Possible Projects Interest

Started by Randomdays, September 22, 2013, 02:43:31 AM

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Randomdays

I'm going to pause a day or two on importing rigging. I just did some more research on the gr2, ganny2 file format. This is used for Civ 5 and partially for NWN2. The old UO Mondain's Legacy uses gr1 that I can convert to gr2. If I can get the project below to work, that would save the rigging time.

What I'm looking into after running around on the Civ Fanatics site for Civ 5 is there are some scripts for Blender on this, and a program called Nexus Buddy2. It looks like with NB2, you might be able to get converted GR2 meshes - with animation - into Blender 2.49. I've already done the meshes, but getting the animations in would be a big breakthru, especially the creature animations for UO and NWN2. Civ 6 would be nice also, but its units are mainly people, with a few creatures thrown in. For all three of these games the animations are a bunch of separate files for each action, similar to Civ 4. Nothing else I've tried has worked, though I did get a NWN1 creature animated into nifskope with the animations embedded within the nif. It wouldn't animate in Blender, and I don't know how to separate them out in nifskope though to make a kf out of them.

Not going to spend too much time on it though. I'll do some setup and experimenting when I get home.

1) Anyone know how to get an animation out of a nif? SA - I think this is what you saw in the Knight Rider game. While not a nif, the mdl files for NWN1 do the same - one long string of animations. When exporting to nif in Max 8, I could get the animations working embedded, but trying to do a seperate kf file, it always had no data in it. I did see where in Max at least, you can break it up into smaller animation sets. instead of one big one.

2) Has anyone done modding for Civ5/ gr2 files?

RD


Randomdays

Update on above - I was able to get a granny mesh with armature and skin weights imported into Blender. The armature though is completely different than a nif armature - no solid bones. I could export the mesh out as a nif, which I could do before with max, but not the armature(envelope skinning not supported). I might be able to get it to animate in blender, but not as a nif without the normal bones.

I would say that ends it for me in getting the animations in for anything extra except the NWN embedded issue.

RD

Randomdays

Update and odds and ends.

A little further along but still not quite there. Doing some searching I was able to find some good support for Granny files with a Program called Noesis. The thread on the granny files is here - https://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=22277

After finding the right dll file to make everything work, I was able to get an animated spider from UO, and a Bullette skeleton animated from NWN2. They exported as dae files to Blender 2.69 and animated there as well. I was even able to get a crab from NWN1 to animate somehow. Some nifs were working in Noesis but not all, and there's no nif export.

And thats about it. I can't get the nif scripts working in Blender 2.69. There's no animation in 2.49b. Even though the armature is there now, I can't get a working kf going or get around the "convert envelopes to vertex group"  error when exporting. Blender 2.7 and up won't run on my win7 laptop, which might fix the problem.

The Nexus Buddy program seems to work all right, but appears to be just for Civ 5 granny files.

On the upside - many of the Civ 4 mods I've downloaded have promising fantasy/ creature models and kfs that should import.

And more good news (or bad if you're a character in game) - the Giant Spider Invasion has started!

Below is a pic of some items uploaded to the megasite; all the spiders are on the Civ 4 spider kfs for FFvt3R. A UO Giant Spider with 3 alt skins - Black Widow, Dread and Frost; NWN2 spiders - A Brown Spider with an alt Dire Spider Skin, a Giant Spider, a Phase Spider in normal and Phased Mode, and another Giant Spider.

On the bottom is an unmounted Spear Warrior and a NWN2 Wasp - the wings weren't working right for some reason, so it has dragonfly wings.

Also, upped the Wereshark, and reupped the Snake, this time with 5 alternate skins.

