How To animate NPCs?

[Ayelius]

Hey there,

so I was trying to understand how NPCs in Oblivion are being animated. Like those "special" animations e.g. when Velwyn Benirus opens the secret door in the manor's basement or the people in Bruma cheering and clapping when Martin passes by.

I don't quite get how this all works together since I never saw any "PlayAnimation" instruction or the like in any script. Only thing I found that got me closer to understand is the idle animations window in the CS. But where's the connection? Like the "SearchWall" idle animation has conditions to the door ref in the Benirus manor basement and a UseItemAt package. And Velwyn is gonna execute that package. So... because the idle animation refers to that door and an AI package, Velwyn is automatically use that animation when his AI package tells him to use the "item" (the door)?

Idk, but to me it just looks like a real overkill, going around all those corners just to make an NPC simply play an animation. Could someone possibly generalize that a little bit for me? Like a comprehensive "How To make NPC play certain animations", just so I actually understand the system Oblivion uses to achieve those things? Because maybe it's easier than I picture it, from what I've seen... http://tesalliance.org/forums/uploads/emoticons/default_aa_smile.gif

[yojeff]

One advantage is that you can easily change an AI package because the package is not in the save file. If you change a script (specifically the variables), those are in the save file. It is also probably easier to change many NPCs at the same time by changing only one AI package.