Evening all,
I've been playing around with skeletons to try and come up with an alternative to body mods (or had been- this is one of my old, old projects being resurrected). Most body mods have the issue that they affect all characters, you and NPCs alike, and they only affect your unclothed body- armour doesn't change. As such, they're not really much use for making fat NPCs, thin ones, tall ones, short ones, and so on. However, you can alter body parts by changing the scale of the 'skeleton' a character uses- make their spine bones bigger, everything 'rigged' to it like their torso, their shirt and so on, will grow. You can create NPCs who'll /always/ appear fatter or thinner, whatever clothes they're in. As well as increasing the scale of their bones, you can also change their length, change their angles, or scale them to zero to remove them altogether.
This can be done on the fly as well, by playing various edited idles on NPCs with the new skeleton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZW_3EIlHqk It shows you can...

• http://i48.tinypic.com/2w3ngk6.jpg
  
• http://i50.tinypic.com/2sb9ysx.jpg
  
• http://i47.tinypic.com/35lb3om.jpg
  
• http://i49.tinypic.com/65y6wx.jpg

You can also play around with the skeletons in crazy ways, to produce insane effects for use in the Shivering Isles. Behold!

• http://i50.tinypic.com/23wtjxl.jpg http://i50.tinypic.com/2ennt54.jpg
  
• http://i49.tinypic.com/6scpqc.jpg
  
• http://i45.tinypic.com/2qnwmdd.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJSJS6Ng3dk
Whilst you can apply these changes to skeleton bones normally, they get reset by animations. So I've gone through and added a bunch of 'scaling' bones linked to the normal ones, unaffected by animations, that you can use to apply permanent alterations to NPC skeletons.
So why is this an open WIP? Well, I could only really think of these 7 things (and one experimental left-hander you can see in the video that went horribly wrong). However, I'm sure everyone else can think of more and it's pretty easy to make them now I've got the skeleton set up, so I wanted to give everyone else a shot at making some. I'll then package them all up and relz them as a modder's resource, with credit of course.
It really is easy to make a scaled skeleton, all you need is nifskope and imagination so if you have ideas don't post them here- download the Open WIP folder and give it a try!

So, here's the download, containing SkeletonScaled (the thing you change) and a few examples.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IH0GB5LX
How do you use it?

• Open the skeleton in Nifskope- Make sure you've got Block Details showing, check under View->Block Details.
  
• Find a Scale node- Do this by expanding nodes by clicking on the arrow to the left of them. All nodes branch down like a big tree, the body proper starts at the pelvis- so you'll find the right foot if you expand until you reach the Pelvis node, expand that, expand the ScaleRThigh node, and keep expanding nodes along that leg until you get there. 90% of the things in the skeleton aren't usable. The only important ones are the ScaleXXX nodes.
  
• Change the Scale node- Click on it (remember it must be one like ScaleRFoot, or ScaleTail and so on), and the Block Details pane should change. Then you can change the Scale, Rotation or Translation of the node, and it'll affect the next node down. So if you wanted to give someone clown shoes, you'd change the Scale of the ScaleRFoot node to maybe 2. If you set the scale to 0, then the node and anything attached won't be visible ingame, although it'll still exist.
  
• Correct the Scale- You'll have noticed the 'tree' structure of skeletons by now. If you change one node's scale etc., that carries on to all the nodes that come after it. If you set someone's abdomen to be Scale 2 to make them fat, the rest of their body above there (including their arms, head etc.) will be twice the scale. Compensate for this by changing the scale of the next node up. For example, you can set their Lower Chest scale to be 0.5- that way you get 2x0.5 = 1, and everything is the right scale.
  
• Correct for Transforms- Scale doesn't just affect body and clothing, it also affects the following node's translations. A node at scale 2 with translation of (25 x) will actually go (50 x). In this case, you'll need to give the Scale node before it a translation of (-25 x) to cancel out. This can take a bit of tweaking to get it to look right, though.
  
• Save to Meshes\Characters\_Male\- pick a descriptive name that starts with skeleton. I don't think you can have spaces but who knows!
  
• Test in the CS- Find or make an NPC, click on the "Skeleton.nif" or "SkeletonBeast.nif" button and find your new skeleton. Then drop them in the render window and see! If they don't look right, you can change the skeleton but you'll need to remove them from the render window then put a new one down before they'll update their appearance.

