A Special Anims Question

[BAMcSH]

I feel it's obligatory to say long-time lurker, first-time poster and such.

 

I think I'm to the point that I understand the Oblivion Animation process. I've made successful exports and created things that actually play in game, but special anims are a hitch in my understanding. Actual I suppose that hitch is extended to animation groups as a whole.

 

How does Oblivion determine which animation from a group to play? When I set an animation to "Forward" in NifScope, I don't understand how that translates to Oblivion knowing whether it should be played for two-handed forward, one-handed, normal, etc.

 

Can someone clarify for me just how this happens? I've thought it might be dependent on string detection in the file name. But after just testing this and watching a group of walking animations work with gibberish filenames all I can do is grope at things like bone priority as possible cause.

 

 

Thanks for reading

BAM

[perfectioncat]

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Category:Oblivion

[BAMcSH]

Sorry, I might be missing the page you intended me to find, but I know Seph's and the other character anim tutorial don't address this (because I've read them too many times). I've looked at the animgroup and special anim pages on the cswiki as well and they don't mention it. 

I also just scanned textkeys and every other field in NifScope for obvious differences and noticed nothing. The bone priority isn't even different. There's also nothing about it in the text palette.

 

I wouldn't mind being pointed to an obvious answer at this point and being called an idiot. I'll also mention that I animate in 3dsmax.
I guess it's not necessary that I understand why this system works but it still bugs the hell out of me.

[gregathit]

Be careful about using 3dsmax for oblivion.  3dsmax can produce a 90 bug if you are not careful.  Blender however does not have this issue.  The questions you are asking are too broad based as I doubt anyone knows all the details.  If you ask more specific questions you'll get more and better answers.  One of the key things to do is use the vanilla animations and those of other mod makers that work as examples.  Some animations don't repeat (cycle_clamp) and others that do repeat (cycle_loop) and still others that have their key frames artificially inflated (walk forward animations).   These are just some examples and likely you have discovered them and perhaps others.

 

As to the file name  -  In some cases the name is meaningless as you have discovered, what is more important is the NiControllerSequence string name.  Now it isn't always the case but can be.  It just depends on the animation you are talking about.

[BAMcSH]

Hmm, alright. I guess what I'm asking is when I put an animation in the SpecialAnims folder and declare its animgroup in the string name, how does Oblivion decide where that animation is played? Groups like PowerAttack contain the power attacks for all weapons, and the only way so far I've been able to "choose" which one my special anim will overwrite is by opening the vanilla version of the powerattack and overwriting it with what I want, fixing text keys, etc, then saving.

 

Is that the only way to get your SpecialAnim to play in the correct slot in an animgroup?

 

For example, if you take something like a power attack, change its animgroup to Forward, put it in special anims and toggle it onto an actor, it will always play in the weaponless forward slot regardless of which PowerAttack it was. It'd just be nice to be able to change this without dealing with more imports and exports.

 

Apologies for being overly verbose. It helps me think.

[gregathit]

I'm certainly no animations expert but you can pick animations and assign them via the CS.  If you don't want to build your own esp file then replacing the existing animations is your only option.

 

Bottomline Oblivion like any program doesn't know to use something, it needs to be told to.  If you replace an existing vanilla animation (or one added by a mod like Deadly Reflex or UV2) then just replacing it works fine as Oblivion was already told to use it via the oblivion esm (vanilla animation) or the esm\esp of whatever plugin that specified something else.

 

Via an esp you can make animations that will be usable for only your PC if you so choose.

[BAMcSH]

Yeah I have a pretty solid handle on that part, it just seems to me that some of the special idle determinations are beyond the modder's direct control.

 

By the way about the 90 degree bug, as long as you don't change the rotation of Bip01 (which you should never need to since you can use the pelvis or whatever that bone is called), you can fix it by resetting the Bip01 rotation (The R rotation) to 0 in Nifscope. The only thing that still seems a little off about Max is sometimes the head seems to dip into the body, and to avoid it i have to keyframe the neck on every frame. Which is annoying but manageable.

[gregathit]

I don't know that they are beyond control per say, it is just figuring out exactly how to control it that is the trick.  That is the problem with animating for oblivion as you always seem to be fighting an up hill battle between the game engine, the CS and whatever program you are using to create the animation. 

 

You might sneak over to this thread: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/18511-combat-stance-reanimation/#entry429168 as the author went through many of the same things and his animations may help provide examples for stuff.

 

I haven't really messed with animations much outside of Lovers with PK, as that has kept me pretty busy lately, so I am rather limited in what I can help with.