RD










SickAlice

Nice stuff. Good old Noesis, such a handy thing right along with quickbms. No to your question about getting keyframes out of a nif, not with what tools I have which would be nifskope mostly. It was the question I was asking you. Only a guess though I never tried, too tied up with the endless manual editing of keyframes myself (I've been working on Tigerclaws keys for going on a month with none to spare for any other projects) but I would think either make a copy of the nif say, delete anything not keyframe and rename it. Or copy the keyframes from the nif to a keyframe file of choice. If I get the process, still haven't tried it and not clear on the Blender version and proper installation but you import keyframes one at a time? So then copy the keyframe from the nif to a keyframe file, choose a short one (chicken has the shortest keyframe set I can think of) and delete the excess keyframes so only the one that you copied remains then use the file as the rest of the process goes. Renaming the animation and such and even setting it up in the proper form if needed. That's where my mind goes without any testing on this.

Randomdays

The problem with the embedded keyframes inside the nif is that I don't even see them to work on them. Even though it was exported out as a FFvt3R mesh, I don't see the normal FFvt3R keyframes when looking through the data in nifskope.

Blender went through many changes as it advanced, and backwards compatibility isn't very good. The newer version can do things that the older versions can't - I can see that just from the point that the dae import of the nwn mesh animates fine in 2.69 but not in 2.49. I actually got what looked like a good kf out at one point, but it was only 4k in size and doing testing with the viewer, it wouldn't animate.

I don't know what I did before, but I'm having problems

Blender2.69 doesn't have nif import/export. The newer 2.7x and 2.8x versions do, but won't run on my laptop. Maybe one of those versions would work fine exporting to nif, but no way to tell at the moment.

I'll go ahead and upload the original some files into a zip(NWN test.rar) and put it in the request area on the mega site if anyone wants to look at it.I'll upload the UO spider gr2 mesh and walking gr2 files, and the animating dae file, and for the crab the nwn mdl file which has the mesh and animation it it, the FFvt3R nif with the embedded kf, and a separate nif with an almost working kf. If you want to look at the mdl, you'll need Neverblender to look at it, or nwmax for gmax or max.

RD

SickAlice

I'd have to see it of course. If you want to send me PM when it's ready. Because you say "normal" that implies there's something there. Like the KR2 files have keyframe controllers with keyframe data but for Third Reich they would need to be linked within a standard controller sequence. That's the manner of the experiment I'm going to try once I get through the other set I'm editing. So basically a matter of looking at what is there and figuring out how to reorganize in the way FF reads them. No matter what I want to see them though, I like digging through different nif files and seeing what's going on.

If or when I get to it I noted those Blender versions. If I can figure out how to standalone and not install over 2.49b (I have a version like that for Avengers Academy models, I just don't remember how I installed it) I'll give it a shot and pass along what I find.

GogglesPizanno

You can download all versions of blender from their site, and each one has a portable version (download the zip/7z as opposed to the exe/msi) and just extract it to a folder and run. I have like 4 different versions "installed" on a thumb drive:

https://download.blender.org/release/

Randomdays

#397
Thanks SA

The files are uploaded to the mega site, as stated above, in the request folder

https://mega.nz/folder/bxoATQBA#zhsyE8hp1uwMeDk7r17BcQ

As Goggles said, they shouldn't interfere with each other

RD

Randomdays


4 new meshes uploaded. Jonny Quest and his dad uploaded to the Jonny Quest folder. Hadji and Bandit moved to the Jonny Quest folder. Old, unrigged meshes removed.

Kaboobie from Shazzan - walking version - uploaded to the HB heroes folder. Also, the Civ 4 mesh its based on uploaded to the keyframe transfer folder.




4 more meshes that are in process - no estimated time for finishing;

Up top, the Spidermobile with Spider-man behind the wheel, Speedbuggy almost ready to go.

and... 40 stories high, head in the clouds.. its HB's Godzilla! .... and Godzooky.






SickAlice

#399
Cool. Downloading the stuff now. It'll be a bit before I get into the Blender part. I had surgery, the bit on my tailbone has me slow moving. I'll look at the nif tonight yet. Ty both.

Great job on the buggy's. Noticed you have Grim, Billy and Mandy in there? If you know how you extracted them and could PM that to me I'd be grateful. Porting Eris from the game has been way up on my to do list for awhile but I never got through the format.

