Requesting general custom weapon animation guidance (revolver rifle)

[TheRizzler1]

Hi guys. I'm trying to tackle some custom animations for my weapon mod, and have made what I consider to be reasonable progress today in terms of getting to grips with the workflow. I've exported the vanilla handmade revolver rifle reload animation and set it up with the vanilla mesh for reference on a separate layer;

 

 

My weapon mod is the M2045 Magnum Revolver Rifle. I've just rebuilt the model so that the 'barrel' is the entire front part of the gun - i.e. the entire front part rotates on a hinge at the bottom of the gun, theoretically with the cylinder attached;

 

 

So here's the rub - I'm on the verge of things getting much more complicated and would really appreciate someone nudging me in the right direction or dropping some bomb-ass advice. I could and will experiment, but I get the feeling I might run into easily avoidable problems as I do. I have a few questions;

 

1) The magnum's hammer is much further back than the handmade revolver, not to mention the other proportions of the gun in comparison to the template weapon (so most things I want to move around, for example the cylinder). What's the procedure for moving bones around so that all the moving parts are in the right places? Do I just move the bones then keyframe and hope for the best? What relation do NiNodes in the .nifs have to the bones in the animation files?

2) The entire front of the gun is now considered to be the barrel, however the cylinder is effectively part of the receiver .nif. Is it feasible for the cylinder to move with the barrel as it rotates forwards, through e.g. link constraint?

3) What's the best order to work in? I was watching shiny haxorus' excellent video guide and he mentions doing the idle first, so that the 'base pose' is down and you can transfer it to the other animations such as the reload, so that everything starts in the right place. Is this correct? How would I transfer the keyframes from one clip to another?

4) I have a speed loader model textured and ready to go. This is probably the most far fetched, but is there any way to add such a model to the weapon so that it appears ingame for a reload? I suspect this would require a new bone? I'd likely add the model to the receiver so that it's always present for the reload.

 

Again, massive thanks to anyone that takes it upon themselves to answer my long winded questions.