Pieces move when running/jumping

[oktokels]

Any known fix to this?

[SickAlice]

Need a little more detail on this since it can happen for more than reasons. Typical they are not assigned to the bone/node called for in the keyframes. Or they are not called for in the keyframes themselves. Depends. The fix usually comes down to either the piece itself or it's in the keyframes. Also if they were converted or anything, that can often cause bugs (and how they were, converter vs Blender conversion). Weighting in Blender often helps though to the one part they need be (say Head for example) if they are otherwise just static.

[oktokels]

I think i had to remove some niskinpartition to make it  compatible.  I did convert it to  ffvs3r with ezconvert. It's the wonderman skope that i posted.
I noticed that sometimes the glasses and the hair have some kind of delay when jumping or running.
So, no easy way to fix it in nifskope then 
thanks anyway 

[SickAlice]

I downloaded two Wonder Man from you. First (a) works fine in CTool2, not in game 
I see anything attached to the Head moving all over the place (glasses, fin, hair?)
Anything else moving that I'm not seeing?

Solutions:
- Attach a static piece to the head and import the model (obj) itself if you know how.
or
- Weight copy the pieces in Blender, export those parts, reimport them in Nifskope

If you can't ask and I'll fix it for you, simple for me. I'm sick in bed so I have time to waste.
Tell me if there's any other parts I need to look at or anything on the second (b) nif if you want me to.
Also and this is key, if you can point me to the clean nif.
It's not good to use already manipulated nifs for weight copying, it creates the exact problem you're seeing here.

I'd add I can only do  stuff but It looks like that's you want.

[oktokels]

Cool SickAlice 

a) The mesh having trouble is the first (A)
b) The pieces are glasses, fin, hair,  bracelets, boots, clean belt, small pouches belt and big pouches to the side of the belt.
c) I don't know how to do either of those solutions, but i'd like to know. What's a static piece and where do i get one? From where do i import the model (obj)?
d) Blender i would like to learn, but not yet, because i'm focused now on nifskope.
e) If you can do it that would be great, i'm still have a lot to learn though
d) The second mesh (b) is clean. Just some particle emitters that are somewhat inconsistent in-game (sometimes they shut off for no reason).
f) The og nif is wonderman by murs, you can get it from force of paradox, avengers tab. I think it's based on a renegade mesh.

[SickAlice]

That's not the original nif. It was something else then with other stuff added. I got the original and worked with it and the new body. This is what I needed to know, this does not come from murs Wonder Man, it come from elsewhere (thus not clean). Normally you would weight copy to that. I worked around a little. I took Apollo and put the body and all head parts into that nif and imported it into Blender. The glasses and such don't show up in the right place and have be moved, I did this. Weight copied them individually and saved each. Skoped each back into yours and moved them more there until the matched the position of the old pieces. I think this is Ren's Superman or Sentry?

Done. They hair, fin and glasses do not move in game now. (edit: I see where the other parts move, not sure how to fix it without knowing what the actual original nif is?)

Anyways here's the fixed nif. I also cleaned up all your textures in it, they were a mess no offense. Several lightmaps, some things had the wrong values, so on. I noticed it right away in game, some things were too dark and the fin was "lit" for some reason.
http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/WMAM47_FixNif.rar

A static model has no biped (bone) values baked into it. The mullet was a static piece. This was part of the problem though. A weighted model has biped (bones) baked into it. When you export to 3d object in Nifskope if it's static there is no warning prompt, if it's weighted you get a warning that tells you the exported object won't maintain the biped info (It will also lose it's size and position).

How to weight copy/Blender: The very basics. Randomdays is the master here:
http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/rdays/rdays.html


The emitter issue is most likely a bad setting somewhere in the keyframes, either in the Nif or the actual keyframes. It's hard to tell. Murs was put together from a few things, some of which don't match, then your Nif is even further from that (most of the things that didn't work don't because they don't belong with this nif/model). That would a big job I'd rather not volunteer for.

[oktokels]

Great SickAlice thank you! 

p,s, Bear with my mess, it's my first attempt into making a skope  lol

[SickAlice]

I didn't know that. Okay so right. An "original" is when it came from 3ds Max. I don't do original work, most don't. I'll even make the entire 3d model myself but still use someone else's nif. Once it's skoped it's changed, "tainted" and can start to cause issues. Conversion also changes it and some authors originals do not take well to being converted from  to  . Texas Jack's for example, this piece moving issue will happen if converted through the tool in EZHero. The solution is to convert the original with Blender instead and fix the problems causes in nifskope.

This is also important for "signatures". Think of it as a nifs DNA. An original Nif comes out of 3ds Max with a signature in it and it's keyframes have a matching signature. Often 3ds Max authors reused the same file, why not, it's the smart way, so we get "legacy" nif and keyframe sets. These share the signature. "Taskmaster or TM" based. I'm sure you see it often. Those are legacy to Taskmaster by Gren. What's important is pieces for legacy nifs work with others with the same signature, no fuss no muss. Just skoped them on.