Edit: Looked at the samples. This is top of my head mind you. I don't know about the spider, I watched it move in Noesis but never worked with this format. I'll follow your tutorials and check this later. It will give me practice.

So the crab. Looking the keyframe files (refer to screencap from a normal FFvTTR keyframe). In the keyframe.kf for crab are NiKeyframeControllers and within them NiKeyframeData. So my guess is you would copy and paste and build a standard keyframe using a NiControllerSequence as you would work with in any standard keyframe set (again screencap). There is a NiControllerSequence already in your crab keyframe as well the needed NiTextKeyExtraData. However it isn't the correct directory structure. This should like any keyframe set be collapsible down to the NiControllerSequence. So basically open this and any standard keyframe set and look at them side by side then set them up accordingly. Likewise you would have the proper biped information and so forth. Again I've never done this so this a test.



Another noted thing is the NiKeyframeData appears lacking? Maybe it's because it's this single animation. I do see in crab_with_keyframe.nif a lot of data especially in the NiTransformData values. These are also under specific bone nodes. I don't know if this needs to be translated somehow but maybe a place to look into.

If you need more explanation let me know but I know you enough to think what I'm saying will snap into place when you're looking at the crabs keyframe set and a standard one side by side. Someone like Windblown could probably make a better go of it here of course.



Randomdays

Thanks SA
Sorry to hear about more health issues - have a speedy recovery.

Nothing really jumping out - it probably does need someone like a Windblown to figure out.

Billy and Mandy came from a 3d models site thats not around anymore, but you can get whats available from here;

https://www.models-resource.com/wii/cartoonnetworkpunchtimeexplosionxl/

I was thinking of doing a Halloween release next month. Hoss and Irwin are there, and there's also some Courage meshes available on the site.

RD


SickAlice

The health issues are constant. I have a weird condition. More reluctant to have caught this early.

Oh that one. I'd thought you got the models from the game of the cartoon itself. I never cracked the self titled one which has the rest of the supporting characters from the show in it.

Things I noted. Your character.kf doesn't have values in the NiKeyframeData. In crab_with_kf.nif they are present in the NiTransformData. I tried coverting the block type and copying them over but it's a version mismatch. So what I did was import that crab_with_kf.nif into Blender, 2.49b for me here, with import animation checked of course. Then selected all and exported but as FFvTTR animations only. The keyframes that came out do contain the data now, the key data in the Translations and Quaternions right? Next noted the naming conventions are off in your nif to include _ca1slash at the end of each node. So I renamed the strings to match that. No dice either. I was thinking then maybe copy just the keyframe datas into a different keyframe set or something next? The header could be bad here and Blender doesn't spit out keyframes right typically as you know but the NiKeyframeData in the ones I exported is correct.

At any right I know you understand all that and can replicate it so at least maybe it will get you further ahead with this. My suggestion is to try to copy them into another set and see it goes (I really think the header info is broke) like your character.kf. Or I included a reduced BumblebeeCar keyframes to make it easy for you. Anyways here's the converted, converted and renamed to _ca1slash and reduced BBC keys.
http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/crabkeys01.rar


Randomdays

#402
Thanks for all the research and effort looking into this.

I'll download them and look them over sometime this week as work permits.Anyone else that wants to investigate, please do. Maybe you'll have better luck.

With the EE3 and Civ4 keyframes imports working well with FFvt3R, new human type kfs have a lot of new choices. I think the Civ4 kfs also share some common bone naming where there ought to be some kf transfer among them possible. Also, I think that a lot of units might share common kfs. Once a shield and sword set is done, they might be used by any similar type of unit, and it might be possible to just quickly import/ export a similar unit and have it animate right away.

For the other games, I'm more looking to try to get some non-human animations imported, like the crab. An or or goblin would be just fine on what's available, but the non - standard beasts would be great on their own kfs. Seeing a Balrog or Beholder doing their special attacks would be very nice.

