Alright ... so I want to make something like my own ghost ... so it disappears when it dies. However I can't figure out how to do that.

I've tried having a look at oblivion creatures ... but I can't seem to understand how to imitate that.

Can someone please walk me through as to how to do something like that in 3ds max or blender.

If your making a Real CC then just use a NiMaterialAlphaController on the Mesh or Meshes and within the Death Animation animate the Alphas to zero -> doing this will NOT make the creature un activatable, that requires a script either in the OnActivate Block or once the Alpha as been completely zeroed just move the creature to another cell so its not available to be activated.

If its just a re-hash of the Oblivion Ghost then just use a script and use SAA (SetActorAlpha) and fade it to zero and or move it or not.

Its a CC ... I can't make any sense of the Oblivion ghost ... looks like two ghost meshes merged with the skeleton or something weird like that.




I must say I am fairly new to max and I can't figure out how to do that ... all I've seen and tried in the animation department are scale, rotation and position. I can't figure out where to find the visibility\aplha cotrollers. Can you like link me to some tutorial on this.






Shouldn't this script command work even on a new custom creature ... provided it has an NiAlphaProperty on the mesh?

My creature does have an NiAlphaProperty on the mesh to make it semi-transparent ... I assigned it using nifscope.

http://sites.google.com/site/saidenstorm/oblivion3dsmaxanimationtutorial



The Function will work even if the mesh does not contain the property -> but the Function has issues in that it has the tendency to remove itself if you save/reload near an actor effected by it or Move to another cell and return to a cell with an actor effected by it, among other situations that cancel the effect.

I read that before ...



I don't know if its a version difference ... but I can't find any Civ4 Shader option within the Blinn Shader {I don't seem to see Blinn Basic Parameters at all} . I can however find a seperate Civ4 Shader option in the menu ... but that one doesn't have any Alpha\opacity.

Using 3ds max 8 with Civ4tools 7+

well you have to have a blinn basic parameters rollout menu if you are using a standard max material.

The civ4 shader is found in the drop down under shader basic parameters. #5 in this image http://www.uberpages.com/tutorials/3d_max_tutorials/basic_texture_mapping/basic_texture_mapping_02.jpg

Ok ... so I found the thing ... thank you ghogiel

However I am having a problem ... I''ve applied a material with the civ4 shader but the fading does not seem to work within 3dsmax or Nifscope {haven't tried it in the game but probably also does'nt work there as well).

I did however notice that the normal Blinn Shader with opacity set to 0 seems to work in both 3ds max and nifscope. The problem here is that the Civ4 exporter only adds this to the mesh rather than the kf ... which means that I can't limit it to the death animation only ...


What am I doing wrong ???

Its not uncommon for Game Shaders to not be fully integrated into their respective 3D Application as its not important for them to work in Max just that they correctly export data into game format.

Ok I tried it again ... seems to work in nifscope now.

However I am having the same problem again. When I export it with the Civ4 exporter the NiAlphaController is added to the mesh (nif) file ... not the death animation file (kf).


Here's an image of the block lists:

http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/5088/nifs.jpg


I haven't tried it in game yet but I think that it will cause the mesh to fade to invisibility in every animation instead of just death animation.

How can I fix this ???

The mesh that is being Controlled needs to be a child of the heirarachy otherwise its not a valid target for secondary animation -> just select and link it to the Bip01 Node and make sure that you do not have any other animations types on it other then the Alpha anim.

It works

However I am now plagued by two new problems.


1) Making the mesh a child of Bip01 or even any other bone seems to destroy all the animations including death. The mesh no longer moves as it should in any of the animations. I don't know ... does parent-child linking effect skin instances? I really don't want to remake all the animations again.

2) I have a single nif from the new export ... how am I supposed to split it into the model and skeleton.nif for the creature? Passing it through niftools exporter will likely strip the Alphacontrollers.

The Mesh.nif still needs to be set up exactly like every other skinned object just with an AlphaController, it sounds like you exported the mesh linked to bones and retained the heirarchy which a skinned mesh does not need.



Just export the Skeleton with NifTools, Export the Mesh with NifTools -> then export the Mesh with CivIV and copy/paste the AlphaController from the CivIV.nif to the NifTools Mesh.nif.

Ok ... here is what happened.

I exported the mesh.nif and skeleton using niftools as you said.

1) First of all I exported seperate skeleton (using skeleton only in the nif) and a seperate mesh using its settings as you said in your tutorial.
Next I added the NiAlphacontroller from the civ4 nif to the niftools mesh {pasted the Nialphacontroller block and then assigned it as the controller to the material property and assigned the target to the material ... just like it was in the Civ4 nif}

However when I tested this in nifscope {copied the mesh to the skeleton and then attached the death.nif} ... I get the error that the controlled block named 'Robe' can not be found. This Robe is actually the part that is supposed to disappear ... and it WAS present in the file. I think that it is not assigned as a "controlled block" for some reason.

