Currently working on Super Llama's Skyrender

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:50 pm

With Super Llama's permission, I have been using his Max 5 scene to try to get his Skyrender creature MW-ready. I have tweaked textures, added a shadow skeleton, and altered the type of animations but not the animations themselves. At this point the creature and animations look pretty good in Nifskope and SceneImmerse, though the animations look less good in the Preview window of the CS. Now I would like to see the performance in-game. Since my MW CS experience is really rusty, I have a couple of questions:

- Any recommendations for a remote external call where I can station the Skyrender in a test ESP?
- Also I was going to use the Betty Netch as a template for my test creature, since it also flies. Any thoughts?

This is undoubtedly the wrong place for this, but I know I can post a topic here. Please feel to move this post appropriately.

Thanks,
Steve

Post by **rot** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 9:30 am

Great news!

SACarrow wrote: - Any recommendations for a remote external call where I can station the Skyrender in a test ESP?

Any should do? I like to go eg to Ghostgate for random tests, flat land may be more practical for you but slopes might also reveal collision issues if they're too severe (never entirely avoidable with MW critters)
but you don't necessarily have to pre-place one, you can just pop them up from ingame with the console.

Code: Select all

PlaceAtPC "creature ID" 1 0 0

SACarrow wrote: - Also I was going to use the Betty Netch as a template for my test creature, since it also flies. Any thoughts?

Far as I can tell the only relevant parameters for you would be having "Flying" checked, its Speed (which you can edit ingame too - click on the creature with console open, SetSpeed [XX]), possibly Wander parameters (can be edited in the CS under "AI" for the creature) and hostility, so yes a netch base should be fine?

Rats · Post by **Rats** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:18 pm

This is awesome news! Thank you for tackling the skyrender, SACarrow!

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Thu Apr 30, 2015 12:21 am

I have successfully gotten a SkyRender into the game, though it does not behave the way that I would like. I have enclosed a 7Z archive that when extracted into the parent directory of a MW install will put the meshes in Meshes\TEST, the textures under Textures, and Skyrender.esp into Data files. That ESP provides two creatures, TR_Skyrender and TR_Skyrender_tame. Some thoughts:

95% of the work was Super Llama's. What I did was to:

o Convert and add alpha to his textures, since MW does not directly support opacity maps.
o Lower the flying anims and raised the bounding box to minimize the static bounding box issue.
o Change some anim group names.
o Re-organize the scene structure so the exported NIF was recognized by MW.
o Add a really crappy Death1 anim group

About those changed anim names: SL included several anims designed to allow a Skyrender to be on the ground and then take off. Since no vanilla MW flying creature actually does that, those anim group names were unrecognized by the game. To preserve the possibility of scripting that behavior, I changed TakeOff to Jump and StandIdle[1-3] to Idle[7-9].

I put in SoundGen tags in appropriate places, but the creature currently uses scrib sounds.

When I do a PlaceAtPC TR_Skyrender_tame 1 120 0, the creature behaves oddly. I made the creature based on the betty netch, but the creature's first reaction is to flee, even when attacked.

My hope is that some people who are more experienced with the CS can review what I have done and give me their thoughts. If I need to add or change anim tags, please let me know. Of course, any other feedback is welcome. Think of this as a showcase for a handyman, as that was primarily what I used to do at Silgrad: getting other people's talents actually into the game.

Thanks,
Steve

Rats · Post by **Rats** » Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:42 am

Looking really good

One thing I noticed in game was that the creature is rotated 180 degrees "backwards". When I managed to get a skyrender attack the player character it turned its back to the player. Now, I'm not quite sure if this could also explain why the skyrender seems to flee instead of running after the player in combat; but maybe that's the reason why it does so.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Fri May 01, 2015 9:01 pm

I've been working with the model. Based on comparisons with other models, it seems that some elements in the Root Bone hierarchy are rotated incorrectly, but trying to rotate the Thorax bone has not worked. I believe the visible orientation, which is the creature front facing the positive Y direction is correct, but it still seems to run away.

Any recommendations for an active forum or MW creature developers I can ping?

Thanks,
Steve

Worsas · Post by **Worsas** » Sat May 02, 2015 7:07 pm

The thing with the orientation can be a big bugger. I don't know how it really works and what breaks it and what doesn't.

Nevertheless I have given this a go on my own. I rotated the creature in blender and inverted the y-translation values of the movement animations. Flying and attacking now seems to work for me, when i use my modified version together with your plugin.

I assume you will still want to work on the dying animation? Perhaps, if you don't find a way to fix the problem in 3DS-Max, you can finish the animation first and let me do the rotation again when you are otherwise done? Only a general offer. Feel free to proceed as you like.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Sat May 02, 2015 7:10 pm

SACarrow wrote:Any recommendations for an active forum or MW creature developers I can ping?

Not exactly an active developer, but I took a flyer and sent an email to the address given in the 12-year-old DarkIllusion tutorial. Lo and behold, he sent me a Max4 scene of his Ultima Black Widow, and it turns out that I had to restructure the scene to get the TES Exporter to add the exact blocks that MW needed. At some point, I'll use NifTools to do a member-by-member comparison to get a feel for the differences. That is why I'm not removing the previous 7Z file. The texture are the same, but the meshes and ESP are different.

Some random thoughts:

- Right now, this creature is mapped to scrib sounds; appropriately insectile, but maybe "buzzier" sounds would be better.
- The grounded idles and the take-off are still in the anim list for possible scripting, though a death on the ground anim would need to be included.
- The creature properties more or less match the corresponding netches, so a creature modder would need to examine the magnitudes and AI settings.
- I love the wing effects, but I'm not sure how that would impact FPS.

