Animations in Skyrim

[4Gargoyle4]

Recently I began making a new mod with a few other people and something came up that I need to figure out. On the most basic level, how do you work with animations in the Creation Kit? Can anyone recommend any good tutorials for this? There are two specific examples I need it for. First, I wanted to have a really cool scene in which some creature was summoned from the abyss by a Dark Priest (Trying not to spoil things :P) and to do so, the Priest makes a bunch of complicated gestures with his arms and hands. It doesn't need to be crazy specific or accurate, I just need to figure out a way to make my own custom animation for an already existing Actor Type. Second, I had wanted to make a new race with a new model for the sake of this mod. I already have a model created as well as a texture, but I don't know how to add any animations to it whatsoever. A creature that can't move isn't going to be much use.

 

Thanks for looking this over, and please respond if you have any tips or help.

 

4Gargoyle4

[DemongelRex]

I'm pretty sure you cannot animate animations with the CK, simply because that was never intended. This is why FNIS exist. I would go to that page to get started.

[Ceruulean]

There's FNIS which is the best for your single custom animation for the priest. Now a custom creature...

 

Creating new animations has a lot of tutorials, but you're basically going to need 3DSMax and official Havok tools, or if you're using the free Blender, you should take a look at Anton's tools. I'm not an animatior so I have no clue how to make them, but there's plenty of animation replacers so its possible. The tricky part is making sure the animations sync well and implementing them.

 

Animations follow a behavior graph (.hkx) and I've written a brief article on behavior graphs. You'll have to copy the animations and all behavior files from an existing race, then replace animations and edit the behavior if needed. When you make new animations you also need to use the same skeleton as the creature you are copying.

It seems creating a completely new graph for a completely new creature is nigh-impossible; I've tried renaming the graphs but the CK does not recognize it (cannot find root or whatever, it's been a problem since 2012, where the new animations part of a totally new behavior graph play in the CK but not in-game).

 

Lastly when you have a working behavior project, the animation events are connected by the Idle Manager, found under "Gamplay > Animations." Basically whenever the actor performs an action, like moving, attacking, the plugin sends the animation event to the behavior and the connected animations plays.

 

Anyway, I certainly wish you luck! It's definitely possible to add unique creatures. I urge you to google the Skywind Guar; there's some hilarious videos out there.

[fore]

 

It seems creating a completely new graph for a completely new creature is nigh-impossible; I've tried renaming the graphs but the CK does not recognize it (cannot find root or whatever, it's been a problem since 2012, where the new animations part of a totally new behavior graph play in the CK but not in-game).

 

I think it is possible. But the problem is the missing information. And the tremendous effort necessary to do it.

 

Besides the behavior graph itself you need 2 things:

1. The correct entry point (the hkx file directly in the meshes/<actor>
2. The appropriate entries in 2 text files directly in meshes: animationsetdatasinglefile.txt and animationdatasinglefile.txt. That's where FNIS has to mess around every time there are a little more complicated things. Like furniture animations, killmoves or pre-cache. But that's really hard stuff, partially crc encrypted. And those files also hold information for all creature types.

 

And, Ceruulean, I thought you had done this yourself? I'm puzzled. :)

[Ceruulean]

Haha, I can edit the graph, but not its filename. I copied behavior files into a new race but they still have the same name ("MyRace/behaviors/dragonproject.hkx" versus "dragon/behaviors/MyBehaviorFile.hkx"). Changing the name of the .hkx got me a root error...

Edited November 9, 2015 by Ceruulean

[jboyd4]

Ceruulean, I've recently learned how to write the skeleton.hkx file and have successfully animated my custom bones in game. But the problem I'm running into is, I want the new race to use their own animations and not have to replace all the other races animations. Now, I know that fnis can do this, but I don't really like the idea of having my mod be depended on fnis to function. Don't get me wrong fnis is great, and I use it for lots of things, but I'd just prefer my mod not need it. So, my question to you is, is getting the race to use its own animations just a matter of copying the playable races folders and creating a new folder structure? For example, actors/character/gorgon/character female/defaultfemale.hkx? Then the folder for the animations would be ....gorgon/animations? Or am I just being overly optimistic?

[BoayGamingYT]

Hmm...does anyone found the behaviour editing yet?

 

I have custom Dinosaur and its basic animation files is werewolf, its works with custom shape not adding the new bone yet.

What I need is how to remove one of the behaviour of werewolf like howling, seems pretty bad when stand up from knocked out hes howling repeatedly.

 

so I really need for that answer very much.

 

Thank you for your assistance.