need help opening animation mod contents

[XG08Zero]

Hello. First off, this is the best forum I know for these kind of questions, but if there is a better site/forum somewhere (like a modder's resource forum or something), it would be great if someone could point me in that direction.

 

(yes, I already know and use http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page)

 

Anyway, I wish to open up and try to edit some content of

 

Seph Dual Wield BETA mod

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16679

 

I'm aiming to see if I could change what animations the mod uses. I would like to disable some of his animations, but keep using ones I really like, particularly his running animation (with weapon un-sheathed). This editing is for personal use and enrichment, but I've hit an early wall and can't find much help/documentation out there for a low level beginner.

 

Seph has said that he has retired from modding and his inbox is full so I'm trying to figure this out myself.

 

Anyway, I figured my first guess/attempt would be to open the .esp and find some kind of "data file list" or something, and remove the .kf files that I disliked, hopefully telling the mod to not use those animations at all. I have a FRESH install of oblivion, with only the official patch, OBSE, and this mod installed.

 

Opening the mod's .esp left me lost. I know that all plug-in .esp files load the oblivion master file, and I see all the master file data, but I can't find the mod's data at all (i see data for goblin animations, imp, etc, but none for seph's dual wield mod). I'm not sure where to look for animation. With custom armor/clothing mods, this is relatively easy, and I find it on the big list under the "Items" list, but for animation data, I'm just unsure where to find it. All I can find is regular oblivion data and no custom data from the mod.

 

so that idea didn't work. I couldn't find any "list" of animations that I was hoping to edit.

 

I did more searching and learned that animation files rely around .nif's, which use .kf's. this seems to be the "list" i'm looking for. I thought I could try opening this file and see how it handles the included .kf files and see if I can edit which ones it uses.

 

I figured out with OBMM that it uses "meshes\characters\_male\skeleton.nif" but it just doesn't exist on my computer at all. I can't find it with full hard driver searches and everything. I'm assuming this skeleton.nif file uses all the .kf files for animation. Why can't I find this file? Is it compressed in the .omod file and is inaccessible?

 

So in a nutshell...

1. Why can't I see this skeleton.nif file? Is it within the omod file, and is it inaccessible?

2. Is my whole idea of accessing and editing this mod wrong? Is this whole "edit the list of what .kf files it uses" not what I should be doing?

 

I would massively appreciate any help. I know this is a huge wall of text, but I would really like to try and figure this out instead of sitting around and hoping some modder does it for me =D

[MontanaBlueSkies]

Lot of questions here.

 

1 - alot of the game files ie skeketon nif are in the bsa files and have to be unpacked to gain access. this is not necessary for what you wish to do. the game has a vanilla animation for each of the attack onehanded , two handed , animations. If a file exists in the appropriate directory and archive invalidation is properly acheived, it uses this file instead of the one in the bsa. So in a mod like this, the files for one and two handed atack etc have been modified and stored in the sub directorys under characters/_1stperson & characters/_male dirs. They then get performed instead of the original animations when the game calls for them. they have exactly the same name as the original anim kf stored in the bsa's. So if you only wanted some of the anims and not others you might could remove the kf associated with that animation and the game would then use the vanilla anim instead. Since some anims are staged one from another this could look funny in game. Try moving them to a temp folder and see how it works, and if it doesnt work like you want put them back again.

 

If you want you can pm me with other questions.

 

Razz