I think the creature is essentially playable now, but could use careful examination by a creature modder/scripter for additional features. For instance, I love Super Llama's idea of having the creature on the ground until aggro'ed, but I have no idea how to do that.

I'm also including the max5 scene if anyone wants to play, but feel free to let me know about model-based issues and I'll try to help.

A note to admins: I think this thread could be grafted onto SL's original one. I would have started there, but of course I have no status.

NOTE: I just noticed that Worsas jumped in. Cool!
NOTE 2: To Worsas: the current version has the world's crappiest death-while-hovering anim; any input will be very welcome. I'm looking at doing some work on the 3DS Max NifTools plugin to at least get it to match the behavior of the TES Exporter, and I know the Blender side is far ahead with animations.

Thanks,
Steve

Super Llama · Post by **Super Llama** » Sun May 03, 2015 5:23 pm

Great job SACarrow! Glad to see my old model/texture finally getting exported correctly. I never had the time and resources to do it myself, so I'm glad to see you're willing to take up the torch. I've gotten kind of uninspired as an animator (and immensely busy irl) since I made this so I don't know if I'll ever get around to doing a death animation, but there's always a possibility. In the mean time thanks for finishing this up for me, looks great!

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Sun May 03, 2015 8:55 pm

Why not just finish what you had started...

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Sun May 03, 2015 10:17 pm

Ironed Maidens wrote:Why not just finish what you had started...

Please leave comments like these to yourself. Super Llama can work on whatever he wants here, whenever he wants.

st.Veloth, The Repenting · Sun May 03, 2015 11:35 pm

could you shoot some screenshots for us? (please don't make it imageshack...)

Aeven · Post by **Aeven** » Mon May 04, 2015 1:33 am

Or you could download the file and learn more....

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Mon May 04, 2015 2:00 am

Looking at the file, I'm more glad SACarrow picked it up.

Rats · Post by **Rats** » Mon May 04, 2015 2:51 pm

This. Is. Excellent. (Even the death animation isn't that bad IMO; sure, it ain't flashy but it gets the job done) Kudos to both Super Llama and Steve!

With proper sound effects and maybe some coloring variations these will be a great addition to TR's creature roster.

Here be screenies for the needing:

[img]http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y417/rats_tr/skyrender_zpsnqyrxry3.png[/img]

ihavefivehat · Post by **ihavefivehat** » Mon May 04, 2015 5:03 pm

Oh yeah, that looks great! Way better than the yellow-striped model in the current release.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Mon May 04, 2015 9:32 pm

To The Powers That Be:

In your collective opinion, would this qualify me as a developer in modelling? I was thinking of tackling the [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=19973]Dres exteriors[/url].

Thanks,
Steve

st.Veloth, The Repenting · Wed May 06, 2015 10:29 pm

thank you so much! these would be a great travel alternative to the standard boat or silt strider, and if possible we could see some dres hunting parties on these...

Rats · Post by **Rats** » Wed May 06, 2015 11:36 pm

SACarrow wrote:To The Powers That Be:

In your collective opinion, would this qualify me as a developer in modelling? I was thinking of tackling the [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=19973]Dres exteriors[/url].

Thanks,
Steve

I'd say go for it.

Miraclestone · Post by **Miraclestone** » Thu May 07, 2015 12:22 am

Looks very good, I don't know much beyond basic 3d modelling and even less about texturing but I imagine it would be hard to make new assets feel in place in a 10+ year old game.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Thu May 07, 2015 12:38 am

Thanks to all, but remember that I just did the tech crap to get it in-game. Most of the actual creativity was from SL. Not that "getting crap in-game" has no value; quite the opposite.

As for using SRs as transport, I would have no idea how to go about doing that.

Dormichigan64 · Post by **Dormichigan64** » Sat May 09, 2015 3:23 pm

abot.......

Super Llama · Post by **Super Llama** » Mon May 11, 2015 6:12 pm

Yeah, I'm sorry I've not done anything with it in so long. I've been really sick for the past 5 years (huge soft tissue infection covering my entire spinal column) and only just recovered this winter. It's been so long since I've done anything that I don't really know if my skills are up to scratch with what they once were. Hope everyone understands and I'm glad someone was able to come along and finish my unfinished business.

I'm really not much of an artist anyway-- this is probably the best art asset I've ever made and it took a LOT of time (I placed all the vertices manually, stitched them manually, UV mapped them manually, drew the texture by hand in photoshop (except for the bug wings which were transformed from a photo), and posed every keyframe manually... it was fun but these days I'm so busy with irl work I just don't have time for stuff like that anymore.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Mon May 11, 2015 6:27 pm

Speaking for myself, I am very glad for what you did and we all recognize that life (in great ways and small) gets in the way sometimes.

Thanks for what you did and if you ever feel like doing something else, cool; if not, thanks for all the fish.

Steve

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Tue May 12, 2015 12:28 am

You have no need to apologize, Super Llama. Like I said above, you may work on whatever you want, whenever you want around here. We all have aspects of our lives that limit the amount of time and effort we can contribute to this project. I certainly hope you feel better in the future, and wish you a full recovery.

klep · Post by **klep** » Tue May 12, 2015 7:19 am

I love it. Thanks to the both of you! And indeed may the recovery be well.

SACarrow · Post by **SACarrow** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:48 pm

Would it be possible for one of the admins to update the thread in the Dres claim section? I was thinking of just updating the completion percentage to 95-99%, including my package in the OP, and maybe adding a post saying that what is still needed are sounds and scripting? Or grant me "special access" and I'll do it.

Tamriel Rebuilt