Changing animations, how the heck does this work?

[redeyesandlonghair]

So I downloaded several different animation sets and I've been trying to pick and choose which ones I want to use from each set. A power attack from this one, a stance from this other one, hey this third one has a sneak animation I like, and so on.

 

But here's where it gets wierd. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

This should give you an idea of the insanity.

 

I replaced PowerAttackForward.kf and PowerSkillAttackForward.kf (the names here may not be accurate, but don't worry I made sure to rename them exactly to what was in the folder before when I replaced them, and I'm sure you know what I mean by those two files). The first time that I did it, success! The animations were replaced. However, they didn't work quite right, so I replaced them again with two new files. Exact same names and everything, previous files overwritten. So technically, those two animations I mentioned at the start of this paragraph don't even exist anymore. But guess what, in game it still uses those animations, not the ones I replaced them with. This all took place in the special animations folder, nothing in _male was changed since I only want to change my character's animations.

 

 

So how exactly does this work? Why did it work the first time, and not the second time? In the meantime, nothing else changed; I didn't install any new mods, I didn't change my load order. All I did was quit out of Oblivion, drop in the new files and replace the old ones, and then started up Oblivion again.

 

So how is it that the game is using animation files that technically don't exist anymore?

Why did it work the first time and not the second time?

How is this supposed to be done if this isn't the way?

 

 

Also, a followup question, why doesn't the animation preview in my CS work half the time? Some animations it will let me preview, but others it won't.

 

PS - if anyone can point me to a list where it defines exactly what each .kf file correspons to, that would be great. Like, which ones are my regular attacks? Which ones are my power attacks? What's my shield bash? etc. I thought the file names were self-explanatory, but clearly they are not.

 

Any help is appreciated.

Edited April 12, 2011 by redeyesandlonghair

[fore]

Bear in mind, that it's not enough to simply rename animations. That doesn't work, especialyy when you are in the specialanims folder.

 

What an animation does is depending on the AnimGroups. And these AnimGroups are HARDCODED. So if you rename a normal attack to make it a powerattack, this doesn't work.

 

The animGroups can be changed with NifSkope in the kf's NiControllerSequence.

 

One specialty are the skillattacks. As you can see from the said article, skillattacks are NOT predefined animgroups. Here the engine looks at the kf's name. So only the name handtohandskill1attackpower.kf turns an attackpower into a skilled attackpower.

 

However: this skill naming works in the _male folder. If this works in the specialanims is beyond me. The reason is that in the specialanims you can name the kfs whatever you like (like sexy_walk). The engine takes the purposes of the kf from the NiControllerSequence. And since there is no "Skill" attribute encrypted (Nif doesn't know that), I don't know if how the engin should know.

 

The effect with an animation playing although it doesn't exist anymore is something i THINK I have also experienced. I believe (but this is pure speculation based on my experience) that the current animation is stored in the save file, and if, after loading, the animation for the same animgroup it technically incorrect (e.g. due to bad renaming or manipulation), the engine will continue the stored sequence.

 

Edit: to get a list I recommend to extract the Meshes.bsa with BSA Commander. There are almost 350 3rd person only, too much to list here. And I think they all are (almost) self-explanatory, once you see the systematics behind it. :thumbsup:

[Striker879]

In my own 'personalizing' Xtudo's Personality Idles - Modified version - NPCs and companions I have also discovered how load order can affect what idles are played (for the NPCs at least). My own mod list is pretty short (outside of my own homerolled and a couple of personalized mods). To date I haven't used any mod load order sorting, but my own mods do get 'sorted' via save time and date in the CS. If my last save was my personalized Aranmathi Ayleid Home I might lose some of my personalized idles in Personality Idles. Just another way of keeping life simple for me I guess.