Q about some female NPC's man-like stance

[kevkiev]

Simple question: the way that, when standing doing nothing, Jordis and Mjoll stand with their arms bowed out like they had muscle-bound arms or something (Lydia might do this too, it's been so long since I sent her off to the blades I can't remember) - is that from their character's mesh or is it an animation?

[Cipherthe3vil]

Simple question: the way that, when standing doing nothing, Jordis and Mjoll stand with their arms bowed out like they had muscle-bound arms or something (Lydia might do this too, it's been so long since I sent her off to the blades I can't remember) - is that from their character's mesh or is it an animation?

 

I'm pretty sure its just an animation, Beth didn't do a lot of work on things like that. They did a lot of work, sure, but they cut a lot of corners.

 

There are many animation replacers out there you could look at. I us like four different ones, one for walking, one for idles, one for running, and one for sprinting. I also have that puppetmaster thing, but I haven't used it yet. So confusing x_x

[kevkiev]

Ok, thanks C, that was my guess. It bothers me with Jordis (it almost suits Mjoll somehow :tongue:) but I think I'll just live with it. I had an outside hope that it was just a mesh so a fix would be relatively simple.

 

In my current playthrough I'm trying to avoid many mods that contain animations/ scripts etc. (Tho I do have Dovahkiin Relaxes Too.) My first playthrough ended up going absolutely haywire so I'm trying to keep this one fairly streamlined. The vast majority of my mods are hi-rez textures ('cuz I refuse to play in an ugly worldspace in a game that, essentiall, is about worldspace.) I might be being a bit of a worry-wart, but this game seems so flippin' fragile and I currently crash/freeze maybe once every 50 hrs or so of gameplay, so something's working. Whether it's because I've been avoiding complex mods (not that I have the technical savvy to really tell - just kinda go by gut feel), I'm just lucky this time around, or eve its my refusal to use quick/auto save anymore, I dunno but I'm scared to change my approach.

 

Which is too bad, since I also avoid any quest mods & anything that creates new world spaces - kind of a shame especially since there's a few I'd like to load up. I think back to FONV and mods like World of Pain/ New Vegas Bounties and how much enjoyment they added without affecting stability one bit. But I try not to DL any mod that I don't really, really need. (Hard to justify Dovahkiin Relaxes on that basis, I know, but I couldn't help myself.)

 

Anyways, thanks again for replying.

[Ragicka]

Maybe try Migals Housecarl Beauties. Among other things he's changed: "None of them walk like a male bodybuilder."

Migal is an awesome modder, one of my favs.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Ragicka

[kevkiev]

Thanks for the reply Ragicka. Your link's a bit off, but I did check out Migal's and it looks like a really decent mod, though not my cup of tea. I tried the required aapachi's hair mod and didn't like it - I have this mod that simply gives a softer & smoother texture to vanilla hair and absolutely love it. I'm fine with everything about Jordis (especially since I started using XCE's cleaner skin for females textures) except her masculine posture, so I'd be interested in a mod that fixed that, but not much else. (Though Migal's increased AI radius sure sounds cool - I do have a follower sandbox mod and the AI thing seems like a very useful tweak.) Thanks again though.

 

edit: ok, I figured I'd try out an animation mod so I installed "Pretty Female Idles 01" but Jordis still looked like she was toting pumpkins.

[Ragicka]

No problem, Kev. :thumbsup: Thanks for the heads up on the link, fixed.

[McMutton]

There's actually an option in an Actor's Creation Kit entry that makes them use the opposite gender's animations; I'm pretty sure those characters stand like that on purpose.

[kevkiev]

There's actually an option in an Actor's Creation Kit entry that makes them use the opposite gender's animations; I'm pretty sure those characters stand like that on purpose.

 

Hmmmn... interesting, thanks. I went into the CK to see if I could figure that out but... alas, nope. (Was hoping for a checkbox. :tongue: ) Tried changing her base template to Aela, but that didn't seem to do anything - in the animation preview the standing was unchanged. (Maybe just as well, I don't even know what a base template is.)

 

There's a standing animation mod in the file section but it's under review atm, so I wasn't able to see if the intent was to change this kind of thing.

 

I also noticed there's a mod that swaps the female standing animation for the male. Based on the author's comments in the description, I got the impression that certain female NPCs mioght stand like a man because they're equipped with heavy armour and maybe there's clipping problems. But, then again, my female PC doesn't have that problem. And didn't have that problem even when I had the weight slider to the max.

 

Ah well.... all too complicated for this early in the morning. I guess I could try that NPC editor mod, but I read the description a while back and thought it was kind of confusing.

 

Edit: okay, so I think this is what's happening: most, if not all male NPCs, are set with the "heavy muscular standing and walk" (quotations mine - not a real name) and most female NPCs defaulted to heavy armour have the same thing. Obviously not all females, otherwise Aela would have that, though maybe it's based on skill and not the actual armour set - in which case maybe it's every female whose default best armour skill is heavy armour (since Aela is defaulted to Ancient Nord armour but specializes in light armour skill). Anyways, Jordis, Mjoll etc. can be "fixed" with this mod however, it changes every NPC that is set to use that animation so they use a "skinny" standing and walking animation instead. I've just installed that mod and, so far so good, I haven't noticed any clipping (so far) with heavy male char's wearing heavy armour and it actually looks okay on male NPCs so, atm, it seems like a reasonably good way to address the manly-standing/walking-thing for female NPCs. And it's a relatively simple mod as it adds only one file which, presumably, overrides its counterpart in the meshes bsa.

Edited July 17, 2012 by kevkiev

[plunket]

Nothing makes Lydia stop standing like a gunfighter. Methods I have tried to correct her stance include:

 

Creation Kit

Skyrim NPC Editor

Housecarls More Feminine Stance

Feminine Stance Housecarl_TavernCloths

Lydia Marriage Fixed and More

Housecarls and Followers Can Wear Zazz (2B and 5B)

Migals Housecarl Beauties 1.01

 

I've given up. There is no fix for it. Maybe it has to be done before marrying Lydia, or before meeting her, but it's too late for that in my game. I've tried moving the load order around too.

 

Mods currently installed:

 

Bathing Beauties Luxury Suite 3.6

Better Females by Bella 3

Cloaks of Skyrim 1

Dimonized Unp female body 1.2

Game of Thrones House Shields 1.21

More Craftables 2.4

More Giants Toes 1

Personalized Music 4

Spend Dragon Souls for Perks 1.5

Summer Fashion for UNP base 1.1.0

Cartographers Map Markers 1

tox Dragon Map Markers 0.1

[kevkiev]

Nothing makes Lydia stop standing like a gunfighter. ...

 

Have you tried the mod that I linked in my (long-winded, sorry) previous post? I haven't visited Lydia lately, but I doubt if she's immune to its effects. Again though, it changes the "gunfighter" (I like that!) stance for (from what I can tell) every NPC in the game. Now that I've played with it for a while, I don't miss the "toting pumpkins" look (my own version of "gunfighter" :tongue: ) at all. Even on heavy-set male NPCs.