How Do You View Idle Animations In CK ?

[ToppDog]

When creating a new package, you can choose a preview actor, but after that if you select an animation, nothing happens. Is this one of those features that doesn't work? I would hope I don't have to create a package with every freakin idle animation just to see them demo'd. What am I missing?

[fore]

Are you talking about FNIS defined idles? THat doesn't work. Apparently this preview only works for idles defined in vanilla behaviors.

[ToppDog]

No, I mean a way to preview the vanilla animations in the CK. There are videos & resources out there which show your animations (which are awesome, BTW). But, I can't find any good resources that describe or show each of the vanilla idles. I need more variety for the kids in my boarding school mod, but I would like to preview them before putting them in my mod to test them. The CK implies that there is a way to do this, but I can't find any info in the wiki on how to do it, so I'm thinking I'm either missing an obvious step somewhere, or it is an incomplete function of the CK.

[fore]

But you can preview all vanilla animaations. Except the paired animations, because they would require a second actor. But all other vanillas work.

 

Are we both talking about the actor window, animations tab?

[ToppDog]

I thought we could too. I think I'm just trying to do it wrong, somehow. Here's what I'm doing to get there:

 

1. I'm clicking on "package" in the object window

 

2. then right clicking new to bring up a new package window

 

3. then selecting the "idles" tab

 

4. then checking the "use specific idles" box

 

5. then right clicking & selecting "new", which brings up a "select idle" window, that also has a drop down "preview actor" menu with a larger window where you see the actor standing there.

 

But, once I have the actor standing in this window, the animation is not displayed no matter which one I select, so I'm wondering if this is the wrong window, or if it's just one of those features of the CK that doesn't work.

 

I'm trying to view the additional animations that are available when creating a new package that are not available if you're selecting idles from the object window. It's for my boarding school mod. I'm trying to have the students do a much larger variety of animations when sandboxing.

 

BTW, do any of the animations you created resemble diving into water? I have an Olympic sized swimming pool with three diving platforms that I'm going to have students using when I get it figured out.

[fore]

Oh no, that one doesn't work. I was talking about the animations tab when you go to "Actor" instead of "Package".

 

In the actor window you see the contents of the animation files (ending on hkx). The animations from 3DS or other animation tools.

 

What you assign in the package windows are "Idles", not animations. "Idles" are defined in the CK, and are nothing else but Animation Events defined in "behavior files" created by this external Havok tool HBT. Behaviors are a layer between engine and animations, which defines and controls everything so that animation is not just an abrupt sequence of single animation files, but works fluidly and as natural as possible. So to make Idles be played in the CK starting from an AnimEvent, it had been necessary to integrate HBT into CK. And I can imagine that had been extremely hard at least. And only for a preview I think that had not paid off.

 

It seems like the CK/Skyrim has undergone sever changes with respect to animation and behavior definition. As it looks like, they were trying for a while to make at least some animation/behavior features available for modding. And when they saw that wasn't possible, they just didn't remove that from the CK. See the Animations -> Idle Animations windows. Most of it's parameters just not working.

 

And no, I never released any animation myself. I'm a very bad animator. That's why I made FNIS. A behavior tool. :D

[ToppDog]

Thanks! That explains a lot. I'm not as crazy as I thought I was getting :)

 

I did find some of the things I was looking for, like praying while crouched, etc. that looked like special furniture. Things are starting to come together well now.

 

Thanks again :)