 

Cheers,

Greg

[BAMcSH]

Thanks for the help! This conversation has lead me to realize a few things, so I should be able to get done what I want now.

 

Thanks =)

[Teechan]

I also animate Oblivion with Max. (Hi there!) I'm glad there are more people using Max for Oblivion.

 

 

Be careful about using 3dsmax for oblivion.  3dsmax can produce a 90 bug if you are not careful.

 

Actually I think I've found a definite answer to this (sidetracking a little bit, but I've been meaning to post about it)

 

The difference between Blender and Max import/exporters is that the Max importer merges the Bip01 bones and NonAccum bones for some reason. The result is there's only Bip01, and that's that. Blender does not do this, and I do not know why. But because the two bones are merged I've run into all kinds of crazy issues, from "snapping" walkleft animations to the 90 degree walkforward bug.

 

This can be fixed by editing the MaxTools.ini (uploaded here) to not allow this to happen.

 

Just drop this into your plugincfg folder. MaxNifTools.7z I already edited it checking "MergeNonAccum" to 0. Now when I import a vanilla walkforward or walkright/walkleft animation and then export those back out, I have no 90 degree or snapping issues and I don't have to fix anything in NifSkope.

 

Now back to the OP: What version of Max, and what NifTools builds are you using? (I'm using 2010 and a combination of Theru's/Figments build.) I personally have had issues with getting the game to allow equip and unequip to work, despite putting in the correct text keys (like attach/ect). The funny thing is, it'll play the ENUM sounds but totally ignore "Attach" or "Unattach". In fact, even when I export a vanilla onehandequip.kf file from max, and place it into _male, it seem like the game ignores it as a replacer, and prefers to use onehandequip.kf from it's BSA. (unless I'm missing something in that regard. lol)

 

  I have a haunch it might have to do with the exporters, which then gets lost in translation when it's in the game, but not exactly sure.

 

 

 

[D_ManXX2]

if it is just special anims then you need nifscope. and edit the animations make edit with prefix like SpecialIdle_ and then name for the animation you created. SpecialIdle what tells ck that this belongs in the under special animation folder.

[BAMcSH]

I've been using 2012 because I was able to get it free through my school last year. I got NifTools to work with it and it seems to export pretty handily (once I finally got the settings completely correct). This seems to be the only thing I can't find an answer for. If I want a special anim to replace say, the two-hand walking motion, I have to import twohandforward and make my animation on top of it. 

 

By the way thanks for that .ini, does a fine job automatically fixing bip01's rotation. Now I pretty much don't even need to use NifTools since the animgroup and loop status can be specified after the start text key. Fantastic.

 

D_Man, I've seen others talk about SpecialIdle_name places, but none of the mods I've downloaded that use specialanims have theirs tagged this way. Though I have achieved some wonky results by specifying anim groups other than SpecialIdle and then pickIdle'ing the animation onto an actor. Sometimes it won't play, but I've also seen it play in slow motion, backwards, or just explode.

 

I feel I might need to clarify that I don't need help making SpecialAnims work, I need help understanding WHY they work.

[D_ManXX2]

I feel I might need to clarify that I don't need help making SpecialAnims work, I need help understanding WHY they work.

 

This will be beyond my ability to explain since English isn't my native language so i will leave this to others to answer.

[gregathit]

Not sure anyone other than Bethesda (and maybe not even them) can give you that.  Most of us have learned by tinkering as to what we can do and not do.  For that matter, I am still learning both daily......

 

Sorry.

[Teechan]

A weird thing tho: I've been able to launch idle animations tagged as "Forward". Like this one.

 

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WN_qDSLsPQ

 

 

Most of us have learned by tinkering as to what we can do and not do.  For that matter, I am still learning both daily......

 

*points up* What he said.

[BAMcSH]

I just tried that again actually and it worked. I must have been suffering other problems at that point.
 
With my newly gained knowledge I made a spin animation real fast for something easy. No more head-dunking or broken arms, so that's great.

 

Apologies for Skype beeps.

>http://youtu.be/Kqjv9pZArgk

[Emily]

Emily bet you'll blow your brains out after peeking on monstergirl's Special anim folder.

 

Special Anim replaces npc and pc animation.

Though for strange reason NPC, refuse to use special anim on melle combat category.

But PC able to use any and all special animation.

 

You can set them manually on CS.

==========================

 

In Emily Monstergirl version, the NPC use creatures animations stored on 'Special anims' folder.

so the Humanoid race acts like creature.