[LE] Animation Questions

[Deleted477949User]

Hi guys

I'm making some long (Very long) term plans for future mods and I'm just making some enquiries about making custom animations for Skyrim using blender. I'm interested in making a custom creature with a custom armature and animations. Now I have plenty of experience making animations in blender and while I never released it I actually managed to make a custom creature armature with animations for a rideable dragon for Oblivion. That mod sadly died when I had to format my computer and I didn't have backups. So I'm just wondering what is possible and if there are any comprehensive tutorials on this subject somewhere I can use.

[fore]

"Comprehensive" tutorials (for making custom creatures) when no one has made one for release? lol

 

For Blender animations you will finde tutorials and tools. Look for the tools from Anton0028 here on Nexus. And more information and tutorials you find on Loverslab.

 

But the problem starts when you integrate a custom creature into the game. You have to trick the Havok Behavior system, which is not public, and not made for being modded. So far only that Skywind developers claim to have custom creatures working. And a guy at loverslab seems to be pretty far. But that should show you how challenging such a project will be.

[Deleted477949User]

Okay thanks for the input. I'll take a look at those links. It might be I can create what I want by giving an existing armature custom animations. But it's a long term project so plenty of time to mull it over.

[fore]

If you want to add animations to an existing creature then you can use FNIS as long as you stay with idles.

 

If however you want to add contextual animations, like walking and fighting, then again you will have the problems of changing behaviors. Not as severe as you had to make a new creature, but still.

[Di0nysys]

If you want to add animations to an existing creature then you can use FNIS as long as you stay with idles.

 

If however you want to add contextual animations, like walking and fighting, then again you will have the problems of changing behaviors. Not as severe as you had to make a new creature, but still.

Would it be possible to apply your alternate animations framework to swap out creature animations on the fly?

[fore]

 

If you want to add animations to an existing creature then you can use FNIS as long as you stay with idles.

 

If however you want to add contextual animations, like walking and fighting, then again you will have the problems of changing behaviors. Not as severe as you had to make a new creature, but still.

Would it be possible to apply your alternate animations framework to swap out creature animations on the fly?

 

No. AAs are only implemented for character.

 

However, the sytemetics behind AA is rather simple. So someone could actually add behavior nodes to specific creature behaviors to implement AAs for this creature.

 

However again, I have no idea if creature animations have to be pre-cached like the human ones. And if so, it would really become complicated. And incompatible with FNIS, even when run without creatures.

[Deleted477949User]

Well I'm glad I put this question out there before I opened zbrush on this idea. It doesn't look look like I'll be able to create what I've got in mind. I certainly couldn't do it by just reskinning an existing creature and using their animations.

 

I don't want to come off as entitled here but you'd think, given that nodded gameplay is a major selling point of these games, that Bethesda would be a little more helpful with these issues. No doubt they have their reasons for not producing any kind of official tool to tackle this but it's still frustrating.

[fore]

Well I'm glad I put this question out there before I opened zbrush on this idea. It doesn't look look like I'll be able to create what I've got in mind. I certainly couldn't do it by just reskinning an existing creature and using their animations.

 

I don't want to come off as entitled here but you'd think, given that nodded gameplay is a major selling point of these games, that Bethesda would be a little more helpful with these issues. No doubt they have their reasons for not producing any kind of official tool to tackle this but it's still frustrating.

 

The problem is that Bethesda has always been blamed for their weak animations and animation diversity in their games. Now they have used probably the best 3rd party system to do so: Havok. Unfortunately Havok tools are neither free nor suitable for modding.

 

Can you blame Beth for going that way? Not really, I think.

[Deleted477949User]

oh of course not. I get it, they paid to use something so there's no way they'd just hand that over to modders for free. Like I said I don't wanna come off as entitled but that doesn't stop it being a little frustrating and really it's just too bad. Both morrowind and Oblivion had some great creature mods with custom assets and animations made for them but we simply can't produce the same content in Skyrim even after all this time.

[fore]

oh of course not. I get it, they paid to use something so there's no way they'd just hand that over to modders for free. Like I said I don't wanna come off as entitled but that doesn't stop it being a little frustrating and really it's just too bad. Both morrowind and Oblivion had some great creature mods with custom assets and animations made for them but we simply can't produce the same content in Skyrim even after all this time.

 

But we COULD produce the same content if we had enough manpower to work on prerequisites.

 

It's not unusual that Bethesda uses proprietary content. Think about nif and kf. Hardly anyone considers this being proprietary any more. With tools like nifskope or Blender interfaces. But there was a tremendous amount of highly motivated people working on that from the beginning. But for the Havok stuff there were only very few. And now that the request for such tools picks up, there are not many people around any more willing to invest in ground-breaking work.