Keyframe Questions

[Tawodi Osdi]

I am assuming that keyframes fall under meshing.  Anyway, I am working on the assumption that Nifs set a mesh's shape while keyframes set mesh's action.  Anyway, I have been thinking of playing around with altering the keyframes (I've been wanting to make the civilian meshes a little more playable as characters.  I think Atomic's Lois and Lana skins are great, and would like them to more useful without just slapping them in the evil civilian mesh).  Anyway, is anyone willing to offer me some advice on how to get started?  Or, maybe, someone has already played around with the civilian keys to give them more action options.

[Randomdays]

The way it actually works is the mesh is tied to the armature or skeleton. A set of polys is "weight painted" or "rigged" to a bone - IE all the upper arm polys are tied to the upper arm bone. When the keyframes move the bone, the polys move with it. So its more important that the armature are close to each other.


I just started messing with keyframes. You can go 2 ways from what I've seen. 1) try renaming the original keyframe to something safe and copying another set in to replace it. If the meshes are simular enough, the mesh will use the new kf's. If  not, it will appear frozen or distorted

The evil civilian should be close enough to work.
2) open the original kf's in nifskope. do the same with a simular kf in a seperate instance. You'll see a list of all the kf actions (walk,run,etc) .Right click on on a action and choose "block> copy branch". You can now go to the other window and with nothing highlighted, select "block> paste on end". This will add the new action to the list. save the kf. When you open it in character viewer, you'll see the action as a choice. If the mesh doesn't move with the new action, it wasn't compatable.

Hope this helps