Regarding combat animations

[Elegost75]

I am sick and tired of not being able to fight with a 2h and spells at the same time (My dream class is a dk, but not just summoning/raising undead but also using magick in combat). I tried messing with spells and making them lesser powers but that didn't work as well and also was either op or underpowered. But then as I was browsing the Nexus I found the awesome mod Lost Longswords

by MrBrownstone and then it hit me! While 2handed indeed might hinder spellcasting, a longsword (in the context of a bastard sword) would not. A bastard sword can be either wielded 2handed or 1 handed.

While making a new class of gear is out of the question, perhaps fiddling with animations can artifiacially simulate that.

 

So on to the topic at hand: Is there a possible way to use animations for a single weapon type (1h sword only) and/or a single equipment setup (i.e sword + spell or sword+empty) ? Right now I just replaced some of the power attacks 1hands do with the 2h counterparts and it looks beautifull and matching, the catch being though that some shields look a bit awkward and dual wielding is just plain bad.

Now that wouldn't be a problem if I only used the animations with the player character, but I would rather not mess with FNIS and so on.

Any help with that would be awesome, thanks in advance!

 

As an edit and since I have a crapload of mods installed right now, and it will take me too much time to check (and to foolproof any work I might do from now on) do power attacks break concentration spells or not in the vanilla? i.e Casting frostbite on one hand and power attacking with the other. Currently on my game it does. I hope that's the default system

Edited February 25, 2013 by Elegost75

[ShimoOkami]

Try using PCEA. This allows your character to have separate animations from NPCs. You'll need a custom race or Custom Races by d_rail if you want to play as one of the vanilla races. If you want to use Custom Races with modded textures or meshes, you'll need to copy those files into the appropriate folders under Data\meshes\CustomRaces or Data\textures\CustomRaces. PCEA does require FNIS, but there's no need to mess with it. All you need to do is run FNIS and tick the box for the PCEA patch. You don't even need to move your animations since PCEA changes the path for the original vanilla races, allowing custom races to use the default animation file locations.

[Elegost75]

Yes indeed, i saw that one, but if i decide to roll an imperial for example then all imperials get the same animations, right? So unless it's a totally new and custom race issues will still exist. Or am I getting this wrong? Once again thanks for the help :)

[ShimoOkami]

Put simply, the Imperials added by Custom Races, "CustomImperials", will be able to use different animations than Imperials of the race that came with the game. This is because animation paths are determined by the race and gender of the actor rather than the actor itself and Custom Races lets the player character use different animations by creating new races that use copies of the data used by the vanilla races. To use your custom animations with an Imperial, you would need to use the race "CustomImperial" added by Custom Races. All of the NPCs will use the normal "Imperial" race and will not use your custom animations because PECA makes them use animations in a separate folder containing copies of the vanilla animations.

 

The only case where you're going to have problems is if you have, say two male Imperial characters, and you want them both to have animations that are different from those that NPCs use but you only want one of them to use your bastard sword animations. The thing with PCEA is that any character you make that is not one of the original vanilla races will use your custom animations, so a "CustomImperial" would use the same animations as a "CustomArgonian" or a "Lunari". If you want your animations to apply only to a single character, you will need to create a race specifically for that character and change its animation paths. Unfortunately, I don't actually know how to edit the animation paths, so I wouldn't be able to help you with that.

 

Does that answer your question?

[Elegost75]

Yes I think it does! I was hoping for another solution though however I suppose it's just not possible.

[ShimoOkami]

Yeah, the way Skryim works can be really irritating sometimes. It (mostly) works for the vanilla game, but for modders, not so well. Of course, the option to change animation paths could very well be in the CK somewhere and I just haven't found it yet.