Adventures across the 3rd dimension

...also can you actually see where these rotation points are in Blender?

EDIT: Oh dear. I should have edited that last comment instead of splitting questions over two pages.

Doesn't seem like it. I originally didn't even think about it and it worked fine anyway, seems I should just need to position the wanted rotation point aligned with the ninode that's linked to the animation. But instead, either works for one node and neither for the other.

I posted again on discord, but they haven't managed to figure it out for me before so I'm not very hopeful. Maybe I'll just skip the latches all together. (well, the animations).

No, I only see those points in nifskope as they are not part of my blender model.

If you know the coordinates of the rotation nodes then you could mark them in Blender with a temporary object or an Empty to see if that helps you align things.

I have been experimenting a bit in Blender, which is a bit difficult without knowing how nif exports and NifSkope work...

 

and it took a while to work out that the lid rotation node needs to align with the top and back of the chest but the latch node seems to be a bit higher
And when varying those points to see what happens the hinge node seems to create the biggest differences with the latch than moving the latch node.
But maybe that's a quirk of using Blender's bones.

Well the hinges are already positioned where the rotation nodes should be... And my model is slightly different from the original chest so my hinge nodes are at the exact same height just opposite sides of the lid. I think the main issue is that the CK just seems to react to changes in one of the nodes and not the other.

But for now I am watching Night Country with Jodie Foster

It's a hierarchical thing though. The hinge node will be the parent of the latch node and seems to have greater movement/rotation in the animation.
Oh and that reminds me to mention that the images you've posted of all your open chests show much more rotation of the lid than I get in the Creation Kit. I wonder if that's just a Special Edition thing.

One more question, not that it will help in any way Do you have to parent the three objects in Blender before exporting?
I just thought of that cos I've just tweaked that Blender experiment to remove the bones and do the same thing with Parenting and setting the origins to the rotation points of the bones.

The nodes are already "nested" so yeah, I know the opening of the lid affects the hinge. The problem is the hinge doesn't seem to want to change position at all.

And no, I don't think I need to worry about parentling. I don't seem to need to worry about whether I made each part of the chest one object or several pieces either, it all seems to settle itself when I copy them into nifskope. That's sort of where the whole structure already is anyway.

As for my open chest images, those are static ones, not the animated ones. In game, there's one open static chest (not containers), but as a modders' resource thing I'm adding open versions of the chest replacers I'm making. They use all the same bits anyway. Except for the collision part.

Edit: 
All of them:
 

They look fantastic when you see them in context!
And that makes more sense having fully open statics. I understand now.

Charlotte wrote:

 I don't seem to need to worry about whether I made each part of the chest one object or several pieces either, it all seems to settle itself when I copy them into nifskope. 

 

That's odd though. If you can put them all as one object then the origin/translations of separate versions wouldn't matter at all. Does this mean that the Ninodes have an "envelope" like bones and the mesh has to intersect that?
Or does it automatically separate unlinked meshes?
This is confusing.

The Lid ninode contains the lid parts and the latch ninode, the latch ninode contains the latch mesh. So it's a kind of nested structure. The lid ninode transform affects the latch, but all the other separate lid pieces can be translated any which way without affecting each other. Make sense?

But if you export it all as one object from Blender how does it know?

Clearly this is all due to my ignorance of the import/export process and I shouldn't worry about it.