How to: make minor changes to existing animation without 3Ds max

this time it was no longer a paratrooper man o war

i think i found the solution (i have a working version), but the explaination why is a bit guessing. I think the problem was the SkinPartition and the used shader. The model was a non shader version (SkinPartition with max 4 bones) and had also the meshNonShader 'shader'. The reason should be to be able to have the damage stats and texture.

While with Blender and Nifscope afaik we can´t create nonshader skinpartition, i have no idea if it´s possible with max, but having wrong skinPartition can (i think i had such a case also in past) cause the observed bahavior, some parts are animated, other aren´t.

Making the model a 'real' shader model and all woked like it should (cannons go first while fortifying in fire position, cannons are moved back by the punch - just for testing purpose renamed the file to 'frigate_fx.nif'). While for the shader model it work fine, for the nonshader version you can try to remove the skinPartition (and lose the damage texture - but the also work without them)

Thanks for all the help.

I thought in nifskope, you coould create either skin partition. When I go to create a skin partition, I get a pop up menu that states the different types of skin partitions. It tells me that 4 for nonshader and 18 for shader. Is this not correct? I did notice when I used the other partition type it gave me undesirable effects.

I think the wierdest thing of all was the fact that it was animating properly in Nifskope, but not in the game.

you should but unfortunally you can´t. Something is different if you use this option to create a non shader partition (try a vanilla unit and compare the values - i think i first saw it while playing with leaderheads), and the this difference cause the error - never asked for a fix in the niftools forums so far because the model itself works without skinPartition - i think only if you want to add a damage texture you must use the NonShader 'Shader' which demands this skinPartition

And i think, nifscope don´t use the partition to display the units and therefore is not affected by the error (only guessing)

The_Coyote said:

1) never asked for a fix in the niftools forums so far because the model itself works without skinPartition
2) And i think, nifscope don´t use the partition to display the units and therefore is not affected by the error (only guessing)

Click to expand...

1) yes, although the in-game scroll with lots of (not-partitioned) units seems a bit slower compared to the shader one (need further test)

2) Confirmed. As general rule, nifscope ignores lots of issues that you'll discover only when you perform a game test

ok, so what is the best way to delete part of an animation. i know you made alex stop short on the sword but not sure if you deleted a sequence or editted the position.

I'd like to tke part of washington's furious and cautious animations out. is there a way to see at wht pointof time its initiated and removed the nodes from there?

EDIT; ok I editted one animation by deleting interpolators for the hands i didn't want there.

On the cautious I want to not eliminate the hands but fix the eye too. but its a plinecompinterpolator so how do import animations into blender?

EDIT2: well it played in nifskope but then I'd get the black screen. Would it help if i post the files?

i only changed the rotation,

if you only want to stop an animation (hold the position at a certain frame) and it´s no spline interpolator, expand the child of the Interpolator and go to the NiTransformData, there in the Quaternion Keys the rotation is stored.

if you play an animation in nifscope you can see the actual time in the animation control panel

now go the the first Quaternion Keys where you want to "fix" the position and use the value there from the key before (and do the same for all keys where you want the position fixed). Also rotation changes are possible (but a bit trial and error to find a good position). if you want no animation, reduce the number of quaternion keys to two and enter in both the rotation you want

Translations is the position (could be good to fix eye position or other bones)

if you have a spline interpolator you must import the animation in Blender and export it again to have NiTransformInterpolators, you can also try to change the animation already there (remove the information for the keys you want to change and set your new values). But be aware the import seems still to be a bit buggy - someone really should report to the niftools team - some animation aren´t imported right (rotation errors). Also it´s sometimes tricky to have the animation like you want (sometimes a key is absolutly wrong and you have to fix the resulting twist [strange animation] by hand)

if you want to complete remove the information for a bones, you must do this in the NiControllerSequence under Controlled Blocks - simply change the name to a non existing node in the nif (eg hand to hand2) - now the information is not used in game (the error message in nifscope can be ignored)

hope this helps (not much time atm)

col. the renaming stuff (weird you have to go into the controller to do it) ended up getting me where I wanted to go. Thx!