Art Questions

[kevinman4404]

Any luck? Have you run a successful or an unclear diagnosis =)

Eh, and dont worry worry about it. If if seems at this point this project will fail, is it possible to have a static bison resource? That too would suffice.

Thanks for your help so far

 

[seZereth]

Any luck? Have you run a successful or an unclear diagnosis =)

Eh, and dont worry worry about it. If if seems at this point this project will fail, is it possible to have a static bison resource? That too would suffice.

Thanks for your help so far

sorry, havent had time to look into it. a static bison should be straight forward, you just have to replace the cow with the bison and probably vertex group everything to pelvis, this might do the job
you even could be able to do this with the nif viewer only, but i am not sure (attaching the bison mesh to the pelvis in nif viewer might work, probably some rotation matrix changes to bring it into right orientation, might be worth a try)

ill see if i can have alook into it next week, if you dont succeed in doing a static version-

 

[kevinman4404]

Sorry I took so long to update- time has not been on my side either.

Doing what you said seems to work for the most part.

Texture- fixed and looking great. Model-looking good.

Two problems:

1) There is only one cow, not the 3 arranged in a circle. If you know off the top of your head how to fix it I would love to know, otherwise I'll just export 3 combined cow models =) and that would work jsut as well seeing as they dont move anyways

2) That rogue polygon/square. Now that needs fixing =) So if there's one thing you look at in the blend, please let it be this.

Attached are a screenshot and the blend if you need it.

Thanks again

 

[Hanny]

Intresting thread.

Of course i dont "get" why there is no custom bison resource in vanila, ( and therfore a simply copy paste) what with the new world being full of them and Native American Indinians being a custom civ.

 

[kevinman4404]

Two Updates:

@The Static: Removing the ShadowPlaneFerdinand removed the square/polygon. However, to model a couple bison would mean having them look REALLY out of place when a pasture is put over it. I would at least like to only model one bison and let the animation nifs create several (and this would place then in or outside the pasture for me, like it would the cow). I realized it may be working only because I have "Animations Frozen" on. I haven't tested the static version without this on yet.

@The Animated: I worked on fixing this a bit. I changed the version to the 20.x.x.x version (despite earlier advice), I used the original cow to merge and get my 3rd bison besh, and then fixed the texture.

With Animations off I get what I showed in an earlier pic, minus the square (shadowplane was deleted by me), the model corrected and textures showing. There are still no 3, moving bisons, and there are stick-like polygons attached to its face. Don't really know how to get rid of those.

With animations off I get the 3 models like the original cow in-game, which go in/outside the pasture, but theyre cow models, not bison ones! (using the bison texture though). So notice that turning freeze animation off bigtime changes the resource on me.

I think that has something to do with the animation nifs/kfms not accepting my new model... it has to... but I've never worked with animations.

Let's try the animated one first, with this new information, then static if that fails.

Latest .blend (this one is for the updated NONstatic one) is attached

Any ideas?

 

[seZereth]

have you tried to import the original cow and export it without modifying, just to see what the import export does and if it still works?
if that is the case, then you have to check that your bisons are all weighed painted to the appropriate bones. the nif of the original cow shows 3 rigs, named CowA_Ground_node_dummy Cow_Ground_node_dummy CowA_Ground_node_dummy@#15

So i think every cow has to be parented to an individual dummy bone.
the thing which makes the strange lines, is the piece you cut out for the eyes, it seems not to be weighted and thus is not aligned with the bones.

hope that helps you a bit.

 

[kevinman4404]

Some interesting suggestions. Remember I've never done animation stuff before, so:

a) I'm guessing rig=animation? How do I parent the cows to those rigs?

b) Any suggestions for getting at the eyes under the bison's maskish head? I've been painting up till now and I fear selecting/assigning will paint vertices I don't want painted.

 

[seZereth]

well, first excuse my expressions
but at the beginning i provided you with the uberuseful blender wiki, a short look for rig might give you a starting point
I am by far not an advanced animator.
The rig is the skeleton you see, the sum of the bones which belong to each other. So, in a way, the animation is done by transforming the rig, the bones.
In the nif, each dummy has a set of bones asigned. which suggests, that each bison needs to be assigned to an individual set of bones. but as I see it, in blender everything is aligned over each other, all in the same place.


why did you cut in the eye holes in the first place? having them stay where they are would make your life easier. right now I found one eye inside his head, turn on wireframe and have a look inside his head either you delete this fragment or you move it to where it belongs and then weight paint it to the head.

ok, let me know if you can progress
I hope at the end of all this, you will have a lot of experience

 

[kevinman4404]

Hey, it's been a long time.

I started easing my way back into getting a static bison model, and I think I'm almost there.

It looks like that both with animations on and (how I play) off. Which is good.

The two questions that remain are:

1) How can I get rid of that darned square? Do you think removing the 'shadowplane_ferdinand' would get rid of that?

and

2) Would turning and lifting the cow in Blender turn and lift it in the game?


Kevin

 

[CyberChrist]

Hmm, Bison animal unit and resource in the works? I can't wait for you to complete this!

 

[richarnd]

Hmm, Bison animal unit and resource in the works? I can't wait for you to complete this!

Likewise. Looking great so far.

 

[kevinman4404]

The culprit was shadow square.

Also, this proves that rotating the mesh alone did produce a result.


However, how can I lift it? Simply lifting it in Blender doesn't work.

I am yet to test it with a pasture. If it fits in/out of it it will be blind luck.

 

[xienwolf]

If it was a unit I would say you have it enabled to Render Underwater... But as a resource I haven't a clue

 

[it-ogo]

Of course i dont "get" why there is no custom bison resource in vanila, ( and therfore a simply copy paste) what with the new world being full of them and Native American Indinians being a custom civ.

Basically bison is a kind of cow. If you ever used Great Plains map generator there are plenty of them.

 

[CyberChrist]

Basically bison is a kind of cow.

Lol, that is about the same as saying that Tigers are basicly a kind of Lion(which they of course are to a certain degree, but I think you get my point).

 

[xienwolf]

No Water Buffalo or Yak, but some African Leaders as well... It's just an economy issue. They didn't have sufficient use for them as a resource (units/health/etc), so they didn't add it in.

 

[kenken244]

But they did add bananas!

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There should at least be Camels and Goats (if not also llamas )

Seriously though, I'm looking for Camels and Goats to add to my modmod

 

[Eldric IV]

Camels are horses. Goats are sheep. Salt is spices. etc.

 

[kevinman4404]

(while you guys are at it Id say it would be a stretch for goats to equal sheep, cuz one is for clothing the other is for cheese; also, camels would lead to camel units so that would need to have its own too)