Civ 4 does have some nice fantasy mods that I'm looking at, especially the Warhammer and Fall from Heaven 2 mods. I've already gotten the nice scorpion and spider kfs in that I've used with other imports.

RD

SickAlice

I'm into what you're doing as well since I desire more variety in animation types as well, again Doctor Octopus has been a long subject among many. Same with specific coding options though again me not being able to install FFX is creating a block on my end with that. Though the short version of this crab thing is it's about the correct set-up and values in the file, all the basics you already know when copying on keyframe to another in Nifskope and/or adjusting them. It usually always is a value somewhere that's just wrong. I noticed though it's a messy file maybe the Nif itself is incorrect or has a bad value or two buried in it since it isn't lining up with the keyframes even when the values are correct. A last thing to consider is signature. More often keyframes and nifs have baked in signatures. This is why I use Val's Bumblebee car keys for testing, they're broken somehow thus work with any nif out there in CTool/CTool2 and provide a converted version on my own site. Anyways you can copy over a keyframe and even see it in CTools but that doesn't mean it will work in game because it was never baked in and signed in 3ds Max. It comes then down to legacy and what that nif and keyframe set is derived from. Like I've found that Ink's Exodus is broken in this way that most nifs can conform to it's signature so long as they are caped (important because there's a variety of animations otherwise unavailable to most caped male nifs in that set). All sorts of things to consider but I know when doing the process it's easy to get microscoped in on a certain point though in reality again it's almost always a bad setting. Hence stopping at a point and comparing to a working keyframe/nif upon when I did I caught several errors right away like the wrong block types (thus the engine wouldn't recognize them), wrong node names in the strings, empty keyframe data and so on. Much of what I ever pulled off since day one, this is before Nifskope and when we only hex editing to go by was done by exploiting a setting in the values one way or another. Otherwise I'll be on and off investigating as well likewise as time permits though I think I have more to devote since I'm down due to surgeries, hence why I mentioned that. Also I work for myself and it's seasonal which is at a wrap up point sans raking leaves and plowing snow now. Else please continue to elaborate on findings, I'm paying attention and it's important for documentation as well for others. I have a feeling we're going to crack this code yet.


Randomdays

It could be a problem with Max 8. The original Neverwinter mdl import to Max through NWmax seems to work fine, and you can see the long animation thread of all actions when you animate the mesh. On export though, the export nif with single or mutli kf gives only a small empty kf, as well as when you pick exporting out a single or multi kf alone without the nif.

Only when you select exporting the nif with the embedded animation do you get any animation at all.

Unfortunately,  NeverBlender won't run on 2.49b, and while it will run on 2.69, that version doesn't have nifscripts. I've got 4 or 5 different graphics programs installed, but none of them can do everything, so you wind up trying to move between them trying to get something working. The dae format is nice since it does contain the animations within it.

That's while I'm thinking Bender 7x or 8x might be worth looking into - I think its got NeverBlender and updated nif scripts, and might be able to do the job.

SickAlice

#405
I put a 2.83 standalone on my system as it was the latest called for and installed scripts for both games. I'll run through some experiments and bring back the results. I have the most recent version of windows as well a stellar graphics card (Ryzen 5) so the only thing left is how complete the scripts are. There's a note in Nif ones that they aren't complete and are work in progress though what's missing isn't specified.

edit: early findings. The Niftools suite is different than Nif plugins and there's a lack of handy tutorials on the subject. Imported crab using Neverwinter tools, animated it and so on. Export failed as usual, wrong settings and so on. No export dialogue is present in Niftools at all, just dumps an unspecified type nif/keyframe with no parameters. No tutorials found on how this works online, assuming a toolset must be accessible somehow. Wiki tutorial appears to just recycle old stuff from previous plugin tutorial (Ye Old Chair).

Randomdays

Well, that's disappointing, but good to know. It may be that importing and animating may not be possible beyond limited use. As it is, I could limit the animation to one embedded set and have an idle or walking crab for non-interactive background items.

