Opening a closed hand

[John Jr.]

I don't even know if it's possible, but I have to ask.
I'm working with Ink's "Superman shield hammer" mesh, I selected the "weaponless" version, but his right hand is still grasping the now non-existent Mjolnir. There is any way to open the finger "bone", so he'll have an open hand?
Thanks in advance.

[Kenn]

One would probably have to go into the keyframes, and on each animation one wanted the hand open shut off or remove the reference to the right finger bone.   Unless of course, on that mesh the hand being closed is the default position.

[John Jr.]

Thanks for helping, Kenn.
Yeah, the closed hand it's the default position. Anyway, how I can change the animations on the keyframes? Which program can do it?

[Cyber Burn]

There may be another way to do this, and hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but if you open the Mesh in NifSkope, temporarily hide the actually body so that only the Nodes show, then you can probably use NifSkope to adjust the X-Y-Z points on the hand to straighten it out. But like I said, I could be wrong on this, in which case, hopefully someone will correct me.

[John Jr.]

CB,
I tried it, but since the hand "moves" from grasping to open in some animations it didn't work (the hand shows open in Nifskope now, but it's still grasping the non existent hammer in some animations). Looks like I'll have to edit the keyframes, like Kenn said, but I have no idea how to do it.

[hoss20]

Go ahead and send what you've got my way. I've been doing a fair amount of this type of work lately. As Kenn suggested, altering the keyframes is the best way to go. I figure I can go ahead and make the adjustments for the hand to the idle animation and then give you what I did along with the settings so that you can make the changes to the other animations that you want.

I'll PM you my email.

[John Jr.]

Just sent it to you Hoss.
Thanks for the help!

[SickAlice]

I would swap out any animations that had hand closed/closing/opening with ones that don't that are also conformed to the main mesh, in that ones case any male_basic keys or cape. Normally in this case it would be ideal just to use an entire different keyframe set but looking at that only a few keyframes actually have that grasping animation and they also happen to be both essential animations as well common ones (basic flying animation for mb, basic hover animation for mb, basic idle animation for mb, ect). What you would do here open up a similar keyframe set in the left window of m25keyframetransfer and this one in the right window. In the right window delete the ones you can see him gripping the right hand in, then transfer the keys of the same name from the left side (again looking at it now in CTool you could just as well use the keys from any basic male or basic male cape for this since it's the same animation minus the clenched fist) then save it.

[John Jr.]

I did it, but there are some animations of the original set I wanted to use, so it would be very useful for me if I could edited some of the animations.

[Kenn]

I think there's a Keyframe editor (M25's, I think) that lets one copy animations from one keyframe set to another, provided both sets of starting keyframes work in the same mesh.

[John Jr.]

I used the M25 kf editor, Ken and got a working set of kfs with most of the animations I wanted. I just wanted to learn how to change the position of the hands in an animation to be able to use some others.
Thanks for helping.

[SickAlice]

Even if it's finished could you point out which animations just to help me understand. Like I said I looked at the animations, just right now again too, and as far as I can see the only animations that have a closed right hands are few of the common ones that can be found in any basic male keyframe set, sans the clenched fist? None of the animations that are specific to that mesh itself seem to have a closed hand.

Else if you want to learn how to alter positions windblown's keyframe tutorial is a good start. He doesn't point out that specifically but does give you the essentials and the place you'll have to look to do the same thing. Myself when I've wanted to change the position of one body part I found one similar to what I was thinking about and swapped it's information into the NifkeyframeController of the one that will be used.

What you would be specifically using are the Quaternion and Translations values, though mainly Quaternion as that controls rotation where Translations controls position. Looking at the keyframes right now it would be the NikeyframeController's for strings Bip01 R Hand, Bip01 R Finger0, Bip01 R Finger01, Bip01 R Finger1 and Bip01 R Finger11 though that's kind of an obvious ones. I would guess the fingers need to be manipulated more than the hand here. You would either adjust every value a step at a time on every axis until you had the desired result or copy the information from another keyframe set with an open right hand, noting you would need to figure out which Translation values need to be retained from the originally chosen animation (for example when he spins like a tornado the hand itself needs to follow that position as it normally would).

Doing it from the ground-up is pretty much flying blind and takes forever if the game even decides it's going to allow the changes to stick at all. In other words it's a really long process and a lot to learn but those are the things your going to want to look into if you want to learn how to change a hand position.

[John Jr.]

Thanks, Sick Alice.
I was trying to use Ink's animation like the base kfs, but the character would revert to the "grasping hand" mode when idle or between animations (even after I changed the fingers position of the default pose in Nifskope), so I would have to replace a lot of kfs to use it. I just inverted the process and moved the animations I really wanted (like the "multi-laser" attack and the "superspeed dodging").
Thanks for teaching me how to edit the hands, I believe it's way beyond my current level, but I'll check it out.
Once again, thanks to all who helped.

[SickAlice]

Kewl. I understand you now, pretty sure I did the same thing on something I have in the works.
Trust me it isn't past any level. Very easy once you go through it on a testing keyframe.
However...tedious, and I mean become close friends with caffeine, turn into a hermit for a bit and abandon life kind of tedious.
I'll take any easy way out instead of the long way even if it means the animations won't be exactly how I want them cause....yeesh, lol.