For example: To create the fat skeleton, I scaled the lower spine up to about 1.25. This meant the 'length' of the lower spine was also increased by 25%- from 12 to 15, and the size of all above bones was increased too. So the upper spine node had to be scaled to 0.8 to compensate (so 1.25*0.8= 1) and moved down by 3 so they became fatter but not taller.
To create the hunchback, I put a 6 degree angle change on all the bones in their back so by the top they were at about a 24 degree angle total. Then I corrected the arms and head by -24 degrees to prevent the NPC staring at and punching the floor.

So that's pretty much the entirety of it. Good luck! A few further notes:

• Whilst you can scale nodes to 0, that just removes the art. An NPC with scale 0 arms will still be able to carry and use weapons, you just won't see them.
  
• For 'realistic' people, keep scale changes small- 1.2-1.4 is more than fat enough, 0.8-0.9 is easily thin enough. Much further and you have huge clipping errors and art distortion.
  
• Rotating the head is tricky, if not impossible. It seems to ignore any changes you make and looks for alterations to the Pelvis, which is odd. Scaling works though.
  
• SkeletonFat was built with an older version of SkeletonScaled, so some of the nodes are named differently.

It's also worth pointing out that this technique produces custom skeletons you can use for NPCs, but can't use for the player as the player's hardcoded to use Skeleton.nif or SkeletonBeast.nif, so if you changed one of those to be fat you'd make the 'default' body shape of every non-customised NPC fat. I'm working on that.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO MAKE AND MANIPULATE YOUR OWN FLEXIBLE SKELETON
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, a guide for how to make a skeleton with scale nodes in, so you can make zombies or goblins or Xivilai or whatnot:

• Step 1- Add a node before an existing bone. http://i45.tinypic.com/2zi27wh.jpghttp://i50.tinypic.com/30cwqaa.jpg To do this you need to add the node to whatever's above the bone in the tree. In this case, to put a NiNode before Bip01 one first has to be added to SceneRoot. Valid bones are ones beginning with Bip01. Side note: Putting spacers before Bip01 NonAccum doesn't work.
  
• Step 2- Make the bone the scale node's child. http://i47.tinypic.com/wquff4.jpg Click on the new node, and change it's name to something descriptive. In this case, the Scale node will change the entire skeleton so I've called it ScaleTotal. Then go down to the Children section, and change the 0 to a 1. Click on the refresh button to update the child list, then open it. Double-click on the empty slot and put in the bone's number, the one to the left of it on the tree.
  
• Step 3- Remove the bone from its origininal parent. http://i47.tinypic.com/9v0l.jpg Click on the original parent, go down to the Children list, and expand it. You'll see the original node and your new Scale node. Now remove the original bone from the list, by changing the links and reducing the number of children by 1.
  
• Step 4- Tidy it up. http://i46.tinypic.com/2niprtd.jpg Collapse the tree, right-click on an open space, and go to sanitise->adjust link arrays and reorder blocks. This makes sure everything's all neat and tidy. You don't have to do this after every node, just when saving.
  
• Step 5- Save. You're done.

Repeat as necessary until you've done everything. You don't need to put a scale node before every bone- things like ShoulderHelpers or ArmTwist bones should probably keep the same scale as the arm or shoulder they're for.
Now, a guide for how to make idle animations that manipulate the scaled skeleton. The guide is a bit longer but it's actually quicker and easier.

• Step 1- Find and expand an animation. http://i47.tinypic.com/35k77go.jpg Pick an animation, something like Stagger or Idle. Copy it to Whatever\IdleAnims\Skeleton\. Then open in NifSkope, and click on the Controller. Go down to the Num Controlled Blocks, and increase it by one. Then click the Refresh button.
  
• Step 2- Set up your new controlled block. http://i45.tinypic.com/2zecin9.jpg. Expand the controlled blocks list, and scroll down to your 'Empty' one and open it. Then fill in the blanks. The String Palette needs to be set to the same one as all the other blocks, you should see it just below yours. Once that's set, you can name the Controller Type (click on the TXT button and select TransformInterpolator from the list) and the node you want to animate (either doubleclick on the name or click TXT of Node Name, and put in whatever your Scale node is called e.g. ScaleLHand).
  
• Step 3- Copy an Interpolator. http://i48.tinypic.com/x1ll4g.jpg http://i47.tinypic.com/veceux.jpg The interpolator's what sets scales etc. so find and duplicate one.
  
• Step 4- Link your Interpolator in. http://i47.tinypic.com/263ap77.jpg Go back to your new controlled block, find the Interpolator field, add your new Interpolator's number.
  