At least all the meshes are available.

If you get the chance, try the same with the spider dae file and see what happens with that. If that works, that would open up NWN2, and I've seen a tutorial online for converting NWN1 to NWN2 and changing the animation over from the super set into individual kf files.

https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Creture_Conversion

Once again, thanks for all the help with this. If it can't be done, that will be disappointing, but at least the other games still work. There might be other nif/kf games from the list that might be able to hammered in for the FF games.

RD

SickAlice

#407
I don't think I'm being clear here. The problem is export, not import. I can import a 3d model and animate it fine in any program. The problem with exporting is there are no options to do so. I think I get where you're confused. There is no "new version". Nif Plugins and Nif Tools are two different things. Nif plugins ended as of the last beta. Niftools is a ground up project and barely works. It's suggested not to use it all and stick with the plugins and other utilities. This is what I'm telling you here. Sorry. They aren't even close to having it working and much if it is just stubs right now.

I can't use that tutorial since I don't have 3ds Max. Doesn't matter because see above. Again though exporting keyframes works with the plugins, the results I got which are in the linked file where superior to garbage that Niftools program pumped out. I don't know what step you missed that made yours come out empty (highlighted everything before export? Sounds silly but it's important). I think what your missing is the rest that has to be done outside of Blender. Blender doesn't create nif files right, you know this. When you export a nif you have to fix it outside in Nifskope. It's the same for keyframes, you can't use what Blender spits out. There's no version that does FFvT3r specifically. So the file IS right, it just needs to be worked from there.

So speaking of that I noticed your crab nif itself is broken. There is no pick-ups or furniture. Like the bounding boxes and contacts and stuff. So that's a static model is what it is. So whether the keyframes are fine it won't animate like that regardless. Noting too just so it's said CTool isn't accurate. It's for preview only but will display most models that will otherwise crash in game. That's why I stick to transplanting and working with what's already there. The slightest deviation causes a crash. It's also why I don't use the keyframe swap "shortcuts". Like assigning more than one variable to a single keyframe. They work so I'm told. Yes, in Ctool. They crash in game. Likewise copying keyframes to another if the mesh itself isn't legacy crashes it in game. Likewise if the root biped is off by a single digit. All those things work in CTool but not in game.

So if it resonates, open up a working file, open your new file and make them match is what I'm getting at. There's no shortcut here. You have to the long boring work to make it work. Just like tedious work I've been doing a month on this one keyframe set, just copying and pasting values over and over. Because Blender and even Nifskope just don't put them out as is. So yeah it can be done but you have to do all the tiring set up work yet is all. I don't have a few weeks to devote to that part of it.

Edit: Something I forgot here. Just because it's Nif doesn't mean it's supported by this game and think that's a snag you're running into. Third Reich is a pretty retro version of the Netimmerse and the first game is way worse. So there's features in the Neverwinter nifs and keyframes for example this 3rdR engine can't actually read. I'm not clear on all the specifics but I know this much because I went through this process myself. My method here would be to impose those into an existing (or vice-versa). I would use one the ants in this case because they're comparable (so you can get the bounding boxes and all that stuff). I'd be looking at bringing over the armature and all that too. That's what I'm seeing anyways because again the keyframes look fine, the ones I exported anyways. The nif itself isn't fine at all though. It's missing way too many things. Unless you can figure out how to add it all in Blender first of course. Shortly when you go in Nifskope and select Display Hidden. On a usable Nif all that colorful stuff will show up, even those native Knight Rider 2 nifs I sent you have that. You're crab doesn't have any of it. It's just an armature and a bunch of static 3d models with no information baked into them as it is now.


Randomdays

That's what I thought - and thanks for clarifying.

