So, can anyone offer insight into how Camera Paths and Camera Shots work?

The Camera Paths seem to be linked in chains via their ''Related Camera Paths'' entries so that the engine goes through a string of Camera Paths to decide which one to use based on its Condition entries. Some fire based on what weapon was used, some based on distance between actors, some based on a random number, etc. They then call a defined Camera Shot. How does the game know which Camera Path to start on for a given event?

The Camera Shots define a NIF file (I don't get this, what is the NIF doing here?), time multipliers to speed/slow time passage during playback, a Max and Min Time, and an Image Space Modifier effect to be used during playback.

One thing I especially don't get is why certain death cameras loop infinitely, when given Camera Shots have Max Time entires.

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I can't seem to find the camera paths, what heading are they under?
The shots use nifs that contain a camera node and animation that moves it and alters the FOV, as nif files can contain animations (and kfs are as far as I've seen only used for animating rigged creatures). Indefinite looping could be due to incorrect flags being set in the camera shot nif, the few I checked had 'Clamp' as the cycle type but perhaps some have 'Loop' and that breaks from time-to-time.

With FNVEdit they're just listed as ''Camera Paths'' and it actually took me a while to find them in the GECK. In the GECK they're under the ''Gameplay'' menu dropdown, ''Camera Paths...'' entry, instead of being in the big old normal list.

After seeing how they're handled in the GECK I understand better how they're organized, but it's still a horrific system: child objects specify their parent, while a parent won't specify any children, so it's basically impossible to know which entries have children without iterating through every Camera Path. The ''PlayerDeath'' Camera Path is the top-level parent for handling the VATS camera when the player dies; removing its children and assigning it a Camera Shot gives it exclusive control over what camera animation plays when the plays dies BUT the looping seems to be hardcoded. No matter how I changed the Camera Shot, the game never left the VATS camera mode once the death camera started.

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