• Step 5- Use your Interpolator. http://i48.tinypic.com/wa6mvq.jpg Click on your new interpolator, and start changing things. It might be full of gibberish data to begin with, but you can easily set everything to 0 or 1 as applicable.
  
• Step 6- Tidy it up. http://i45.tinypic.com/2s6k13q.jpg Collapse everything again, right-click, reorder blocks, then you can save.

You can add many new controlled blocks to one animation.

:drool:
I didn't know this was possible.

Why hasn't anyone made a diverse NPCs mod if this has been possible all along???

I can already see the fat baker, the skinny beggar, the muscular guard, and everyone else having totally unique bodies!

I was always thinking about this; good to know someone brought it to work.

That's incredible.

Not sure if people will see it that way so long as this method doesn't allow changes to briast size.

Regardless, this certainly looks like a tool that can be used to bring diversity to the game world. Glad this is out in the open :thumbsup:

This is awesome! I already have several ideas for this. Thanks for sharing, and many kudos, too!

Good point. Although people can change the briast size if they really want... it'll just increase the whole ribcage as well .

Critterman: Well, not many people have really been messing around with skeletons. XMS definitely, and he told a few people how to use extra nodes at least, but I assume they used the stuff he gave them as a solution for a single problem rather than as a jumping off point for more stuff :shrug:.

If only you hadn't included the Tank screenshot in the OP ...

Now what we need is an OBSE function that lets us hot-swap actor skeletons. I'm curious however - Do the same concepts apply for creature skeletons ?

Alas alack, swapping skeletons on the fly doesn't work. I requested it ages ago but they found out it didn't do anything once an actor's loaded.
The same concepts should definitely apply to creature skeletons, yep. The Bonelord I was working on ages ago (come to think of it, I should probably finish that off sometime soon too) used this kind of thing.
You can even add extra bones then alter the animations to apply transforms to them just with nifskope, to for example create spiders that can jump on and off the ceiling. In fact... these skeletons can actually let you do individual limb 'removal' on the fly through the same principles. I hadn't thought of that until halfway through this post, probably something for me to prod skycap with if he's still around.

Shame.

Interesting range of possibilities. What happens when the Ceiling Cat walks out into an exterior ?

Er, they continue walking at the same height above the ground unfortunately. It's just a 180 degree rotation and a transform rather than actual reverse physics- their hitbox for melee/magic is still at ground level, too. You could create a few scripts and idles that would make them 'climb' ceilings, although the scripting would be a bit clunky (detect ceiling height by firing spells upwards and tracking when they stop kind of thing). It's only really suitable for single locations or setpieces, e.g. a floor in a SI house that has everything inexplicably upside-down.

Very cool. This will definitely make the game more interesting.


The funny thing about that pic is that I can do something similar with my legs (I'm double jointed). It's great at parties.

could it be useful for Flying Creatures to fly at certain height..?

This looks like a great resource. I'll use it if I ever get back into making things for ES.

heh...i remember ages ago when this technique was first meantions (was it you, i dont remember).

glad to see it finally taking shape, it is looking good

Yes, but it's not going to be substantially different from the current best methods. It doesn't change the location of the hitbox, which is still at the actor's feet, they'll still path like a normal actor, all you can do is change how high above the ground their art is. Since all you'll really want is them to be high up out of combat and low down in combat, you can already do that by making them have their weapon sheathed idles be 'cruising altitude' and the weapon drawn idles be at about player height for fighting, so it's a bit pointless.

Looks really cool.

Ah, what a rentr? to oblivion modding.
You always amaze.

Will have a go at this when i get the time.^^

That's awesome! :goodjob:

absolutely fantastic! screw E-cup anime girls in Oblivion and let's bring some variety and realism to people

Now, this is awsome. I really hope this gets fiished. Also it shows that the devs can actually do this in the next game as well, without the bothersome need to make customeslothng for everyone. Really fantastic. I think that after OBSE this might be the second greatest change made to Oblivion.

This is a much better fix for a problem I needed to solve than my solution (which was going to be to re-model, re-rig, and re-animate an entire humanoid).

Fantastic as always Toaster!

Is this how you made that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOPz0QPJAfo?

Could this technique be used to get believable children (rather than midget advlts) into the game?

It does.

You just need to add some "bones" to the front of the skeleton, and rig the briasts to them. The bad part is you need to re-rig every piece of clothing you care for. The "good" part is ... well, you can animate them too.



Yes, it could.