Usually when I work I do have to add the selection and bounding boxes in by hand. I know what you mean also by not all nif versions being the same/ compatible with each other. Zoo Tycoon 2 doesn't use kfs at all, but xml files. Dark Age of Camelot uses kfm files, which need a specific program to work with, and forsome reason I can't get the uv to set up the skins right for them - they never seem to skin correctly. In a way its lucky that two of the games that do work, EE3 and Civ4, have such a large number of meshes and kfs to choose from, and Civ 4 has such a large number of mods for it.. Other than that then it'll be going back and rigging the mesh to working armatures and kfs, like the beetles and spiders I just did.



Thanks once more.

RD

SickAlice

I think that crab would on ant and you could play around and get the claw working. When I watched all the animations they were mostly walking with exceptions where it swung the claw around. Really I don't think you'd think you'd even need the pincer to clasp, it's not like it would be seen in game being so small and everything. But else I see the animations working fine in Blender, can select between whichever I want there. I also "think" it may be possible to superimpose some of the crab to an already made nif then rig the original crab animations to it still though. Just a lot of messing around in Nifskope.

I can almost always fix texturing with ease if you want to send those my way. I've used Milkshape for decades now and it was made for doing that exactly.

Randomdays

#410
I'll put up a couple of test Dark Age nifs in the requests folder for you to look at. I've been using Milkshape for a long too, but I tried Milkshape, Blender and Max, and all applied the texture incorrectly. Maybe you'll have better luck. There's multiple types of the same creature in the game, some might be higher poly models introduced form an expansion. I'm including those as well, just in case I picked the wrong version, though I think I tried them all. I don't think there's other versions of the skins but I'll look again for that also.

For the crab, it would of course be a Giant version to menace the good people of the city. If you check the keyframe imports on the mega site, you'll see I was able to get a scorpion that might work, imported with new kfs from Civ 4 (which itself was imported to Civ4 by a modder from Kohan 2), and a mud crab I imported with new kfs from Oblivion.

SickAlice

Cool. I'll probably be able to work it. In the time I used Milkshape I've failed to map a single 3d model. I know that program like the back of my hand. Just when you do get whatever uploaded make sure to send me a PM so I won't miss it and can put a prompt in my que.

I'm standing on what I say about crab, spider as well. I think you export fine enough but need to combine methods and if so can pull it off. Downside is it means a ton of value input, copying and pasting of course. But to get it from that format to FFvT3R anyways. Else thoughts were 1.) did you make sure the armature was assigned before export? That would be all individual parts. I noticed the models in the nif are static and have no bone/biped data in them. 2.) possibly weight the thing to a copy of itself. This is a long shot though I'd check the former first. Either way I know that nif is missing any pick-up/contact information it needs, all the hidden furniture like I said and that being the case wouldn't animate in CTool nor in game. I mean it's simple, there's nothing actually attached to the 3d models nor them to anything in the Nif, they're basically free floating right? So when you run it in CTool the bone nodes/armature is probably animating (at least with the renamed keyframes I put together for you) but it's not like you can see them. But the models aren't assigned to those bones so they just sit there and don't move. Hope I'm making sense here, I can't figure out how to word it.

On the side celebration. Phase 1 of Tigerclaws keyframes are done. On to modelling and texturing Phase 2 then keyframing Phase 2 and finally glossing. I'll be happy when I get this thing and the other "big project" out of my way so I can go back to the fun stuff.

Randomdays

#412
Good to hear on Tigerclaws.

The Camelot files were uploaded last night and are ready to grab. One skin is a little weird in the its not a standard square/ multiple of two, but a rectangle - this might be one issue. Good luck with those.

I understand what's your saying on the weightpainting and I'll double check on that - but if they weren't weight painted at all, why would they animate at all, the dae in 2.69, or the embedded nif in nifskope?

In noesis with the spider at least, you can activate the skeleton view and see the armature animate as well as the mesh. If its losing its weightpainting somehow, that would be something to look into.

On a side note, I was able to get the spider to animate well in 2.49, but as a Quake 3 md3 file - which from the looks of it animates the mesh directly without an armature at all.

The 'furniture' to me could always be looked at later if the kf problem can be figured out. The spider and the crab aren't too important for themselves, but more for test subjects for the process.


