Animation issue wrong place

[SickAlice]

I'm looking for help finishing a project where I keep running into the same snag. This is Superior Spider-man. The work is imposed into Texas Jack's male_basic_symbiote.



The mesh has a second node system, which the nodes are named "02" as opposed to "01". During certain animations 4 spider legs come from (are made visible/shrink/grow) his back. The lower set of spider legs are assigned to typical arm nodes though again on the 2nd system (Bip02 Spine1, Bip02 L UpperArm, Bip02 L Forearm, Bip02 L Hand, Bip02 L Finger0 for the left and Bip02 Spine1, Bip02 R UpperArm, Bip02 R Forearm, Bip02 R Hand, Bip02 R Finger0 for the right of course, the normal Scene Root for both) and are assigned in the keyframes to follow the exact animations that the " 01 " bipeds would normally where the original nodes in some cases have had different animations pasted in place (during melee_13 and melee_14 the original arms now follow the keys found in the Idle animation so that they hang at the side and the spiderlegs follow the animations they normally would during the melee sequence.).

The legs nodes are named "spiderlegslowL" and "spiderlegslowR" respectively. What occurs though is the left spiderleg will appear and disappear in it's assigned postition during the animations UNLESS I switch to another animation then back to it.  When I do that the spiderlegslowL now appears down and to the right of the left toe instead as pictured. The right arm does not take on this behavior whatsoever and stays right where it should be at all times. In the case of these melee animations the right arm (spiderlegslowR) has taken the place where there  would normally be a "r_hand_axe" node called for in the controller and does just fine. In the case of the left though I have tried every possible type of NiControllerSequence and it still behaves this way.

I've adjusted any setting, the Quaternion, Translations and subsets in the Scales yet no change. The only way I can get a change is to not have a controller for spiderlegslowL at all (my presumption is it then follows Bip02 by default). This of course isn't workable since I need something in place to tell the game engine to make the leg appear(grow) during select animation and vanish(shrink) by it's end. I can't for the life of me find where the issue is especially as it's counterpart is doing just fine. The project is on hold until I  can resolve this as several animations will call on the leg.

Any help here from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Myself and I'm sure for many of you this is the first time I've made a nif that has multiple limbs that are able to move independently of each other. I'm also a noob to keyframes as it is though if I'm looking I have set everything in the nif up correctly. I also hope to be able to do this on the fly for the potential of releasing a Doctor Octopus that will " all permissions given " as I know the community has desired such a thing for awhile now.

Thank you anyone for any though given to this in advance. Again given my current unstable internet connection I apologize for delays in responses to this inquiry.

[Podmark]

Three things:

1. Afraid I can't help you with the animations. Outside my expertise.

2. Superior Spider-Man looks really good (based on what I can see). Hope you can get it worked out.

3.

I also hope to be able to do this on the fly for the potential of releasing a Doctor Octopus that will " all permissions given " as I know the community has desired such a thing for awhile now.

I'd certainly be very happy if you pulled that off! I've had ideas for Ock armed skopes for a while.

[SickAlice]

While I'm opening the subject then here is my understanding of a way a Doctor Octopus could be created in case anyone
else would like to take it up or work with me on it. Mind you it isn't as elegant as the approach as Beyonder used for
his but in my case I still don't have 3ds Max fully functioning to create nifs and animations. Bare with the fact that
this is an oversimplified rough draft I tossed together quickly just to get the gist of it down.



So pictured the are three sets of mechanical arms. The first is lined up with a male basics arms and hands. The second
with the legs and feet. The third with the arms and hands again. In game the third set is the same as the the second. It
is for when the lower set acts as hands rather than as legs and Octo stands on his own natural legs as opposed to when he
walks on his mechanical set.

There will need to be separate Biped sets/skeletons for these arms, a second to native one for the first two sets and third
for the third set. My method is I assign these parts each to a separate nif and rename the Bipeds there then copy them over
to what will be the source mesh. Else if one attempts to copy,paste and rename the original Bipeds within a nif file they
end up renaming the original nodes instead thus losing them and losing the bone assignment for the new parts, mechanical arms
in this case. So there will be three nifs, in the second the Bipeds names are changed from "01" to "02" and in the third "01"
to "03". These naming conventions will of course come into play when running the keyframes in Nifskope for both giving the new
arms their own distinct movements and for deciding which arms are visible at the time. The first two sets of arms are assigned
to the second nif, and the third set to the third. The arms can be given these assignments easily via Blender (see Randomdays
tutorial). Once this is done all of the new Biped sets and meshes are copied into the original mesh and saved.

From here the animations are worked out. The main body or at the least it's arms are usually given different animations than they
normally have whereas they now sit idle instead of say his arm extends and punches, either hanging at the side of the body or being
folded over each other. The mechanical arms are given what would normally be the animations and keys for the actual body.

What else needs to be done of course is the mechanical arms need to be extended. I believe this is done by stretching their nodes out
but maybe the better method is to control these positions solely within the keyframes? I'm not at that point yet so you tell me? But
we know in animations like Idles Ock himself should be floating off the ground while at least the second set is touching it. Ocks body
should just as well be given the positions from standard hover keys here if you ask me to give him the illusion of being hoisted up by
the arms while the mechanical arms retain the original standard type " on the ground " animation positions.

That's again a rough draft but you get it I'm sure and I think it would work but I of course do not know any bugs that I'm overlooking
at this point. Again this differs greatly from Beyonder's approach but I'm also working with different tools to get the final result. In
his there was one single mesh and one Biped system. The Biped system includes many additional bones which are all mirrors of finger bones
and the mechanical arms assigned to them at various points. In his case (I think?) he was able to use Max and it's extensions to give both
the nif and animations what was needed to have it work in that hierarchy from the ground up where as I and I believe most likely most of you
do not have this advantage.

My test subject is again Superior Spider-man to at least get an idea of the specifics of what needs to be done. I'm also working on the
X-Men character Chimera, where I'm giving here a second bone set and having the snake manifestations follow those. I think looking at
Stilt-Man would also be a good idea, that was Tommyboy I think, and will dl it and get around to it sometime in the future.

Note: I consider as well that maybe in order to keep the illusion that the mechanical arms extend from the body at all times while being
assigned to their own individual bone nodes in the case of the Spine and Spine1 they should assigned to 01 the same as the basic mesh is.
This way they would never " leave " the point on the backside where they all meet during animations and rather appear to stretch out from
those points?

[ghazkul]

Just wondering if there was any update?