Animation Help Needed

[Gagonite]

Hey guys, Not quite sure where to ask this question, so I'll just post it here.

I'm currently working on a re-skin of the Musketeer unit using the Landsknecht skin, that part went well. However, the thing I'm having trouble with is adding a new animation to the kfm file. The animation I want to use is the Light Swordsman attack, hurt, and melee death animations, so that the Musketeer will use those in melee, and use the regular musketeer animations in range. I think I know why I can't get it to work either, I just can't figure out how to fix it. In the Musketeer .Nif, the skeleton is named with Bip01, while the Light Swordsman .kf animations are tagged to a skeleton named BIP, and I am unable to rename it. Anyone know how to redo that?


Also, while I won't be working on this part till the above problem is fixed, does anyone know how to make it so that the new Musketeer's sword (which is the sword from the Explorer) moves from his hip to his hand during the melee animation? Also, his gun would go to his back from his hand during that same animation. I've tried figuring it by using the Archer .Nif file stuff as reference, but no luck.

Any help with either of these two problems will be greatly appreciated. Also, here's a quick picture of the unit thus far:

 

[Gagonite]

Alright, update on the progress. I've been able to figure out the first problem, and the solution was so simple I'm tempted to go bang my head against the wall. In the .nif file, to rename Bip01 to BIP or vise versa, all you have to do is double click on the name and rename it. In the .kf file, that doesn't work. However, after searching around in the .kf file a bit, I found out a place to change the animation bone targets. All I had to do was click a stupid little 'txt' button next to the name to change it. So I did that, and vuala! Now I need to change another 6 or 7 .kf files to that, then my Landsknecht Arquebusier'll be swingin' his sword!

However, I'm still in need of assistance with the second problem, that is the visibility of his sword and gun on certain animations. I have a feeling that it has to do with the .kf file as well as the visibility controller in the .nif, so I'm going to continue researching that. Any assistance to help me progress would still be apprecated though.

 

[Gagonite]

Well, after banging my head against a brick wall for a few hours, the wall dun broked! I figured it out, but its a bit too complex to explain it here. But now, my Arquebusier shoots like a Musketeer, fights in melee like a Light Swordsman, and looks badass all while doing it. I'll get it uploaded in the Unit Graphics section soon, theres a few minor touches that need to be done.



(If a moderater would like to remove/lock this thread, its fine by me, my problem was solved)

 

[The_Coyote]

glad that you solved the problem (so far you are the first i know who created a combinated animation this way),

about the visibility of objects i´m interested what exactly you did (used the object scale option or worked with visibility controller). If it was the later did you mimik the archer values? (i´m interested in the used time values for the NiVisibiltyController in the nif - the rest should be easy, in the kf it seems to be a boolean value, and if you added the NiVisibilityController to every kf)

on a side note: even it is too late to save you some head banging if you had looked at my nifscope tutorial you had at least known the answer to question 1, perhaps you still found some information there you could need

 

[Gagonite]

Actually I didn't change the values in the NiVisController at all, the visibility of items in certain animations is controlled in the .kf file for each animation. In there, you just add a controller for the particular item you want to be visible / invisible and set the controller to target a "NiBoolInterpolator", which has a value in it that is either 'Yes' or 'No'. Yes means it IS visible in that animation, no means it isn't. I'll post a tutorial on it soon explaining it better, since there are some other details that I'll need to explain.

Edit: And also, your tutorial did help me find and fix the first problem I just didn't read the tutorial thoroughly enough the first time around, second time I spotted what I needed to find, and was able to figure it out from there.

 

[mechaerik]

That tut would help me greatly, i thought of several ideas that i couldn't do cause i didn't think this was possible. Off the top of my head this would greatly enhance several units.

 

[The_Coyote]

thanks for the explaination, good to know that the time values in the nif doens´t seem to have an (major) impact and must not have an exact definied value.

And i awaiting for your tutorial, new ones are always good

 

[Gagonite]

Also, if you guys want to see an example of what I did, check out this thread for a Longbowman I gave the Holkan melee animation:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=312348

The Longbowman is actually the unit I used to figure out the problem. By comparing the Longbow and Staff in the various animations I was eventually able to figure it out.