Importing new creature nifs and kf?

[Pellape]

What a day... It took me 6 hours to get a bloody kitty cat into the game...

 

I did solve this in the end, but not in the way I want it solved so lets debate this bloody issue.... ;) How do we do this with CS

 

CS

I wanted to create my own Idle group with idles and using NIFs and kf from my own directories that later will be included into my current house project.

 

So when we create a new creature, we can import the skeleton, so that is not a big deal but the body? I do remember from Morrowind that we did import body parts, well the armor was imported as body parts at least and they was part of the left side "tree structure" in CS as I did that last year but where do we do that in Oblivion CS?? As example, if I have a creaturehead.nif, where do I import it as in the creature window, we cannot add a nif in the modell list and where is that bloody list as it must be in CS somewhere??

 

Then we have the idle Animations that we have among the menu's which is very nice structured in trees but no matter where I click and no matter which mouse button I use, I cannot add a new tree, just use the trees already made so if we right click a tree, we can Insert Sibling, which doesn't do a bloody thing and insert a child that works great so how do we create new tree?

 

TES4EDIT

I reached the limit of my patience after a couple of hours searching on the net after tutorials and there is none... I did found one in the end but it didn't explained exact what I was looking for but he did mention TES4EDIT and I had that one in mind as well for a period but I didn't wanna use it.

 

I gave up, started CS and peeked in MOO how Maskar solved it and also how it looks like in Oblivion.esm and I created a new Idle Animation tree and added 1 animation to it and also created a new creature and added 1 nif body file to it.

 

Final Result

• I got my Idle Animation tree and could add childs to it
• I got a new creature with not only 1 body.nif as I got all 3 included suddenly but that is better than 0 :D

Damn this took the whole day to do but now I know how it could be done - But: How should it be done, that is the main question?????

1. Adding a new tree in Idle Animations?
2. Adding bodies to new creatures?

 

[DrakeTheDragon]

Hmm, in principle I did the same when I created my ridable creature dragon, but I don't recall it being that difficult. I'm not sure if I had to do anything inside the idle animation selector, but I think for the mounting, unmounting and stuff I had to.

I know the normal set of animations comes automatically from inside the folder where the "skeleton.nif" is. What body parts, and/or equipment, the creature has is set up in one tab of the creature dialog though. Not sure why you had so much trouble finding it.

 

Maybe it's all to do with me using the CS Extender (CSE) from ShadeMe and you the regular CS? Ah, but I'm far from an expert in this one. I only remember the whole setup wasn't really that much work.

 

Kinda curious now, too, to learn how it's actually done.

[Pellape]

Well you got a point as I guessed it would been related to the skeleton, but as I did not saved that object after adding the skeleton as I did not see the body nif, it might got added if I had saved it and reopened it again? I will try that but the Idle Animation stuff still buggers me...

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, yes, I think so, too. The very moment you select the skeleton file the CS will know where to look for all the animations. All the ones with the special code names inside the NIF will get added and used automatically (moving around, jumping, fighting, etc.).

 

Only the real special ones, the ones named Special Idles, where each is only played while certain conditions are met, have to be set up inside the Idle Manager. But most creatures I know don't have many, or any, in there, unless it's ridable ones and similar.

And I for one didn't have any trouble creating new animation branches inside the tool. Though... as of right now I can't really recall how it was done anymore either.

[Pellape]

Very good indeed as i did watch that animal I implemented through TES4EDIT and it dod not do any idles at all, even if I had setup conditions. I watched other mods which has Idles bit no conditions and then the animals do them all the time, which is better then none. Att Bethesdas cretures do have one condition and it is: If they are dead, don't do them.... ;) I will delete everything I did yesterday and I already renamed the folder in case so I can start all over clean.

 

I think I had Morrowind in my backhead when I started... Morrowind body parts... So I started with it in the wrong end... ;)

[Pellape]

Now I know how to do it.

 

1. Make a new creature
2. Add the skeleton and save

Now we could open and edit the creature but at this stage the Idle animations is not added.

• Save the mod and restart CS

Now the tree gets added and we can import the child's to the new tree as they do not get there by auto. I add some necessary conditions that might be the most proper to do as Beth did that.

• Check GetKnockState so it is not 0 when getting up
• or not IsInCombat when using the other idles.

This is how it works for me right now at least... Most creatures seems to have 5 different Idles

Edited December 19, 2020 by Pellape