Randomdays

Update on the Camelot files - tried again on the two nifs - cyclops and ettin - converted the nif to obj in Blender, loaded the obj in milkshape, assigned the texture, exported the obj back out, loaded the obj in Blender - skin not properly set up to match the mesh.

But....tried the process above with 3 different meshes - a basilisk, a cockatrice, and a crab - process worked perfectly and skins look good on the mesh.

Not sure what the problem is for the 1st two, unless the models are wrong for the skins, or I just got unlucky in picking two difficult sets first.

Randomdays

#414
The Spider- Mobile is basically finished. Added transparency to the front and rear headlights, added some basic skins to make it look more like the classic car.

http://www.comicscube.com/2015/05/the-saga-of-spider-mobile.html

Just under 20K vertexes total, but since its made of many parts and has no animation or vertex groups, doesn't seem to lag in game.

Spider-man mesh/skin from Tommyboy's Spider-man TVLite. Its a male basic skin so any male basic should work on it.

I tried to get it to work with the ant kfs so it would look like it was riding up a wall with the wall climbing ability, but couldn't get it to respond to the kfs.

If anyone wants to work on it - tweak the skin, add web cannons to the headlights, get it to wall climb, please hop on board.

Uploaded to the mega site in the 'other' folder.

RD


SickAlice

It's close enough to release I can spoil I guess. Tiger Claw is a model imported in rather than making my own for getting the look right. I'm adding the mechanical arm though. So it left me having to work in his jetpack, two guns, a rifle and a sword then the weapons the arm turns into as well. Also had to make the new arm and body parts from scratch. More than for fans I'm also working which has been a goal lately to make it open for skopers/skinners to have a lot of new options they can swipe for whatever project.

Spider-mobile looks great, I expected no less from you.

To be clear weight painting is a long shot. It's more that there's no data at all in the models connecting them to the bones. Like if you took a model and dropped it in the Scene Root, it would just hang out and not respond to the animations. So my direction would be rigging it using Nifskope to make it closer to this games required structure. As it is it isn't a 3rd Reich nif, not at least past a static object and this games limited engine as the first is very fickle in that it does checksums for specific things. If they aren't there, if the values are off a hair (example: main biped changes size momentarily results in freezing in game) or are properties this version of the engine doesn't utilize it will be a no go. It's why I always check everything in game, especially the new animation exactly. So you don't need to weight paint exactly as much as find a way to assign the models to their nodes. As it is the models have no data in them that I can see.

All in all this is what wings me around to updating the engine itself, making an new one that's more flexible. But that's not a solo project of course and I'm not that level of a programmer. Likewise where FFX is the workaround since you can tweek existing settings, again frustrating for me it doesn't install on 10 x64.

SickAlice

#416
Here, took some screenshots to see if I can show you what I mean. The first one is Irrationals ant_soldier, 2nd your crab file:

Normal set up in the ant. It opens with a Scene Root. Value Flag is 2= Collison Detection: Triangles. Check Skin Influence. Like your typical it has lighting effects that will be applied to everything in the scene. It also stores the main node which everything is attached to, usually that's Biped 01 (Flag: 6 type) for us. Or it's within a Handle. With 3rd Reich within a Root_NoteTrack set. Inside the Scene Root are also buffer properties/vertex color, so on. A weapon node is in there that the game accounts for maybe some Omni lighting. The Scene Root tree structure is important in other words, the game checks for this. Meshes are typically stored within a node. You see the ant Editable_Mesh stores within a NiNode (Flag:2 type). These types are important and it matters that they're specific. Editable_mesh is weighted thus contains the bone info inside it, you know this. It doesn't have to be. Dropping a static model into a bone node in Nifskope will assign that bone data to the model, it will have that data in it if you look in the block details. Else in block details you have the pick-ups. Collision detection, important because that's how the scene and object within the scene interacts with the rest of the game. Else it would just be in space somewhere. So on, you know all this stuff.



