[LE] How to play an animation? [With a twist]

[horniman6969]

Ok, we all know SendAnimationEvent() function. Lets you make NPC do animation etc etc.

 

However, this function has an annoying limitation. You see, it doesn't just play an animation. It will also perform an action in that animation. I.e. SendAnimationEvent(Hadvar, "PowerAttackStanding") will hurt anything in front of Hadvar.

 

And since it performs actions, it also checks for conditions whether that action is possible or not. I.e. SendAnimationEvent(Hadvar, "chairStandUp") will not work if the actor wasn't sitting on the chair to begin with. A kind of "foolproofing" which ruins it tbh, because it just won't let you play any animation at any time, only if its "precursor" animation was already running, or some other conditions are met.

 

Is there a way to JUST play an animation on NPC? Similar to what you'd see in 3D software - press a button ,animation plays no matter what. No conditions check, no prerequisites, no checking for game state, none.

[rkkn]

while I am no expert, I have spent a lot of time messing with this, and I am pretty sure the game engine is set up such that animations and actions are intrinsically linked, with data for actions being in the animation files, and the actor's action state being the animation state

 

There are ways to work around the condition checking, though. For example, you can't play the attack animation if you are midair in the jump animation. However, you can send the landing animation while midair, which gets the player actor out of the jump state, and then immediately follow that with sending the attack animation, and that will work. But you still get all the associated effects. Gonna guess that the only way to get an animation with no effects is creating a custom animation that calls no events.

[Sphered]

More trouble than its worth but you can equip an object that has a DefaultMale (or female) graph with NPC Root and so long as that graph is active and controls base skeleton you can call a subgraph animation that plays with no prereq or checks. You need to use at least one armature slot for this to work but it doesnt matter which one so pick something like FX so you dont conflict with gear