So do keyframes and this more important. When you copy over keyframes whichever method you use you can then fire it up in CTool/CTool2 right? So long as the Nif also has every stringname in it that is called upon by the keyframes (see Windblowns tutorial hosted on my Workbench page right next to Randomdays Blender tutorial, these are as straight foreword, short and easy to learn as they come). Maybe.

Or maybe it looks weird, the body get's real short or something? But you look and it's "male basic" right (if you look at your skopes, murs and Ren's Sentry it's actually called "body_bald")? Except that isn't so. Male basic is just a shared naming convention, usually used because we recycle the same 3d models. It's easier for people who do textures if the male and female models are the same and follow the same map of course. Everyone wants ten textures by their favorite to choose from (careful with that, you can overload CTools memory pretty easy, it has a different threshold than the game does). They're aren't the same model. So the skeleton and then "flesh" matched to those bones isn't the same thus this part isn't going to "fit it like a glove" since it's someone else's "clothes". If that helps to make sense of it? I have problems describing this part of it.

But it works in CTool/CTool 2 and it's exciting to see this animation that wasn't there working now and oh so simple to just copy over. Think of the possibilities, hooray! And then I show up and ruin everyone's day in these forums and say: "Always check your stuff in game instead of CTool. CTool is a different program and renders everything different." Aren't I fun at parties? I'm also right. CTool is only in game during the preview panel when you make a characters hero. I'm not sure I understand why they did this but they did. The game itself is a different engine. And here's what happens. You go in game to make a hero and...nothing? The animation can't be selected at all. And that is because of a "signature mismatch". The imported keyframe's signature does not match the one you put it in so the game denies it to you. This isn't the technical wording mind you but just to make a visual and understand that this game engine is very fussy and limited. Or another problem happens, you do have the animation to chose from but you go into the game and use the move and the game freezes or crashes. Why? The bones deformed to such an extent the game engine got tripped up because the information in that keyframe was too removed from the original. Which brings us to you go in game and everything looked fine in CTool but when you play the pieces you imported float about and don't move with the body, right? Because they don't match what the animation is telling them to do, think geometry here and in a precise 3d space where everything interacts.

So this one is Renegade's Sentry, hosted at Alex's now. You can tell by the "S clasps", The Sentry's S shaped cape clips. He never made a  of this one. It was then skoped into Apollo (Wildstorm) at some point. Then to Wonder Man by murs. Then to Wonder Man by you. The Nif and it's keyframes are going to call on the original so when we weight copy we want that, that will make pieces move with "with the bones". We also don't want any bugs that happened during transitions, a LOT of my stuff is buggy like this. It took me a long time to learn to make clean skopes. Now Sentry is partially recycled by Ren. He used his Superman file over again for a few things, again smart and it's such a nice looking model by him. And because of this Sentry contains other parts of other meshes already, they are just hidden. Namely bootcuffs, gloves and a mullet. These are shared by other Superman works by Ren, like Brit for example. So is the collar.

Typically you only use Ren work for Rens if you can. His stuff is real distinct like Texas Jacks is. Just pointing this out, it's important to know. "Try and keep it in the family, always". When you skope as well. If you do INK stuff, try and stick with other INK sources for example for parts because they'll match. I know how to make my 3d models and bypass this, I'm also aware of a broken piece that works with most of anything (Big@$$Fro or something it's called over at Alex's site).

So to fix this I need to weight copy so the pieces do match the body then. Basically the "skin and muscle", this is our vertices and faces/polygons have the name of the bone(s) they line up to baked into them so they'll move and stretch with it like our own skin does. That's the goal here. And here's where I run into the problem, the rest of what's skoped into this is not from Sentry, sort of? These "new" gloves and boots, named "Object" for reasons (see where I renamed them to glove and boot now)? The gloves look like the ones that already came with the Sentry nif and where just hidden. The gloves that do match the model and move with it in game, I mean perfect yes? Somehow they aren't though. Between the time this thing rolled out of Renegade's hard drive to the time it ended up on my current I don't know what was done but I do these pieces were broken and are forever more unusable. Someone didn't, I know, sigh, check it in game.

Then there's the belt and hair? You skoped these I take it? From I'm going to guess INK's? That mullet looks like it came from his Nightwing. Maybe you got it from someone else's skope of his but all the same. So since that's a different model that's why it doesn't move right. This threw me for a loop too though. Sentry comes with it's own mullet already, see Sentry's long Fabio hair right? And it's already weighted and fitted (so you wouldn't have to color that part of the head on the texture black to hide bald spots like your doing now, I can see this)? So I don't understand this anymore than using bootcuffs and glovecuffs that look identical to the ones that were already in the original but aren't the original? But this is what's here. Getting where you should use The Sentry from the ground up, it would have been easier for you that way.

