to redo it again from the start now that I think I understand better what was wrong. I'll post back tomorrow probably as I need a break from this tonight. Thanks for all your help Ghogiel, you kept me trying new things to see where I was going wrong

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/8555/flypose.jpg

fair enough . Sounded like a pretty easy fix.