Need answer with OAR, how it actually works?

[Agevairs]

Hello everyone!

I have a question about Open Animation Replacer. My team is currently working on our debut mod, and the idea is to keep it integrated and up-to-date instruments and frameworks, BUT.

If using OAR I do not understand, how can I mark different phrases as "conditions" during the dialogue, so it cause animation to work? For example, I'm writing dialogue line for NPC "Bla-bla-bla, and now we should go.... thinking.... to the right!". What do i need to do with My Dialogue, so when he is "thinking", this NPC wil use some OAR "Scratching Head" animation?

Maybe I'm a donkey and i've missed this lines somewhere in OAR description, so I'll be grateful for help

[scorrp10]

R in OAR stands for Replacer.  Means that in this situation, this NPC needs to perform SOME idle animation.  And there needs to be a rule in OAR to replace that animation with another one.  Say, if you make a rule that for this specific NPC, a shrug is replaced with a head scrstch. and for that dialogue piece, you indicate a shrug idle.

[Agevairs]

Aha, uhu... got it, i`ll try, sounds nice. Thank you!

On 1/20/2025 at 2:14 AM, scorrp10 said:

R in OAR stands for Replacer.  Means that in this situation, this NPC needs to perform SOME idle animation.  And there needs to be a rule in OAR to replace that animation with another one.  Say, if you make a rule that for this specific NPC, a shrug is replaced with a head scrstch. and for that dialogue piece, you indicate a shrug idle.

 

[scorrp10]

Basically, when you are creating dialogue, when in TopicInfo window you go to add or edit a specific line of response, the Edit Response window lets you choose an Idle animation to be played by the speaker and/or by the listener.

In CK Gameplay menu, if you choose Animations, and expand the Actors\Character\Behaviors\ tree, it has a LOOSE category in the end.   You might notice that animations under that category are the ones you can pick in the Edit Response window to play along with that response.    For example "IdleCiceroDance1".   

Animations window will tell you that IdleCiceroDance1  idle in fact uses "IdleCiceroDance1"  Anim Event.    
Now, I personally use Nemesis, so in my case when I go to meshes\actors\character\behaviors, I got Nemesis_*.xml files in there.   And if I grep for 'Cicero' I can see that it is found in Nemesis_mt_behavior.xml, 
And looking in there, I see that 'CiceroDance1'  corresponds to 'Animations\Special_CiceroDance3.HKX'   (that would be under meshes\actors\character\)    So yeah, figuring these things out can be a bit hard.
Now, if you want to go OAR route, you can set up in OAR to replace specifically that .hkx file, and put up a rule to replace it only for that NPC.   

Another option, of course, would be to add that head scratch animation file into your mod(as well as any other animations you wish to use), along with behavior files for either FNIS or Nemesis (see their documentation), which would add your animations as entirely new Anim Events to the game.    For example,  you add it under 'MyMod_HeadScratch'.

Then, in CK, with your mod's esp loaded, you go into the familiar Animations window, under Actors\Character\Behaviors, and in LOOSE, you right-click and 'Insert Child'.   Give it a meaningful ID(like IdleHeadScratch), and select 'MyMod_HeadScratch' in Anim Event.    Then, when you do the dialogue, you can select this idle for the response.