[LE] Staff Animations

[l3ksa]

Hi,

 

I'm looking to make a mod related to staves and am trying to figure out which animation event calls the staff casting animation and to which behavior the animation event is linked inside CK.

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated!

 

L3ksa

 

Edit. meant to ask for left hand ones

Edited January 22, 2018 by l3ksa

[fore]

The question is: what you you want to do?

 

The whole behavior/animation event mechanism is much more difficule than you probably assume. Except for (special purpose) idles, there is no 1-on-1 relation between animation and animation event. Everything is integrated into a complex execution net. And which animation will be used is mostly determined by more general events in combination with other parameters, like the the current equip situation.

 

You should make yourself a picture by looking into the behavior files. But I can tell you upfront that if you want to do something other than replacement of existing animations you have a ton of work ahead of you. And there is no documentation whatsoever.

 

To look into the behavior you need hkxcmd to convert the behavior hkx files into xml. And then I have written a tool called CondenseBehavior to make this xml a little more prettyprint.

[l3ksa]

The question is: what you you want to do?

 

The mod I'm working on has custom staves that are treated as shields and has magazine like system to select triggered spell when pressing added keyboard key to have similar casting system to Oblivion and shields skinned as staves which have some extra special functionality through perks. I wanted to enable the left hand staff casting animation for the player when calling the animation event when not meeting the vanilla games requirements for triggering the animation such as wielding actually staff since we are actually wielding a shield, much like how Dual Wield Parrying Reimplemented enabled animations. And then I can use the same Animation Event as trigger for my spells.

 

If it makes any sense...

 

Thanks anyway! :wallbash:

Edited January 22, 2018 by l3ksa

[l3ksa]

rambling

Edited January 22, 2018 by l3ksa

[l3ksa]

 

I'm looking to make a mod related to staves and am trying to figure out which animation event calls the staff casting animation and to which behavior the animation event is linked inside CK.

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

Yeah definitely didn't mean behaviors, I was supposed to ask for Idle Animations in CK animations widow

 

 

 

So I'm trying to find the Idle Animation for left hand staff casting and alter it's conditions so I can call it with script while PC has "shield" equipped

Edited January 22, 2018 by l3ksa

[fore]

I'm not familiar with staff combat (never used it), and I never looked into the staff behavior files. But maybe you should look from the other rside first: the existing animations. These are the only ones that sound like staff:

 

staff_idle.hkx

staffright_idle.hkx

stf_equip.hkx

staffright_equip.hkx

staffrightleft_sprint.hkx

staff_bash.hkx

staff_bashintro.hkx

staffmagic_1stp_run.hkx

staffmagic_1stp_walk.hkx

staffmagic_runarm.hkx

staffmagic_walkarm.hkx

staffmagiccast_turnleft180.hkx

staffmagiccast_turnleft60.hkx

staffmagiccast_turnright180.hkx

staffmagiccast_turnright60.hkx

staffmagicright_1stp_run.hkx

staffmagicright_1stp_walk.hkx

staffmagicright_walkarm.hkx

stf_equip.hkx

stfmagic_aimconloop.hkx

stfmagic_chargeloop.hkx

stfmagic_preaimcon.hkx

stfmagic_precharge.hkx

stfmagic_preready.hkx

stfmagic_readyloop.hkx

stfmagic_release.hkx

stfmagicright_aimconloop.hkx

stfmagicright_chargeloop.hkx

stfmagicright_preaimcon.hkx

stfmagicright_precharge.hkx

stfmagicright_readyloop.hkx

stfmagicright_release.hkx

Look which one you think could be the one. Doesn't look very muck like anything left handed. But sometimes (like torch) they are blended from different animations, but that's also much more complex. If you found the animation, then you can search for the event which activates them (which, as I said, hardly ever is a simple 1-1 correlation) in the hkxcmd/condensebehavior created xml files. And then you can look how these event are used in the CK.

 

Idle Animation btw is a totally wrong name as header for this CK window.

[l3ksa]

I know there is Animation Catcher mod, but it only seems to catch the Animation Event, not what it triggers.

 

Do you have any ideas in that direction for capturing the actual animation?

 

EDIT

 

Or can I get a look inside 0_master.hkx somehow? I'm asking because hkxcmd didn't convert it to .xml with the rest of the behavior files

And I'm being stupid, I can see everything in it even if it's .hkx

Edited January 22, 2018 by l3ksa

[l3ksa]

Okay I found the actual animation I was looking for, now i need to find the animation idle that uses it or add it somehow to CK...

The left hand animation was stfmagic_aimconloop.hkx and stfmagic_preaimcon.hkx for concentration spells and combination of the rest stfmagic_*.hkx

anyway

[fore]

Pretty close to the place in the CK which you have opened in the picture: CastLeftConcentration -> LeftConcentrationAimed -> CastLeftConcentrationAimed. There the animation event "MLh_SpellAimedConcentrationStart" that you are looking for is called.

 

However this place already works for both magic and staff. But the distinction between these 2 is done in the behaviors. Based on the animation variable iLeftHandType.

 

In order 2 convert hkx into xml I always use a .bat file to convert ALL .hkx files in the current folder:

d:\hkxcmd.exe convert -v:xml . xml

 

There is a small bug in hkxcmd. One of the converted xml files gets the postfix ".hkx". You have to manually rename that. Then use CondenseBehavior.

 

The behavior files where your animations are controlled are magicbehavior.hkx and magicmountedbehavior.hkx

[l3ksa]

Can I claim in CK that a shield is a weapon type for behavior tree to use that tag for resolving branches?