Last you, someone, brings in a two part belt from ? and drops it in the Spine node and two holsters that would normally be attached to the Thighs and drops them in the Pelvis node? The holsters are named "rocket something or another" and I can guess these came from Tom's work, Tom also also have distinct work by the way especially his TV stuff, keep that in mind. Different bodies. I also see a helmet node from Tom's, there's literally nothing in it and it has several repeat textures assigned to it (this seems to have been in murs as well) and it's there for no reason, not used or called on by the keyframes. It is causing glitches. So where the other twelve or so things floating about this nif that were passed down somewhere in it's travels (Some character nifs are just not careful in their travels I swear, hurumph! *flips hair*). The point is these parts do not work with this model. And of course you know it, they jump all over the place in game. Now you know why this happens. And I'm teaching you because I'm not going to do it for you all the time, mostly I'm getting old and my time for all this is limited (as it stands I have several acres of forest and collapsed trees and pine needles and yadda yadda to take care of in the summer thaw...okay done thinking about that one lol).

So you know when you see the final product what happened. One more Nif after this I'll upload. I'll weight copy things back to where they should be on The Sentry nif in Blender. Skim through that tutorial if you need to to get up to speed. Just like I did with the hair, glasses and fin. Those where weighted to the head which is easy. The gloves and boots will also be easy because the original has them to, again their identical. The hard part is belt, the harder is holsters. Belts are hard because they can, and sometimes you want them to, pick up more information from the model than needed. It will make them bend in other words. Like you, and you make in a crease in your own belly. But if you're wearing a belt it doesn't crease does it, it just pushes into your skin? So like, we don't want all these boxes you have um, bending and twisting like they were made of flesh because that will look creepy but that is that what will happen if I try and weight copy from a body model. This is where we seek out matching "static" pieces, pieces that do not bend with the skin, a static belt or something then but again one that matches this nif and keyframe.

But we got lucky today because Sentry has a belt. A big belt with an S on it (to distract enemies or something, I dunno?). And Ren weighted it proper so I'm just going to weight copy from that belt piece instead of the body to your new belt for Wonder Man. Leaving us with the holster issue. Normally these go on hips, it makes them move naturally but it isn't the end up the world to put them on the pelvis. They may fall through the hip from there but you would have been looking real close on purpose in game to see that. This falls in the "optical illusion" thing I bring up often. The game is a series of optical illusions created via math. So what I'm going to do there is also weight those to that original belt since a belt follows the pelvis anyways.

And that's that. A lot of reading, a lot of typing but so you know what happened when I put one more link with a Nif in it up and how to do it next time. And for the record the only reason I know any of this is because I made the same mistakes several times over, like I said more half the stuff one can download from my site is an utter mess, I'm not even sure how many bugs I put in the mix at this point (and encourage anyone to report them to me so I can fix them). But I've been around since just after the first game came out and had plenty of time to make messes. But I hope this long winded comment helps you somehow at least. Look for the nif (I'll name the rar file with a 2 at the end or something) later tonight.

[oktokels]

I took the time to read it all, there's some things that i need to double check to understand well (blender and weight copy), but i think the tutorial you posted will cover all those voids.

This was interesting to read:

So this one is Renegade's Sentry, hosted at Alex's now. You can tell by the "S clasps", The Sentry's S shaped cape clips. He never made a  of this one. It was then skoped into Apollo (Wildstorm) at some point. Then to Wonder Man by murs. Then to Wonder Man by you.

Reminded me of archeology or history, but with freedom force meshes lol

Thanks for this, it will help me to fix this problem in the future. Much appreciated 

[SickAlice]

I've probably been in this community too long that I even know that stuff. And cool, glad you read it. Just trying to teach I guess. And also I have to iterate for now I'm having problems uploading stuff yet so I can't be of too much use making files for people. Small ones like this are okay, takes awhile on this messed up thing but I can pull it off.
So anyways here is the completed nif. I did some more things to it but left a note on that. Mostly I fixed some 3d models themselves. The fin for example wasn't the right shape for this body/head so I fixed that to fit. Redid the gloves and boots to be symmetrical, the originals weren't. So on and so forth. Tested everything in game. The belt and pouch stuff does "breath" a bit but optical illusion and all it looks better than if it fell through the body which is what would happen if it was static. The fact that Ren included a huge belt was a life saver here, belt weighing tends to be a frustrating thing for me. And you know I know you'll understand all this stuff and eventually you'll be better at these things then I am (I'm somewhat mediocre even though I should be better at this, especially code).

http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/WMAM47_FixNif2.rar