Hey everyone. I've been looking all over the web to find a detailed tutorial on Custom Animations, but I can't find one that covers everything I want to know. I've seen quite a few Anim Mods out there, so I have to assume that someone knows something that could help. When I figure this out I'd like to write an exhaustive tut on this subject.

What I already know:

[1] Animation 101 (got an incomplete bfa in digital arts and animation)
[2] Extract the _Skeleton.nif to animate with (only bones joints, no mesh)
[3] Animating in Blender (used to Maya, but getting the hang of it)
[4] Exporting .kf in Blender (Not sure if I do it right, but I get a .kf when I'm done)


Here's where I get all jazzed up...

I can get the animation into the GECK via Gameplay>Idle Anims
-OR-
I can use FO3Edit to copy an idle animation into my esp, and replace it with my custom .kf

However, I have no clue what the proper file structure is, whether it should go in _male, Characters, _Male/IdleAnims, My own custom folder... Wherever I put it I can't preview the animation on any NPC in the GECK, leading me to believe that I've done something wrong, and it wont work when I call it up in a script.

I've also tried the FO3Edit "MMM" method of copying animations into an NPC, and I still don't see mine on the list.

Is that normal? Do custom animations just not show up in the list when you Right-Click>Preview an NPC?
I would greatly appreciate if some one could lay out a simple "How-To" for me to see if there's something I'm missing.

Thanks for reading.

The file structure is the same as the animation that you are replacing. For instance, if you wanted to replace a female player's third person walk forward animation you would put your animation in data/meshes/characters/_male/locomotion/female. The animation would be named "mtforward.kf". The NiControllerSequence's Name value would be "Forward", and the cycle type would be set to "CYCLE_LOOP".



Not all animations will be preview capable. However, usually you will get an error in the GECK if there is a specific problem and you can then go check the error log to figure out what the problem was.

The best way to learn how to utilize your animation abilities for fallout 3 would be to do some reading on the TES CS Wiki (http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Animation_Tutorials). Start with "Creating a Character Animation". Even though this is fallout 3 animations are virtually unchanged from Oblivion and any changes are handled by the export scripts (mostly).

The Niftools site actually has a good animation tutorial as well. Go to http://niftools.org, choose "Blender", then under tutorials choose "Blender/Oblivion Character Animation".

There are also other tutorials online, but most are for 3dsmax. I wish SaidenStorm was still around. He was an expert at getting animations (and pretty much everything else) to work. If you could find a link to his homepage he has some pretty good tutorials iirc. Also anything by SickleYield or Nic-V or a bunch of others.

I'm pretty much brand new to Blender and animations, but I had an awesome modder tell me how to do it, and especially what to do in Nifskope. I didn't do any tutorials, though referred to one I found on the Blender website for some things I didn't understand, like which exact button to press. I can't find the link at the moment.
I had problems getting my custom animation to work, or show, anywhere outside Blender. I hadn't put it in the right folder. Mine's an attack animation, but to test it out it had to go in the Meshes\Characters\_male\idleanims folder.
It worked alright in the GECK and later in-game.

Oh Wow - Thank You! I actually got the thing to show up in game now! :celebration: That tutorial at the TESCS wiki was Exactly what I needed. I'll check out the others too, but I think I'm good to go. There's a few kinks to work out still, like: fixing the Z height issue mentioned in that tut, and another anomaly with a 90 degree rotation, but I think i may have done that myself by accident.

>Not all animations will be preview capable<

That puts me at ease. I was worried about it for a minute. It would be nice to be able to, but I guess it's just as easy to replace a "jump" or "idle" and test it in-game.

>There are also other tutorials online, but most are for 3dsmax<

So I've seen... I read that Max is much better for FO3 animations, and I can understand why it would be. Maya would be great too, but it doesn't export anims for .nif. However Blender is free, so I'm trying to get used to it. It's a great program once you unlearn everything you know about any other 3d modeling software. Still, for static objects I've been modeling/texturing in Maya, exporting to obj, and importing to blender for finishing touches and the Blender Nif export plugin.


@MyStykStar >Meshes\Characters\_male\idleanims folder<

I'm creating an item that enables a new kind of movement via a script attached to the item as an effect. I'll be reading input keys with FOSE to change the animations. So, when I go to script my animations, I'm going to need to put everything in this folder then? Just want to make sure I get everything straight so I don't get stuck again.


While we're on the subject of animation... I found a list of Player Actions (http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/GetLastPlayerAction) and a list of Animation Actions (http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/GetAnimAction)... is there a more complete list somewhere, or is there a file I can find these in? I'm looking for Jump Loops, and Fall Loops... I need to trigger my script immediately after the player jump action has finished. Then I'll start my script to control movement and the new animations.


Thank you Both. You've been a tremendous help to me! I will not forget this. I'll be sure to give you thanks in the mod credits. :foodndrink: