How to move Doombased's SCAR-LK closer to the camera

[chillshock]

Hi,

 

I am totally in love with this scar-lk by doombased:

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10804/?

 

Just one weird thing: It's further away from my chamera than the other weapons. So the arms seem long and I can see the back of the stock (even the recoil compensating / longest). And I do not think it's a good thing to SEE the end of a stock of a gun you are about to fire. ;)

http://imgur.com/K5kUoXy

 

Instead of going all 'please do this / please move it / please release' I was thinking about fixing this for myself.

 

The question is: Any pointers?

Nifscope and just move "it" - whatever nif I need to edit and move? Is there any anchor for models? Or some comprehensive guides you would suggest?

 

Thanks a bunch!

[Slostenn]

The character holds it so far forward because it uses the submachine gun animations, which were really the only option at the time. Moving it in Nifskope isn't going to help if you keep it assigned to the submachine gun animations, because the gun will move but your character's hands won't. The easy way would be to reduce your viewmodel FOV by reducing your third person FOV; in the console, use the command "fov [viewmodel/3rd person FOV] [first person FOV];" the default values of which are 75 and 85 respectively I believe (not 100% sure on 3rd person). The downside is that this is going to move everything closer to the screen, including all of the other weapons and even the Pipboy. The alternative, and what I would strongly recommend, would be to convert it to Nuka World's Handmade Rifle animations.

 

Converting it to use those animations is a very lengthy and involved process, but to try to give as concise an explanation as possible: the easiest way I've found is to copy the receiver I want to convert into a Nifskope window for the Handmade Rifle's receiver, edit the coordinates to line it up where it matches, then do the math and apply those coordinate changes to every nif that the weapon I'm converting uses. There's probably a better way to do it for attachments (they're frequently just slightly off if I use the same coordinate values for everything) but I've only converted weapons to new animations like, two separate times, so I haven't had much opportunity to optimize the process. Also, obviously this is only an option if you own Nuka World. If you're still interested, I'll give a more detailed walkthrough of the process (unless someone else beats me to it, especially if they know a better way which is honestly pretty likely).

Edited April 20, 2017 by Tukster

[chillshock]

Thanks for the information. It's going to be a whole different story if I find the time for concentration I'll need to do this. I did find some 3ds max tutorials and am going to work my way through the whole animation thing with my wife rolling her eyes. ;) If I'll ever get anything done, it's going to be a looong time.

 

Would never have thought of the animations being the reason, as the reload animation was redone and it fits and so I thought there would be some pivot point for those animations and positions. Well, at least I got a new hobby now. :D

[Slostenn]

The thing about the reload animation (I assume you're referring to "Grab the Damn Mag?") is that it edits the animation files, not the nif files for the weapon. Which, is a third alternative I failed to mention: you could edit the submachine gun animations to move the weapon closer to the body, and then either use them to overwrite the existing submachine gun animations or assign them solely to the SCAR-LK via keyword (I'd say the latter would be a much better idea). Now, I don't have much experience working with animations, but I'm pretty sure that would by far be the most amount of work, especially if you don't already have experience working with animations in 3ds Max already. Still, it is an option, but if you want to go down that route I unfortunately don't have any advice beyond directing you to some of the mod authors that have made animations for Fallout 4 (Shiny Hax, Ha_ru, War Daddy, Hitman, and others).

Edited April 20, 2017 by Tukster

[chillshock]

Well, so far I managed to... break files and not understand too much of it. I'm a programmer, not an artist, darnit. XD Should have learned something usefull (for modding) *g*

 

Thanks again for the pointers. It's going to be a long long road - and have a complete buisiness trip in between with only my laptop... Well, at least I can read and watch stuff.

 

How do you real modders do it? Work, Wife, Children, Modding, Gaming? XD I'm totally impressed.

[N7R]

Yep the way a character holds a gun is all based on the animations. Its physical hkx animation files you'd need to edit to move the arms/hands closer to the camera for the gun to be positioned closer, there are about 20-26 files on average you'd need to redo. When I was first making my custom weapon I noticed the submachinegun animations made my gun too far away so I spent several months literally redoing every single 1st person animation from scratch so the gun was closer to the camera.

 

It is definitely not a quick fix since if you change one animation the moment that animation completes the gun will go far away again if the others have not been edited as well. An example would be if you made a new idle animation (where you are not moving your character), say you then start walking forward. The moment you walk forward another animation is called into action and if its still using the default submachinegun animation the gun moves far away from the camera again.

 

Once you've got your files redone for your scar in the creation kit you can create a keyword and make a new additive human subgraph that will allow those animations to only play when the scar is used. Adding 1st person animation is a lot faster than 3rd person ones, 3rd person has about 45+ lines to make them play correctly in game, 1st only needs one line in the new subgraph.

[chillshock]

Well, that's some good news (i only want the 1st person ones) wrapped in a whole lot of bad-news (The amount of work). Too bad I don't have a week of time, or I'd try and write a tool to redo the darn files for me, after all it seems to mostly be a transition of everything along exactly one axis - so no vector calcs and nothing, "just" a shift. At least that's what it looks like.

 

Hm, wait a second, thinking about it... wasn't there some skyrim(!?) related tool that already did this? Or was that 3ds?

[N7R]

Well, that's some good news (i only want the 1st person ones) wrapped in a whole lot of bad-news (The amount of work). Too bad I don't have a week of time, or I'd try and write a tool to redo the darn files for me, after all it seems to mostly be a transition of everything along exactly one axis - so no vector calcs and nothing, "just" a shift. At least that's what it looks like.

 

Hm, wait a second, thinking about it... wasn't there some skyrim(!?) related tool that already did this? Or was that 3ds?

 

I suppose a script that translates the axis' needed to move the gun closer to the camera could work for some of the animation files but not all. The main issue is there are a lot of complex animations like reloading, melee, grenade throw etc that have many ketframes. Even better some animations like walking forward and running don't actually have the arms keyframed at all. Instead the character is in a single pose and the body is keyframed to move back and forth with the camera to give the impression you are running. It looks super silly in 3ds max when you see what the animations are really like compared to how you the player sees them in-game.

 

If this was not fun enough many animations require annotations added to them as well. These annotations dictate when sounds play and other actions (like when to release a grenade being thrown or when to end the reload animation etc). Only way to get these annotations is the convert the vanilla animations using the converter tools on the animation kit on nexus. If this sounds really overwhelming/confusing don't worry it pretty much will be at the start. It takes a lot of time to know what animation files do what and even more to decipher how to blend them correctly.

 

As another user above pointed out the quick way would be to do some adjustments to the position in nifskope and use animations from another gun. However if you want true perfection and the character to hold the gun always correct animations are the only way to do it. The animation files have the bones for the gun basically so it tells the models from niskope where to be positioned and rotated.