Well, I was bored tonight and Nam inspired me to mod. I started at about 10:20 and made a skeleton for a creature I had always wanted to make for Oblivion. If you have ever played Fable, there is a spell that lets you summon swords that attack your enemies. This is essentially the same thing. It is kinda lame, but I wanted this for Oblivion since I played Fable.
Here is a vid of the idle ( the animation was really fast, I slowed it down now)



I will try to finish this tonight... I will need some help with the scripting/ placing of the sword creatures. I figure we could make this a Scrollwork project. It would be nice to make a dungeon with various sword creatures to fight, and also spells that allow you to summon these creatures to fight for you.

Ideas,comments, suggestions?

Finished the forward animation.

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Finished the backward/ turn right/ turn left animations.

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And this is a video of the death sequence. I think its nice.

I never played fable, but hey, what roleplaying game ever existed without flying sword? I made some for Neverwinter Nights, they were pretty easy though.

The death animation is really nice, maybe you should make it a bit faster though? So they actually fall from the air into the X. It's a really nice touch that it lands with them crossing over! Am I retarded, or didn't you quite make the attack-animation yet?

How about a ruin with the sword and loads of traps? Make it puzzle dungeon where you can learn the spell at the end? I can't really do any scripting but I could throw in some interiors?

And well, is the player going to be able to pick them up? They could be cursed so they drain some fatigue from the player and resurrects if he tries to pick them up If you didn't want to hand over 2 million red awesome swords to the player.

(10-08-2011 11:51 AM)Mercery Wrote:  ....is the player going to be able to pick them up? They could be cursed so they drain some fatigue from the player and resurrects if he tries to pick them up If you didn't want to hand over 2 million red awesome swords to the player.

Well, if you don't want to let the player use the swords afterward, they could shatter into pieces like an atronach. I think this would mean you have to break them up first so they move as if they were one during animation, then become free upon death. At least then, you could only craft an awesome red sword once you collect enough pieces. The other option is to make them magic-based so that after they hit the ground in that X pattern, they fade away quickly with some magic effects thrown in.


One thing I noticed in the videos that you might want to find a way to change is that the creature bleeds when hit. It seems like there should be a way to turn that effect off, somewhere in the CS.

That leads me to another question though. How are you doing this? You said that you made a skeleton for this creature. So, to be sure, there is no invisible creature holding these swords? The swords are all you can hit to cause damage?

When you animate the attack sequences, you should definitely get creative on the motions. Let the swords do wild, spinning attacks that wouldn't be possible if it were merely a person using the swords. Actually, that leads me to a comment about the idle & movement animations. You need to distinguish them more from an invisible creature carrying them. Perhaps, when they're not attacking, they should float with a different center point. Give them a it of rotation around the center of the blade rather than the middle of the hilt. Rotation around the hilt is the default only because that's where mortals carry them. A self-guided sword might more naturally float in a drastically different way. A subtle change, like rotation around an unusual axis, would make it more obvious that something different is going on here.

(10-08-2011 04:28 PM)Alcron Wrote:  

(10-08-2011 11:51 AM)Mercery Wrote:  ....is the player going to be able to pick them up? They could be cursed so they drain some fatigue from the player and resurrects if he tries to pick them up If you didn't want to hand over 2 million red awesome swords to the player.

Well, if you don't want to let the player use the swords afterward, they could shatter into pieces like an atronach. I think this would mean you have to break them up first so they move as if they were one during animation, then become free upon death. At least then, you could only craft an awesome red sword once you collect enough pieces. The other option is to make them magic-based so that after they hit the ground in that X pattern, they fade away quickly with some magic effects thrown in.


One thing I noticed in the videos that you might want to find a way to change is that the creature bleeds when hit. It seems like there should be a way to turn that effect off, somewhere in the CS.

That leads me to another question though. How are you doing this? You said that you made a skeleton for this creature. So, to be sure, there is no invisible creature holding these swords? The swords are all you can hit to cause damage?

When you animate the attack sequences, you should definitely get creative on the motions. Let the swords do wild, spinning attacks that wouldn't be possible if it were merely a person using the swords. Actually, that leads me to a comment about the idle & movement animations. You need to distinguish them more from an invisible creature carrying them. Perhaps, when they're not attacking, they should float with a different center point. Give them a it of rotation around the center of the blade rather than the middle of the hilt. Rotation around the hilt is the default only because that's where mortals carry them. A self-guided sword might more naturally float in a drastically different way. A subtle change, like rotation around an unusual axis, would make it more obvious that something different is going on here.

If you look at the first video, they do indeed bleed, but I removed the blood effect because it looked a little weird that swords would bleed
And no, there is no invisible creature holding the swords. I made a new skeleton with 2 bones. One rigged for the right weapon, the other for the left weapon.

Here is a screen of it :



Merc, that would be awesome. A ruin would be a ton of fun, if you can do it, please do!

That's what I thought you meant.

I do think it would look less like an invisible creature holding them if they rotated around a different point while idling or moving... but would be an extra challenge to animate that way because of where they are attached to the bones.

Good work so far.

Well I planned out some different tiers of the spell.

Novice summon spell - Iron daggers

Apprentice summon spell- Glass longsword

Journeyman summon spell-Elven longswords

Expert- Daedric longswords

Master summon spells- Will include custom weapons. I think the red ones in the video will be suitable, as well as some others that I have made in the past. The master spells will only be obtainable after you have killed the sword creature that the spell pertains to a certain number of times, as Merc stated. That could be where a ruin filled with them could come into play.

And the attack anim is finished, which completes the animations.

Now you're left with the tedious rigging for the other weaponry

(Congratulations on being the first to use a proper post icon! Yay!)

Also, the attack animations look pretty good, but is it possible to make several? So it won't look as ... stiff?