Cowboy western style equip/unequip

[Esbiem]

So is it possible to integrate cowboy/western style weapon equip/unequip animations like fancy gun-spinning+fast draw? Also it'd be of great help if anyone can mention tools/tutorials needed to achieve this just in case I wanna start making this myself

[dubiousintent]

Those would be custom "animations". That is not something recommended for a rank beginner to start out on, but anything is possible if you have enough patience and determination.

 

Please see the 'Animation' section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article for some "starter" tutorials and Tips.

-Dubious-

[madmongo]

Yeah, animation is definitely not something for an absolute beginner. I taught myself how to do it just because it was something I wanted to learn, and I managed to create a few of my own animations, but I am definitely not an expert on the subject. There are some tutorials out there, but there's a lot of stuff with importing nifs and setting up the animations correctly in Blender so that the GECK accepts them properly that doesn't seem to be documented anywhere. I had to go through a lot of trial and error to figure out how to add animations to FNV.

 

Blender Noob to Pro has some decent stuff about how to create the animations in Blender. Start with that.

 

This tutorial has some decent info in it, but it assumes that you'll be importing animations to start with and will then modify those. You definitely do not need to do it that way. None of the animations that I created were based on existing animations, and I have never had to bother with fixing the IPO curves like the tutorial discusses.

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_character_animations

 

One of the things that isn't documented is that the GECK apparently sets a bunch of stuff internally when you define the animation in it, and those settings are hidden from you. If you have screwed up something in the animation, fixing it in the animation kf file often isn't enough. You need to redefine it in the GECK or at least rename the kf and change the GECK to point to the new name so that the hidden mystery bits all get set correctly.

 

Yet another reason why I often say the GECK is really a secret Vault-Tec experiment designed to test modder's frustration levels.

 

Another thing that is only partially documented is that the nif/kf import and export tools will sometimes end up with stuff rotated by 90 degrees. The tutorial I linked to above mentions this but makes it seem like it only happens when importing animations. It's not just an issue with animation import, and you can easily end up with things rotated when you create your own animations from scratch as well. The important thing is that you have to rotate the armature root (which I think is called scene_root if I remember correctly) 90 degrees to fix it. If you rotate the entire armature instead of just the root, you will royally muck up your animations.

 

My success with importing existing animations from kf files has also been a bit hit and miss. Some import correctly and easily without any issues. Others end up creating a bizillion and a half keyframes, which takes eons to load into Blender and doesn't result in anything all that useful when it finally does finish.

 

A lot of modders can't do animations because there is quite a bit of a learning curve involved and a lot of it isn't documented very well (or at all, in some cases). But if you want to head down that path, hopefully this will give you an idea of what you are in for.

[Esbiem]

I am pretty much well-versed with CK/Geck, but never done animation related modding before. I'll try this out if I get enough time. Thanks for replying dubiousintent and madmongo