Hello Guys,

I have been working on my 2nd mod which is based around fireworks. Basically a caravan vendor selling fireworks which you can plant in the ground and activate (at which point you should run-away ;o )
Eventually I want staged firework displays in pre-determined locations during special occasions, and player purchased choreographed firework displays, plus craft your own firework, etc.

Who doesn't love a good firework display eh? ;o)

I started with firing a projectile (Ice spear) from the ground into the air, which explodes and creates a firework effect (I actually used one of the shouts as the effect but it worked out quite nice).

So my next stage is creating the actual fireworks to use for my mod, and I want many different effects and different types.

Many hours of Google/YouTube later I find myself in Blender. Which is a nice place to be mostly! I can model the fireworks and effects using particles in there with the lights etc. and I can play or render the animation over say 75 frames. etc.

My question is how to get that 75 frame firework animation out of Blender into SkyRim? with all the effects, lighting, textures and particle animations?

Can I make an animated projectile within Blender and be able to export this as a .nif to be used as a projectile within the Creation Kit?
Would this projectile have the same animations (particles within Blender) when rendered in-game?

Is it like a jigsaw puzzle where you have to export all the parts individually and then piece back together within the Creation Kit? Export the projectile as a .nif, export the explosion as a .nif, export the sound as sound ;o)
The bit that confuses me is how much information is exported within the .nif file format when it comes to animations/special effects?

P.S. I think most of what I need will have to be done with NIF files, and apparently there is some way (not worked this out yet) to go from Blender to a .nif and then into SkyRim. Isn't there? Please say yes, I can not afford 3DS Max!

Thanks in advance for any input.

Can anyone help with the Blender to Skyrim conversion? So I can at least see in-game what is going on during my testing?

Well, you're not going to like the answers ....

Blender to Skyrim nif = not possible. Niftools exporter does not handle Skyrim format yet. It's not even being worked on. You could export in F03 format and rebuild the nif in Nifskope after.
Blender particle effects to nif = not possible. Never has been even for Oblivion. Particle effects need to be built within Nifskope from scratch. No idea how and no idea how that would translate into a Skyrim nif.
Even so, to export what you're making, you'd need to export the nif (projectile) as one piece, then the animation as a .kf (at least that's what it is in Oblivion - I believe Skyrim animations are similar)

So basically, what you're trying to do will lead to jumping through many hoops but if you figure it out I'm sure it would be a great help to the community.

@Hanaisse; Many thanks for your answers.

So to understand, you are saying it is possible to export the projectile mesh into Skyrim and I could animate it using Papyrus, i.e. have it fired into the sky but I couldn't have any effects attached to it using particles from Blender.

That is a shame because that would have been the easiest way to create the fireworks. I assume I could still apply lighting to the projectile. But what about the explosion, is it not possible to create the effects used for such things as shouts, or spells?

Also do any of your answers change if I were to ask the same question but using 3DS Max?

Thanks

Sort of.

It's possible with some fluffing to export the projectile nif and turn it into a Skyrim mesh, that's the easy part. It's also possible to export the "fireworks going off" animation. It's not possible to export particle effects. You can, however, build the particle effects in nifskope and they should work. Perhaps there's some kind of explosion in Skyrim meshes similar that you could copy? I'm not sure if you can apply a shout effect to a static object.

And I can't answer about 3DS, I don't know that much about it, sorry.

I think the problem with adding spell effects is that you need a target-destination-type-thing to have the pretty-explosion occur (at least, that's my memory of it)?

Maybe you could fudge a script adding a collision object 100-metres above the PC/NPC's head, at the moment the firework is launched? If it then hit that ... maybe ...

... IDK, as you say, importing particles would be much easier, but I can't see anyone rigging that up any time soon (if ever).

(also see this topic, might help? http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1391600-help-how-to-emit-light-from-an-arrow/)


Nice idea, I hope you get it to work

The collision is not needed as there is an option against the projectile to explode on impact or after a specified time. This works OK for creating the firework explosion. I just need some pretty effects now. Some of the shouts look al-right as fireworks but I would need to make more, and I am not sure how to make them. But still looking...

Thanks for the responses guys.

@Hanaisse; Good news I think... The manually creating particles using NifSkope is possible, by that I mean by me, it sounded really scary when you first suggested it!

PlayerTwo sent me this link http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Oblivion/Oblivion_401_-_Particles which seems perfect and not actually that scary when you can visualise in Blender and hopefully see the real effect played out within the Creation Kit... The tutorial is for Oblivion but there is still some hope of making my pretty firework displays.

And it would be so cool if the CK supports what that post suggests Oblivion CS supported, which is viewing the particle effects within the Creation Kit in a test cell?

Thanks again guys for your help and suggestions, very much appreciated.