Statues from dynamic creatures

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

I've mastered--more or less--making statues from non-dynamic creatures.  Briefly (in Gmax), I find an animation frame that is close to the what I want, delete all the other frames, remove all the animations, tweak the pose until it's something I like, texture it, export it as a placeable, and add it to the game.

 

Is there a way to do something similar with pc parts and clothing?  I've not worked with either pc parts or clothing beyond that I have a vague idea of how to find the parts and clothing I want.  Any tips on how to proceed from there?  I guess what I'm asking is how to turn a specifically clothed dynamic creatures into a non-dynamic creature.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

First you'll need the humanoid animation series loaded. You can import the required a_ba or a_fa file, or you can use my merged file to import the whole animation set at one time. Find that on the vault. http://neverwinterva...rged-phenotypes

 

Either way, that file will give you the bones in the correct places and at the correct rotations.


Now, import the individual parts and spread them out so you can see them all. Keep them correctly positioned on their aurora bases, as the base contains the proper offset spacing. Select a base and parent it with the proper bone. Then use this code in the listener to make them reposition to their parent bone location.

 

Make sure your imported parts are scaled properly. Things like weapons and heads have a weaponscale and helmetscale entry in the 2das you need to read and adjust for. Also remember heads in the most up to date NWN release are positioned wrong. I don't recall what the exact offset is, but its really funky. If I can find that data, I will put it here in an edit. Or just fudge it after import. The neck spacing on the females will be super long otherwise.

 

Now, select all the imported location part BASES and then run this code:

For obj in selection do (
  obj.position = [0,0,0]
  obj.rotation = obj.parent.rotation
  obj.position = obj.parent.position
)

or as a single line for the listener:

For obj in selection do ( obj.position = [0,0,0]; obj.rotation = obj.parent.rotation; obj.position = obj.parent.position )

This code rotates and positions the imported body part (on its base) at the exact location of the parent bone it would have been loaded to in game, as long as you have parented it to the proper bone on the a_ba/fa frame.

 

Now you can do the same thing you do with creature models. Remove the bone models, leaving the placed parts in the proper location and at the proper rotation. Or you can fuse all the placed parts into a single object and delete everything but that model.

 

You should be able to do the same thing with cloaks and other skins. Importing the cloak/skin should import additional bones which will parent to the proper pre-existing bone in the scene (which is a terrible bug if that isn't what you want).

 

Make sure to reset the transform on the exportable object, and then do your thing.

 

 

Edit: If you are NOT working in localized rotation, this might cause issues, but I have mine set to use world rotation, which is why the code move the part to zero before rotation. If you have a problem with this code rotating objects way out of range around the parent bone, let me know. I'll rewrite it for you.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

That's a bit more involved than I was hoping for.  *g*  The payoff should be some nice statues though.  I'll see if I can wade through this over the weekend.  Thanks MD.     

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Depending upon exactly what you want to do...

There is a REALLY simple way.

It involves hitting stuff with bricks.

 

Let's say you want an Elf wearing X clothing parts with X head, etc. (Same procedure applies to any phenotype, obviously).

Take an Elf from stock (any one of the standard NPCs ought to do). Using notepad, exchange all parts you want to alter with the pheno clothing parts, head, etc that you want for your statue. Remember to rename the new parts to match the original "head_g" etc, just to make sure your Elf is all correctly linked together and doesn't become a freakish giblet heap.

Rename it "Statue X" or whatever and set supermodel to "NULL" in Notepad.

Import into gmax WITHOUT animations.

Using "rotate" and "move", tug their arms, legs, head, neck, etc about until the mangy little weirdo is arranged in the pose you want them. With the NPC parts named as per the original model, you'll find that if you rotate, for example, an upper arm, parented parts -  the lower arm and hand - will follow. (As a default). Then move the lower arm, then the hand, same with neck then head, legs down to feet. You can get more or less any pose you want (in a blocky, NWN, low-poly sort of way.) Easy enough to create multi-figural statue dioramas the same way. Pose each separate figure roughly, then put them all in the same scene and arrange as required (to put a rider on a mount, for example, or two gladiators locked in a fruitless struggle). Equally you can clone and add, say, extra arms or whatever you need, as I did with those Tantric Statues in the Kali Hak...

 

I find this method of just hitting the model with bricks a lot quicker than poking about through key frames which may not give me the stupidly strange pose I want anyway. Again, the Tantric Statues I did, aside from having six arms, were seated cross-legged waving their arms about weirdly in a way no BioWare animation would match, so sometimes this method is about the ONLY one.

 

Once you've got your statue posed, delete all the irrelevant nodes for holding weapons and anything else a Placeable won't need. Obviously if you want a weapon in a statue's hand, you just hit a weapon model with a brick and nail it on in the relevant place.

 

I then tend to parent all the geometry to the Aurora base... Be sure to make certain everything's parented to SOMETHING anyway.

 

If the geometry's fairly simple and low-poly, I tend to then attach all the meshes into one piece - if I'm going to just give it a single stone texture.

Obviously if you want textures with more details for individual parts, overlaying a stone texture over the PLTs of the parts involved, you will want to leave the parts separate.

 

Then just nail it firmly to whatever dais, podium, base, outrageously large watermelon that you want it standing on and you're done.