2) For my second attempt I exported again using niftools but instead of seperate skeleton and mesh I exported a single merged nif and again I copied the NiAlphacontroller. This time I didn't get any errors ... although the robe was a child of Bip01 it animated just fine. HOWEVER the fading did not occur when i attached death.kf ... no errors about missing controlled blocks but still it did not fade.

.........................

Ok wait .... I've been experimenting and I think that I've found something.


What I did was to add a new NiNode to the skeleton and made it a child of Bip01. I named it Robe. Now when I attached the death animation I no longer got the error about missing "controlled blocks". The problem now was that the mesh did not disappear {when i co[pied the body onto the skeleton and then attached the kf}.

So I added two properties to the new Robe node in the skeleton and assigned them to the material and NiAlphaController in the Mesh.

Here is what my skeletpon.nif now looks like http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/456/finaltc.jpg


It worked!!!! In nifscope at least ... the mesh now disappears at the right time when death.kf is played and is animated correctly in all the other animations as well.


The only problem now is that it seems that this can only work if the mesh is permanently copied over the skeleton ... otherwise the material and NiAlpha controller can not be referenced as a property.


................. so now my question is .... can I add a permanent mesh to the skeleton.nif instead of having seperate mesh.ni and skeleton.nif?
I think that there is a merged mesh in the skeleton of the ghost and the willowisp ....

If not then is there a way to make this work.

Yes, you can merge the Mesh into the Skeleton if you wish Beth has done this a few times themselves Storm Atronach comes to mind.

That is un-necessary and I doubt it will function in-game (other then by simple chance of the fact that the robe is first in the file) -> the problem is most likely a problem with NifSkope when you attach animations the controllers are ALL set to the NiMultiTargetTransformController which is the incorrect controller for all Non-TransformController Controllers -> Just set the Controller in the Sequence to look for the AlphaController and it will function.

Have you tested any of this in-game ?

I still need to add controlled blocks to the skeleton ... right?

I just noticed that I can remove the mesh blocks after setting up my skeleton as in the image above: http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/456/finaltc.jpg

... and the added properties {alpha controller and material} still remain in the skeleton without the mesh.




My work-bench is seperate from my gaming pc. So I don't get to test it much in game.

However ... I tested the merged skeleton and it worked .... though the game crashes when the creature dies.

Any idea why that might happen ????

----------------------

Not sure what you mean ? -> the skeleton and all secondary.nifs (set within the Models Tab) are all used together to create the entire object palette so any blocks that reside are allowed to be controlled by an animation.



I would guess thats most likely a collision/havok issue.

Ok ... let me explain what I think I understand.

I think that in skeleton.nif ... the mesh needs to be a child of the animation's root node\Base for it to be considered a "controlled block". Unless this is true Nifscope spawns an error about missing controlled blocks and the fading effect does not occur.

In my case the root node\Base for death.kf is Bip01 ... and unless the mesh is a child of Bip01 it is not considered a "controlled block".



Now I can not make my mesh a child of Bip01 since that effects the other animations ... so my workaround is to add new nodes under Bip01 in the skeleton which bear the name and properties of the mesh.
{http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/456/finaltc.jpg}


At least in nifscope this seems to work out. I no longer get an error about missing "controlled blocks" ... and the fading occurs.

........

However that does not seem to help with the game.

I just got my eye on some errors that are spawning when death.kf loads in the CS




All of these are the meshes that are supposed to disappear ... the robe, head and arms.

These nodes ARE present in the skeleton ... and they DO have both the material property and AlphaController {though the AlphaController is assigned to the material property instead of directly to the node}

I believe it is quite similar to what nifscope was saying when I first tried the death animation ... complaining about missing "controlled blocks" on the skeleton|mesh ... the meshes are not a child of Bip01 ... and hence not a valid target for animation.


I think this is also the cause of the crash ...

I have a question ... can I make the Scene Root as the root node\Base of an animation instead of Bip01 ?

I think that it might solve my problem :S

You need to take a closer look at the Beth creatures there are a ton of examples just in the 32 Creatures they made for the base game that show exactly how to set up a Non-Transform Controller for Actor based animation -> just make sure yours is identical to theirs.

I've had a look at a few ... namely the ghost, wraith and wisp.

However I can make little sense of them. Other than that they DO have added controlled nodes {named as skin attachments} in the skeleton ... which are the children of Bip01 {the animations's root node}. These controlled nodes have NiVisibilityController attached to them.



Anyways I renamed death.kf's root node to Scene Root instead of Bip01 and that seems to have fixed the errors that used to spawn in the CS and the animations play fine within the CS.
... however the game still crashes when the creature dies.


I am beginning to think that it could have something to do with the missing havok or missing unequip {I didn't make any unequip or equip because I want my creature to only cast spells}.

Thanks for all the help you have provided ... really appreciate it