Help switching reload animations from one custom gun to another (or all SMG)

[andresdbr]

I'm new to modding stuff in Fallout 4. And of course, I'm no animatior nor know anything about it. I barely know how to add mods manually and I just downloaded the creation kit for Fallout 4.
I was wondering if any of you knew how to replace a reload animation of X weapon to Y weapon. For example, most custom automatic guns here on the Nexus are rigged from the submachine gun animations of FO4. There are a couple of mods for reloading animations, such as "Grab the Damn Mag". However, it is a little but sloppy. I found a gun, the RU556 with amazing reload animations and I'd like to standarize those animations for all my submachine-gun type custom guns. Step by step, how would i be able to do that? Where can I find the animation files of a downloaded modded gun and where do I put them in order to tell the game to use those animations? (I don't realy know how this works). This is for 1ST person animations. For 3rd would be welcome aswell.

I would absolutely appreciate it.

Edited September 18, 2017 by andresdbr

[N7R]

It is a bit more complicated than just taking a few hkx animation files from one gun to another. Custom animations especially when built to fit the form of one custom gun the hand location where the mag and grip are very different from vanilla guns usually. So if you try to copy those animations to the root submachinegun folder (that is very different in form factor) you most likely will see a lot of issues like the hand grabbing an invisible mag, charging handle in wrong location, floating meshes, etc. The "Grab the Damn Mag" mod you speak of it just one weapon reload animation that overwrites the vanilla submachinegun reload. Custom mods that did not have any custom animations yet were still using the submachinegun animations back then so it would match a more modern firearm. Now that most weapon mods these days come with a custom set of animations the "Grab the Damn Mag" mod does not affect those.

 

If you just want the vanilla submachinegun to use a different reload then you'd need to create a folder directory that replaces its original wpnreload.hkx file. However, if you want to replace every gun (including custom mods) that is far more complicated. That would require creating new subgraph data and if you are not very familiar with modding, creation kit, or animation files it might be a rather steep learning curve from the get go.