[REL] Fore's New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS V1.0

[fore]

Fore's New Idles in Skyrim allows you to add and play new Idle Animations without having to deal with nasty work-arounds, like replacing existing animations and creating temporary pseudo-races. It does this by creating (400) new animation slots in the Skyrim Behavior files.

 

This mod serves both gamers and modders.

 

Gamers can use it to make NPCs perform any standard or custom animation by simply copying the (.hkx) animation file under a pre-defined name into a special directory, and activate them by casting the FNIS spells.

(Note: although there can be different NPCs performing different animations at one time, this mod does not provide any synchronization of these animations, as needed for example in somne adult type animation mods).

 

Modders can use the new animation slots to implement there own (behavior independant) animation invocation and synchronization.

 

The animation slots are implemented by extending Beth's behavior files (which was only possible thanks to TheFigment aka TheHologram's amazing hkxcmd). Because of the anti-modding structure of these behaviors, my mod will always be incompatible to all other mods which modify behaviors as well (none known as of today). To make 2 behavior modifying mods compatible, they have to be integrated into one set of behaviors.

 

Currently this mod provides 400 additional animation slots. They can be used for all kind of simple animation tasks, (hopefully) including idle based combat overhauls like Oblivion's DR6 and CCAO. However due to the lack of necessary behavior information they cannot be used for regular combat animations.

 

 

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Usage for GAMERS

 

On start-up the player automatically receives 2 spells:

• FNIS Idle Selection: This (self) spell allows you to select the Idle Animation which will be used for successive "FNIS Idle Spell"s. By installation, these animations are pre-set with 5 standard animations (C1-C5) and 5 of Umpa's Dance Animation for Modder (C6-C10). See "Installation" on how to change these files with your animations.
   
  
• FNIS Idle Selection: This (target) spell makes the casted NPC perform the selected spell. On standing NPCs the spell will run until you interrupt by casting again. But (unfortunately), because the animation slots are fully integrated into the behavior files, the animation will be also interrupted by other standord animation event's of the NPC's animation schedule.
  

 

 

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Usage for MODDERS

 

Simply copy your animations into the "animation/FNIS" folder, using the predefined names FNISc0051 to FNISc0400 (I hereby reserve the right to use the first 50 slots for upcuming versions of this mod ;-) )

abd call your idles with PlayIdle() by using the corresponding anim events (zFNISc051 and following).

 

Please keep in mind that you will interfere wih all other modders that use the same animation names. Provided there is enough interest from SERIOUS modders to use this scheme, I would be willing to assign those numbers for a certain time. In the long run I hope someone (else) will write a managing utility, which defines the animation numbers based on the user's mod list. But this would also require an additonal wrapping layer, TBD.

[JanusForbeare]

Wow... that's... wow. Good on you. The inability to make new animations has been a serious handicap for users of the CK since day one. I know that some mods have been stalled indefinitely due to this problem, so a fix is really good to see.

[MofoMojo]

Immediate watch. AWESOME Job!

[jimhsu]

This "solution" reminds me of the system used by the community modders for the Egosoft games (X3). Good work regardless.

 

They did eventually come up with programs that would automatically handle "metadata" files (which contain the anims) and generate appropriate files that the game understands (in this case, behavior files). Looking forward to such a system for Skyrim animations also,

[Darksun45230]

Does this mean our dreams of new weaponry, enemies, and combat has come true?

[porroone]

Sorry I did not know about this thread, basically what I see there is a Hierarchy, which in my experience refers to a parent and its childs, and since its inside a block called controlData and then a set of parameters that clearly define a type of movement and the fact I havent seen the same block in the character behavior.. Im just guessing here, I do not know if the parent is the AI which controls the childs, im going to attempt to create my own behavior see what comes out.

[Scripts18]

So basicly you cast a spell and the npc does an animation?

[fore]

So basicly you cast a spell and the npc does an animation?

YES (provided the NPC isn't just doing a package, like walking)

[fore]

Some New question related to defaultfemale.hkx :

Saidenstorm said "..The reason your new race character does not animate anything but the default idle is because you need to set up the Gameplay -> Animations -> Action to Anim Event Mapping, for a duplicate of the Character Actor this is going to take A LONG TIME as there are well over a thousand animations you need to map though you need not map all of the Idles except maybe the furniture idles if this is a PC only race.."

 

What is he mean by mapping? should I duplicate 0_master.hkx

 

I've done what you were doing there and has the same result, lol. And I feel something or two were missing. Should I just give up?

 

EDIT: somehow I found a "hole" with your step, you see I was testing without editing any defaultfemale.hkx but simply rename the defaultfemale.hkx that directed from behaviour graph through CK. So custom race has a renamed vanila defaultfemale.hkx and it match. In theory, since it's vanilla.. it should like vanila but it doesnt. The idle pose with "glide everywhere when we move" was happen. Rename it to Mydefaultfemale isn't working same as when I try to modified the path folder with the same file. So I came to conclusion there must be something else than custom race>body>behaviour_graph that connected to this defaultfemale.hkx [the behaviour graph files with 1kb]. When I search through all behavior files in animation, I found nothing related to defaultfemale.hkx path. The only files that mention defaultfemale was the defaultfemale.hkx files inside characters female folder and renaming it also no good.

Since no behaviour files directly connect to this behaviour graph, there must be other things that could connected. I'll try to deep search into this.

I think you have to duplicate the 0_master.hkx, but you can't actually duplicate the entry you see. You have to copy each lowest child by hand. Technically you can copy a node and all of its child will be copied too, but by themselves they won't be registered as new items (your esp won't have a * mark) you'll have to manually rename each node by hand, which is what I'm currently doing, and without any promise of result.

 

Especially because I'm wondering whether the IDs have anything to do with the behavior or not. I'm afraid that changing the IDs will render the data obsolete. prmarily because I have a copy of 0_master.hkx that is recognized by CK, but it is empty, even though it is a direct copy of the original and it has LOTS of stuff

We need to straighten these things out.

 

The behavior grapgh (defined in CK Races) starts at the "little" character/defaultfemale.hkx, which contains almost nothing but a link to the "big" characters/characters females/defaultfemale.hkx. This big one contains a list of ALL used animation files per gender, and a link to 0_master.hkx, which is the real start of the behavior graph.

 

To make a new race, you have 2 choices. The "complicated" way, as described by Saiden, which copies everything in the character folder. ALL behavior files, and all animations. And change the link in CK to the new "small" defaultfemale.hkx. But as it is said, this might become pretty tedious, because simply compying all behaviors doesn't copy any animation ID in CK, and for a complete race you have to define like a thousand IDs (as Raestloz found out),

 

And then there is this "easy" way as I have described in 1336657-rel-havok-animation-converter-thread-2. Here you only copy the "small" and "big" defaultfemale.hkx, change the link from "small" to "big", and then you are free to modify the "big" so you can replace all existing animation file names with your new ones. And they work as before, because you don't change any "real" behavior file or it's link (like the link to 0_master.hkx. Again you have to change the behavior grapgh link in the CK to the new "small" file.

 

To be honest, I don't really understand why it works (Saiden was surprised as well). Because the file names are also included in behavior files (which you don't need to change). But I have tested the results both by simply replacing in-game, and by a script calling the new idles with with playIdle. So there is some caution necessary, and you might want to test if this works for something like combat animations as well.

[xp32]

@fore

the easy way works like charm when using idle but not with movement type. Not tested with combat type. Thx for make it clear. I should give up now for the easy way.