Adding guns to a skope

[Podmark]

How do I add a gun to a mesh?

I tried to search for it but didn't see it.

[murs47]

I second this query.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Adding a gun is easy (I can't believe I'm the one saying that), if you want the gun in the hand all the time.  All you do is copy said gun from another mesh and paste it onto the new mesh's hand node (sometimes you have to move it into the right position after pasting), then save the mesh.  

I don't know how to add a gun that vanishes when not in use (via keyframes).

Dana

[Podmark]

Yeah I want a gun that appears only in specific animations. Based on some skopes I've seen I'm pretty sure it's possible.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Yeah, it probably is...I have yet to figure it out.  Sorry I can't help out more, Pod.

Dana

[area34]

Every time I have made a skope that needed to have a gun appear I used Gni's Trenchcoat as the mesh/keyframe beginning. It's the only one I've seen that has the gun only trigger and appear when he reaches for it. Any other mesh has the object shrink away when an idle animation is used and I've yet to figure out how to successfully do it myself. Failed Hero has had better luck with it. You might try PM'ing him for help.

[Failed_Hero]

I've been working on a tut for this. 

[Podmark]

Would the easier method be to start with a mesh with the gun animations and add whatever other animations I need?

I'm working on a re-skin of my Cyclops skin from Whedon's second run of Astonishing X-Men, where Cyclops was powerless and using a gun for a while. I'm including it with my other Cyclops skins on one skope with my usual using alphas to hide parts. So I need animations for powered Cyclops but I also want him to draw a gun for some ranged animations.

[Failed_Hero]

Pod,

That is part of it. the other part is shrinking the weapons on the mesh. There are some other things as well, but if you say began with with the male shoulder holster mesh then added the cyclops animations to the key frame set that would give you cyclops with guns

[TrajkLogik]

I'm confused with the meshes whose character.nif show the weapon in their hand and some don't show the weapon. Yet they both have animations that only show the weapon in certain animations. I would like to be able to replace a gun in the mesh that doesn't show the weapon with a gun from a mesh that shows the weapon. When I tried it it showed the weapon in every animation. Has anyone had any luck doing this?

[detourne_me]

I'm confused with the meshes whose character.nif show the weapon in their hand and some don't show the weapon. Yet they both have animations that only show the weapon in certain animations. I would like to be able to replace a gun in the mesh that doesn't show the weapon with a gun from a mesh that shows the weapon. When I tried it it showed the weapon in every animation. Has anyone had any luck doing this?

The trick with the meshes that DON'T show a gun in NifSkope is that the guns are actually shrunk down to be really tiny.
So...here's what you have to do.  go through all of the trees to find out exactly where the gun is, probably in the right hand. You'll have to paste in the gun you want, and then shrink it to about 0.001 for starters.
Then save the file, open up ctool and it's just trial and error from there getting the placement and sizing right.
It can be difficult to do, but once you got it,  it looks pretty good.
Check out my Turok skope for a better example of what I'm talking about.

[laughing paradox]

I do the same thing, but in a different way.

1. You have to locate the weapon piece in the mesh where the gun disappears.

Let's say it looks like this:

30 NiNode ----- Gun
  31 NiTriShape ---- Editable Mesh

Then right-click on NiTriShape, press Flag and then click "Hidden", so that it disappears.

2. I will copy the gun from the OTHER mesh now.. but I won't copy from the NiNode.. I'm going to copy its NiTriShape.. where it says "Editable Mesh" next to it under the Value column. (It ususally says Editable Mesh.. certain meshes will label it differently)

3. Now, I will paste back on the original mesh, under the (30 NiNode----Gun) part.

4. Adjust the new gun to make it look right and it should be done.

[doctorchallenger]

I'm confused with the meshes whose character.nif show the weapon in their hand and some don't show the weapon. Yet they both have animations that only show the weapon in certain animations. I would like to be able to replace a gun in the mesh that doesn't show the weapon with a gun from a mesh that shows the weapon. When I tried it it showed the weapon in every animation. Has anyone had any luck doing this?

When the weapon is not visable in nifskope, it means that its normal size is miniature to render it invisible during resting mode, and it "inflates" to "super-size" to be visable during active mode.  "Replacing" the weapon with a different mesh piece is fairly straightforward, however, very similar to the process for a weapons that nifskope portrays as visable in resiting mode (like Gren's Cable or Taskmaster). I'll use Draven's The Phantom mesh as example.  When you open the character.nif file, all that is shown on the screen is the male_belt (character body) piece and the holster pieces.  

The 2 pistols (one in each hand) and the knife can't be seen.  You will have to scroll through the nodes to the hands to find the guns (gun_right and gun_left).

I'm going to replace the Mesh's standard guns - .45 automatics -   with Tommyboy's gun_t_mauser.  

First, I need to see what I am doing. Right click gun_right->transform->edit.  The gun piece node location information comes up. Go to scale (bottom of edit window).

Enlarge until mesh piece is visible: for this case it means making the piece 1000 (one thousand) times bigger .(for purposes of this example - it will be different on different meshes)   Now the gun is "normal" sized relative to the rest of the mesh.

Copy gun_t_mauser from source and paste it to gun_right.  WARNING: When it first appears as part of the mesh, IT WILL BE HUGE - 1000 TIMES HUGE! Don't panic (Grab your towel).  Right click gun_t_mauser->transform->edit.  The gun piece node location information comes up. Go to scale (bottom of edit window). Reduce size until it is proportional to rest of mesh (0.0010 for this example).

Delete skininstance node under the Editable mesh node of gun_t_mauser. Otherwise that puppy will bounce all around.

Manipulate X,Y,Z postion and Y, P, R axes of gun_t_mauser until it aligned with gun_right piece.

Hide original gun piece using Editable mesh node (Right click gun_right's Editable mesh node->flags-> check hidden->accept)  DO NOT HIDE THE GUN USING THE gun_right NODE!!! THIS WILL HIDE BOTH GUNS!!!

Right click gun_right->transform->edit.  Reduce mesh piece back to 1.0000, rendering it invisible.

Save.  Repeat for gun_left, if so desired. Save.

Now the Phantom is using kewl Mausers, instead of plain jane .45s.

[doctorchallenger]

Ninja'd. Oh well.

[TrajkLogik]

Wow. Thanks for all the quick replies. Time to dive back into some skoping!