Some questions for any animators out there...

[kevtg26]

This question is mostly about Fallout 4 VR, but I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience dealing with animations in Bethesda Games.

 

The submachine gun has a problem in VR. Every other gun appears to have its grip align with controllers, except for the SMG. With that gun, the pistol grip seems to float about 6 inches of the controller and it looks like the player is grabbing it about haflway done the stuck. When the gun is in NPC hands it looks fine. It's only in player hands that it looks off. This problem also seems to affect any mod added weapons that rely on the SMG animations. That list seems to include every real world rifle with a pistol grip. It's kinda bad for the immersion of VR to feel like the gun is actually not in your hands.

 

The quick and dirty solutions has been to modify the weapons NIF files and slide the guns backwards in game space. This fixes things so that the pistol grip lines up with the controllers but it has two problems. One, it's a lot of work. When I built the patch for the Assault Carbine mod, I had to alter over 50 different NIF files for just two guns. A mod like Modern Firearms would take a lot more effort. Second, the weapon may now line up with the player grip but now it no longer lines up with an NPCs hands. It now looks as if the NPC is grabbing the gun by the magazine instead of the pistol grip. That leaves you with a choice. Leave it floating weirdly in front of your hand or have it look weird when you see it in any other persons hand. That's kind of a sucky choice.

 

So= it seems like the problem is the SMG animation set. That got me thinking. Would it be possible to address the animation itself and fix the root of the problem? I've already gone into the Fallout 4 - Animations.ba2 file and verified that the game still has regular character (third person) animations and a _1stperson animation folder. Operating under the theory that Bethesda is trying to change things as little as possible, I'm assuming the Bethesda is tying all player related animation the files in _1stperson. How would I find out if that's correct?

 

Second, is it even possible to alter the guns position in game space by altering the animation? Moving a shape around in NifSkope is pretty easy. Just looking at what it takes muck about with the animation files leaves me with the impression that I could get out of my depth real fast.

 

I still might consider wading in to see what happens, but the software required doesn't seem to be free or even cheap. So here are the main questions I have for anybody with animation experience, particularly if it's with Bethesda games. Is this path worth looking into and how hard would it be to alter just the positioning of an existing animation? I'd like to know I wouldn't be wasting time and money before going any further.

 

[langnao]

Maybe the issue is related to VR? Anyway, gripping the weapon/gun is aligned to the origin of the object which you can adjust using nifscope which you have done...