Creatures with custom skeletons and animations. To Skyrim.

[calubri]

So I did some research but I couldn't really yield usable results. Me and my supporting social worker have, on his behalf, planned to complete a project that involves getting entirely new creatures with custom skeletons and animations into Skyrim. It seems that behavior files are involved, but I really know next to nothing, so if someone could fill me in on all details on how to do this, or where to get the information on how to do this, or if this is at all possible, that would be great. I have tried many different things now and none really worked. Will anyone give me some directions? I also have a contact who is part of a mod project that would, optimally but not necessary, also involve getting their own creature skeletons into Skyrim. I haven't talked to him in some days and don't know if he made some progress, anyways I think this would help some people if someone could try and tell me where to start with that custom skeleton thingy, best of all, write a tutorial about it.

[porroone]

Hello there, I have studied the behavior files in XML, which is the only way to edit them, and well, havent u wonder why nobody has done this before ? hehe

The first problem you will encounter is understanding the code, once you transformed the behavior to xml, you get like 40k lines of code (depending on the behavior) but its usually on the 5 number figure. Then there are events like moveStart, which triggers the running animation on player, that dont seem to be defined on the behavior, the event is there but the path to the animation isnt, so my guess is that kind of animation is called from somewhere else.

Then if you want to use a completly new skeleton... its not the NIF, its the havok skeleton you have to worry about, I have no idea on how to even edit it, to make for example a player with animated wings or something.

You are getting yourself into some hard stuff, but dont loose hope, a lot have been achieved regarding behavior and animations this past few months so I still have my hopes on somebody who will figure out more stuff.

[calubri]

Hello there, I have studied the behavior files in XML, which is the only way to edit them, and well, havent u wonder why nobody has done this before ? hehe

The first problem you will encounter is understanding the code, once you transformed the behavior to xml, you get like 40k lines of code (depending on the behavior) but its usually on the 5 number figure. Then there are events like moveStart, which triggers the running animation on player, that dont seem to be defined on the behavior, the event is there but the path to the animation isnt, so my guess is that kind of animation is called from somewhere else.

Then if you want to use a completly new skeleton... its not the NIF, its the havok skeleton you have to worry about, I have no idea on how to even edit it, to make for example a player with animated wings or something.

You are getting yourself into some hard stuff, but dont loose hope, a lot have been achieved regarding behavior and animations this past few months so I still have my hopes on somebody who will figure out more stuff.

Hello porroone,

I notice you are the author of the flying ring mod which in turn made the flyable dragon races mod possible, is that correct? If so, I imagine you must be quite the expert on this matter. And I'd be very thankful if you chose to help me out a bit with any information you could supply. I want to first ask, do you know about havok behavior tool 6.6.0? I imagine you probably do, and I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't such an amateur.

Also you said

Then there are events like moveStart, which triggers the running animation on player, that dont seem to be defined on the behavior, the event is there but the path to the animation isnt, so my guess is that kind of animation is called from somewhere else.

, and it seems, regardless of whereever from the animation is called, custom animations can be implemented using the havok behavior tool, following this tutorial: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/624251-progress-in-behavior-filesalmost-done/ unless I am terribly misunderstanding something. Now, I didn't try it out myself with a default skyrim skeleton as of yet, but I will after this post to make sure it does work as theru describes it.

Additionally, I want to tell you what I did to try and get custom creatures into Skyrim, and don't laugh at me after reading this, because I already mentioned I was an amateur and do many things wrong. So, this is what I did as an example. I have an ogre, with its own bone system and bone naming. I delete unnecessary bones for my sample project, rename the leftover bones to "NPC Root [Root], (...)" etc, and using havok content tools, I exported a rig, a skeleton, and an animation to .hkx files which I then imported into havok behavior tool. I then followed the instructions supplied with the youtube videos by this user (theru). I dare not say what I did after this because I am sure this was plain wrong and without sense what I did, and even telling someone that I am an amateur, that someone would be going to facepalm over my attempts at getting a custom creature into creation kit. So, if you can tell me if I can achieve anything using this havok behavior tool, what its limits are, what I need to do with the .hkx files that the HBT exports, how the tutorial from theru differs from what Im trying to do (custom creature, new skeleton), and, if all that I was doing until now using the havok behavior tool was wrong, tell me perhabs how I can make such a havok skeleton, or give me any clue on where to search for information on the subject, that would be great.

Edited June 15, 2012 by calubri

[porroone]

Well you did everything right till the point when you start using Havok behavior tool. Theru method just doesnt work, free hbt just doesnt work with skyrim, it was kind of useful actually since its what "The Hologram" used to create hkxcmd, but you cannot create a new compatible behavior with the tool. Maybe you could sort something out, then export it to XML and tweak it a bit so it works with skyrim, but I dont know. In terms of behavior editing, the best I can do is add IDLE animations and since there is already a mod that does that (FNIS), I use that instead.

[calubri]

Well you did everything right till the point when you start using Havok behavior tool. Theru method just doesnt work, free hbt just doesnt work with skyrim, it was kind of useful actually since its what "The Hologram" used to create hkxcmd, but you cannot create a new compatible behavior with the tool. Maybe you could sort something out, then export it to XML and tweak it a bit so it works with skyrim, but I dont know. In terms of behavior editing, the best I can do is add IDLE animations and since there is already a mod that does that (FNIS), I use that instead.

You said theru's tut doesn't work? How did he manage to get new animations (looking past a new idle) in-game then? And the skeleton.hkx that I exported with havok content tools is compatible with Skyrim as well?

and what about dogtown1? Surely he didn't rig all those monsters to vanilla skeletons did he?

Nother Edit: Hey, I really want to thank you porroone for providing insight on the topic, it really helped me a lot, but I think I'd have to be educated in coding/scripting or whatever to understand these behavior files.

While it would be optimal to get a completely new skeleton into Skyrim, I take it it is impossible (for an amateur like me, at least). So what I think I'm gonna do, is rig my ogre to a vanilla skeleton BUT instead of letting the ogre also use Skyrim animations, try to replace these animations with my custom ones by transferring the animation using a special 3ds max script. I think that will work, and it's an acceptable solution for creatures who don't have a skeleton that completely differs from the Skyrim skeletons. I will report the outcome sometime as an edit to this post unless someone replied. thanks for reading!

Edited June 15, 2012 by calubri

[porroone]

Well then you seem to know more about theru's work than I do hehe, I just gave hope too soon since in any case it didnt serve my purpose very much. In any case I didnt say HBT was worthless, in terms of exporting hkx, its pretty useful stuff, but in any case I recommend you to use HKXCMD, its based on those tools but more adapted to skyrim.