grip clipping fix

[nognow]

any way to fix this grip animation clipping?: it's driving me insane

[dubiousintent]

It's a "clipping" issue between the standard hand and the weapon forestock artwork. The "hand" portion is part of the attack/reloading animation, which the weapon mesh has to fit into (AFAIK; I'm not a modeller). To correct, you will need to replace one or the other. At any rate it is not something you can fix without replacing some portion of the "artwork assets". I'm guessing you are using a replacement of that "service rifle" from the vanilla version? If so, try another.

 

The animations for each type of weapon are standardized to general "types" such as "2hand" or "1hand" plus '<action>'. You can find the animations ".kf" files under the "Data\Meshes\characters\_1stperson" folder.

 

-Dubious-

[nognow]

It's a "clipping" issue between the standard hand and the weapon forestock artwork. The "hand" portion is part of the attack/reloading animation, which the weapon mesh has to fit into (AFAIK; I'm not a modeller). To correct, you will need to replace one or the other. At any rate it is not something you can fix without replacing some portion of the "artwork assets". I'm guessing you are using a replacement of that "service rifle" from the vanilla version? If so, try another.

 

The animations for each type of weapon are standardized to general "types" such as "2hand" or "1hand" plus '<action>'. You can find the animations ".kf" files under the "Data\Meshes\characters\_1stperson" folder.

 

-Dubious-

thanks!

the grip animations .kf files are super confusing.

shooting and reloading animations are fairly straightforward (1hareloada = 1 handed automatic reload a...)

but with grips, it doesn't make sense. In Asurahs pack for example, there are files like 2hahandgrip1_plasmarifle.kf and 2HRhandgrip4_shotgun.kf.

the gun name after the _ corresponds to the .nif file name? or is anything after the _ completely meaningless and simply serves as a note to the user?

I tried to mess around with those files by renaming, disabling,... but couldn't find out the logic behind it.

[dubiousintent]

I'm not an animator, but here is how *I* interpret such file names, using "2HRhandgrip4_shotgun.kf" as an example without actually digging into the file itself. (This is VERY superficial and the actual details probably are different. If some mod creator like hitman has a definitive explanation, I will turn it into a wiki article entry someplace.)

 

* "2H" indicates the animation depicts a "two handed" grip on the weapon. (This usually means a "rifle".)

* "R" indicates it is a "rifle" (or possibly a "revolver") grip. Not certain just from the file name how that is different from an "a" grip, but the latter might be "automatic pistol" (e.g. the ".45") which is straighter than the more curved "revolver pistol" grip (e.g. the "Police .38").

* "hand" indicates the "trigger" hand is placed on a "pistol grip" shaped rear stock. This is different from the grip shape where the hand rests in a straight line along the stock, such as on the Winchester lever action rifle.

* "grip4" indicates this is the 4th different variation of this basic grip version. Likely you will need to experiment with each variation to determine which is the best "fit". Here is where I would expect differences in the gap between the thumb and forefingers around the forestock in your original image.

 

Everything after the "_" is indeed a general description as to the sort of weapon it was created to work with (e.g. "_shotgun" in this example). Just because it says "plasmarifle" does not mean it could not be used with a projectile weapon with similar shape characteristics. But the basic hand positioning is based upon that required of the "plasma rifle", and "energy" weapons fire a different type of "projectile" so that would also be different. The underscore ("_") connects both parts of the filename into a single valid filename. (A "space" would be treated as two different files, and fail to find either.) So the part after the "_" is still a crucial part of the filename distinguishing one from another.

 

Renaming those files will break other mods expecting those same file names. If you meant "copy and rename", then that is fine, but your new file will only be used where you have it defined in the "mesh" NIF file using a "relative" file path, as described in the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files" for the procedure to locate the texture (and animation) file entry within NifSkope. (The path needs to be "relative" instead of "absolute"/"hard-coded" in order to be found on various installation locations, which is what many editors default to and that article covers.) The file also has to be in the expected folder.

 

-Dubious-

Edited November 5, 2020 by dubiousintent

[nognow]

I'm not an animator, but here is how *I* interpret such file names, using "2HRhandgrip4_shotgun.kf" as an example without actually digging into the file itself. (This is VERY superficial and the actual details probably are different. If some mod creator like hitman has a definitive explanation, I will turn it into a wiki article entry someplace.)

 

* "2H" indicates the animation depicts a "two handed" grip on the weapon. (This usually means a "rifle".)

* "R" indicates it is a "rifle" (or possibly a "revolver") grip. Not certain just from the file name how that is different from an "a" grip, but the latter might be "automatic pistol" (e.g. the ".45") which is straighter than the more curved "revolver pistol" grip (e.g. the "Police .38").

* "hand" indicates the "trigger" hand is placed on a "pistol grip" shaped rear stock. This is different from the grip shape where the hand rests in a straight line along the stock, such as on the Winchester lever action rifle.

* "grip4" indicates this is the 4th different variation of this basic grip version. Likely you will need to experiment with each variation to determine which is the best "fit". Here is where I would expect differences in the gap between the thumb and forefingers around the forestock in your original image.

 

Everything after the "_" is indeed a general description as to the sort of weapon it was created to work with (e.g. "_shotgun" in this example). Just because it says "plasmarifle" does not mean it could not be used with a projectile weapon with similar shape characteristics. But the basic hand positioning is based upon that required of the "plasma rifle", and "energy" weapons fire a different type of "projectile" so that would also be different. The underscore ("_") connects both parts of the filename into a single valid filename. (A "space" would be treated as two different files, and fail to find either.) So the part after the "_" is still a crucial part of the filename distinguishing one from another.

 

Renaming those files will break other mods expecting those same file names. If you meant "copy and rename", then that is fine, but your new file will only be used where you have it defined in the "mesh" NIF file using a "relative" file path, as described in the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files" for the procedure to locate the texture (and animation) file entry within NifSkope. (The path needs to be "relative" instead of "absolute"/"hard-coded" in order to be found on various installation locations, which is what many editors default to and that article covers.) The file also has to be in the expected folder.

 

-Dubious-

Does that mean that each weapon can have an individual grip animation in addition to the “global” grip animation? I mean that there can be more than one 2HRhandgrip4; let's say 2HRhandgrip4_shotgun and 2HRhandgrip4_BBgun, and the weapon's NIF specifies the correct one?

[Radioactivelad]

The problem with adjusting the animations is that New Vegas uses a "One-size fits all" approach for many weapons. Meaning one animation file will be used for many, potentially very differently shaped weapons.

 

For example if you modified the animation so that the thumb is not clipping in to the foreend of the Assault Carbine(?) you're illustrating the issue with, you'll probably have a lot of "dead space" on something narrower like the Service Rifle.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Radioactivelad

[dubiousintent]

Does that mean that each weapon can have an individual grip animation in addition to the “global” grip animation?

 

AFAIK, yes. You could theoretically have an individual grip animation customized for each and every weapon, as long as you modified each NIF to point to the one required by that weapon. But as pointed out, that is not the approach taken with the game. And in practical terms, it is much too labor and "disk space" intensive for "production" purposes.

 

-Dubious-