Need help with setting up animations with custom races.

[Guest Messenjah]

So, I have recently joined up with a modding project this Summer. Recently the project lead has left on holiday and has left it up to me to complete writing the dialogue and adding animations.

 

How our system currently works, is that I have a group of dancers inside a tavern. We have permission to use some of the various dance animations that have been posted on the Nexus and one of our animators has worked on a couple of custom dance animations. The problem, is that the head of the project asked me to implement the animations but I'm not exactly certain how to approach this, this time around.

 

He has provided the hkx files that I need but I have to figure out how to implement it. We are using custom races for our npc's (we wanted to add custom animations and custom hair to the npc's). The thing that I'm not currently certain of, is how to add custom animations to a custom race? Can anyone give me an idea of how to go about this? I asked him before he left but he didn't have time to explain.

 

If anyone has any information/tutorials that might help, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Guest Messenjah]

Any help please?

[fore]

That's not an easy task to make it yourself.

 

Look for PC Exclusive Animation Path and talk to xp32. The mod works for a custom race PC, so it should work for a curstom race NPC, too.

[Guest Messenjah]

Honestly, Skyrim has one of the most convoluted file systems I've ever seen. Back in the days, where I modded Fallout, this would have been a menial task for me but with Skyrim, my biggest problem is trying to understand their format.

 

I'll take a look at that link.

[fore]

I don't think it's much different from Oblivion, where I have my roots. Except for animations. Because of all the additional possibilities Havok provides. And because animations were not intended to be modded. :D

[Guest Messenjah]

Yes and no. :) Of course, though, I have mostly focused on Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas modding and while I find them similar to Skyrim, Skyrim certainly has it's own formula. While level building is relatively the same, dialogue is much easier to work with overall. Scripting is similar but has a lot of format changes that I still need to overcome before I can fully script. Trying to create custom races seems very convoluted inho. If I wanted to simply duplicate a race in Fallout, I would just duplicate it, add whatever hair I wanted to it and called it a day. Now you need a body parts list, texture lists, you have to assign every part about 3 times before it actually works, and add your race to multiple form lists or write your own. :P Animations are another beast altogether because they were not intended to be modded sadly, as you have explained.

 

For most of it, we are using FNIS but we wanted to add a few custom animations to the races themselves. We have the animation files and I have them in my possession. I just need to know how to get them into the esp file itself and how to attach the animation to a custom race?

[fore]

The problem is, that using a custom race doesn't help.

 

A few months ago, custom race seemed to be the only way to "add" new animations. But in reality those custom animations were not added to the new race, they were replacing existing ones. That's ok, as long as you only use the custom race for a short time, as long as you need the animation. Except for all the trouble it made to swich races back and forth.

 

But if you want to use the race permanently, you have the same problem as for vanilla races: it's not possible to add animations with standard means. You have to use FNIS, or something similar which adds some new "slots" into the behavior.

 

So in fact, if you made the race by making a complete copy of the race files, including all animations and behaviors, you should be able to add the FNIS files as well. In theory. :)