And then there's this crab nif. See compared to above? However Blender spit this one out it isn't right. No Scene Root for starters. Instead a NiNode (crab3, naming conventions are important since the game looks for them) with a 12 type flag, Collision Detection is set to Bounding Box. It's telling the game and CTool to look for that bounding box which isn't there. No directory tree nor essential values since there's no Scene Root. No furniture again. No main node either, instead there's this c_crabyellow_ca1slash which is apparently a keyframe track? Inside it where the biped structure should be but instead there's static models (I highlighted what is the crab Body model) just dropped in and the bone nodes are inside of them instead of the other way around? In some of the others there's a node named for the bone node that isn't a bone at all with the model dropped inside that (static, connected to nothing) with the bone inside of it and something multiple times. Same name btw and as in the animations so the animation would if it could see multiple instances of the same string. And then all of them, everyone is inside one static model, the Body. Not actually a node but stuck inside one 3d mesh. You know that doesn't work. None of this does.



So what you need to do is copy and paste and rebuild this thing so it's set up proper. I suggest using a donor at least for Scene Root and go from there. There's no reason I can think of the armature of the crab (or spider later) can't just as well be brought over so long as the tree structure is correct (it would take the place of the Bipeds of course). I also do suggest renaming all this stuff to be something more commonly used, likewise match the keyframes. So sure I think it can be used. Can you export from Blender and it "just works"? No. You need to use your normal method of working with Skope and adding the missing settings and such, in this case pretty much rebuild it all. That's where the issue is, it's not the kf's, it's the nifs. So if it's a consolation you're keyframe export method works, I think you just have to highlight everything before export and change a setting or two after. It worked for me which also means you answered the question I asked in at the start of this exercise and I'm going to experiment with that this season now. It's the nif that's actually junk in the case of these models and needs to be fixed.

Otherwise I got the Camelot files, will take a look at them. Also on Spider-buggy the KITT I sent you from KR2 ironically has the animations you're looking for if it was set-up right. Funny that you bring it up since I've been thinking about it.


Randomdays

Good information SA. I'll try fooling around with them this weekend.

The Spider mobile is basically just a bunch of meshes thrown together as a static object. Tommyboy's Spider-man was posed in edit mode using its vertex groups, and then, since I was trying to get the ant to work, stripped of its armature and groups.

But with the FF ant a least, just importing it alone and exporting it back out in Blender - with no changes made - breaks it and stops animation. Its the only set of kfs I can think of that rotates 90 degrees with wall climb.

Adding the car pieces to the ant nif in niskope would probably work, but there's so many parts to it it would probably take quite a while to do.



SickAlice

The cool thing is your keyframe exporting does work, I think anyways. That's big to me. As far as buggy goes I would have transposed it on an already existing car to snag it's animations. I know you can copy a typical keyframe to climbing as well with some adjustment, I think to the rotation. It's been a long time since I did that. Else I already looked at the Camelot textures. They're off but fixable. Do you have the original files so I can look at them and see what's missing? Generally it's either and/or the position needs to be fixed, texture needs to be flipped. I'm looking at the cyclops though and don't have the original mapping to work against.

Randomdays

Those are the original files - Camelot uses nifs for creatures and map items. I haven't done anything except extract the files from the data packs.

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Dark_Age_of_Camelot

It looks like none of the original nifs I checked had mapping done, which is strange since they're obviously mapped in game. I'll check some more to see if I'm wrong on that.

Instead of kfs though, it uses some unique "kfa" files I can't find much information on.

I haven't see any problem in game when testing the keyframe imports. I had sent the first one over to Windblown to see if he could get it working (he did) so I think he would have noticed anything odd about them. You ought to download a few and take a look. Examples - The mud crab is from Oblivion, the scorpion from Civ4, the dinosaurs from Wildlife Park 2, and the Barbarian from EE3.

For all the map items I might be adding, I'll use existing ff items like a tree or something for a base. For the car I'm going to see if I have any better luck with the FFvt3R ant and see if I can make that work.

RD