Vanishing limbs 2020

[SickAlice]

I've been through it as have others more often than not and have a few bookmarked threads on this but starting it a new to collect recent findings and anything concrete. The issue generally it seems with a body weighted in Blender and donated to an original Nif during animations both in CTool and in game will have limbs that zero out and vanish. I recall solutions being to redo the model in Blender applying some techniques (though I've seen this with static objects as well) and messing with the keyframes. I added Quarternion values where they were missing and set them to Linear, I think a Translation needed to be present if it wasn't as well though I'm not positive, also not certain why this all worked and only am guessing the program needs to read these values in order regardless or it simply doesn't read it right? Any and every input is appreciated here. Keyframes are to date a weak area for me though I'm gaining traction.

*update: discovery here:
http://www.freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=60453.msg830396#msg830396

[SickAlice]

Testing a few things just to note, none of these resolve the issue:
(This is Gren's Sif for clarity, I've used this one often and never run into this issue, Red Sonja for example)

- Made new 3d model from the ground up and weighted.
- Weighted to both original nif and converted in Blender.
- Tried three different editions of nifskope.
- Simply copied the same mesh from the working Sif to a another clean version of the same Sif for testing.
(concluding from this here it something to do with this nif and Nifskope, they don't play well?)
- Copied Trishape and Skininstance from original.
- Cleared date in Transform.

I dunno?

[spydermann93]

Wish I could help you, SA, but I got nothing.

[SickAlice]

I localized it to the keyframes. When I add a piece that vanishes and/or appears it makes the limbs do that. Two tests, one where I copied the existing piece, the sword and it happens regardless if it's exactly the same, a second test where I changed values but still the same. Everything lines up with the animation time and the original keys, I just don't get it.

2nd finding: I had changed the rotation of the right hand in said animation in Quaternion. This seems to be the cause. I changed it this time with Axis where I had used Euler previously. So far so good though I only have the one keyframe working yet.

[spydermann93]

So it's the keyframes themselves causing a mesh's verticies to "rotate" improperly? Or do the keyframes just use an improper rotation value set?

[SickAlice]

No no, I rotated the keys. The hand originally bends down at an angle and I wanted it straight for holding a pistol. It seems custom movements plus a vanishing mesh piece are the cause though I still have no clue what setting I had wrong in the keys while doing that, just that a copied the problem over the last time I did the keyframes to all the animations.

[SickAlice]

I made a discovery about this today finally. This a Nifskope issue. For lack of better phrasing everything must be done in a linear order. Like copying, pasting into, so on. I'm projecting a little but I think it was to do with the way Nifskope auto-reorders blocks and that when things out of order the reodering then puts this block or data in the wrong place. I did several tests, the ones I did in a linear fashion worked every time, the ones I did out of order had vanishing limbs every time.

[Randomdays]

That's interesting to know - that the order matters. Usually when I skoping a part I try to swap two pieces out, or if i can ties the piced to the bone itself.

For creating the nif FFvt3R kfs, I just paste at end each new animation, and there hasn't been any problem there.

[SickAlice]

At the end seemed essential. Mid work if say you grab the wrong numbered block or say delete one that was spit out and not in use Skope will auto-reorder the blocks. Right there is where the bad data blocks seem to be getting worked in. Tested 10 and 10 with the same results every time. I don't know the specifics of course but any rate this works for future reference to resolve the problem, likewise if the issue is caused while working the keyframes reload and start over instead saving at that point (I always have two copies going myself and one for walking back if needed).