Ok true, females are very manly, but oh well...

the male walking animation is hilarious! from behind it looks like he's sporting a fully loaded depends diaper, and in the front, the exaggerated crotch movement speaks for itself. :rofl:

hey bahamut, i've got 3ds max, and i know how to make key notes, so if you ever get round to doing animations i could have a go at making the .kfs for you
i made a test animation in max and exported it to .kf, and it seemed to run fine in game, so i should be able to export any animations you make, although i might have a go at just tweaking some animations myself, as im too lazy to make animations from scratch :snoring:

I support anyone trying to make new animations.


Technically, I think it would be possible. If you went through in the CS every single NPC and assigned them different animations.

Edit: There is a mod which makes all DB assassins use oshiel's anims.

I'm behind this all the way! You go Dirnae! I think editing existing ones (if that's what you intend) can be enough to make it look much better on BB.

i think thats because all the dark brotherhood assassin's that attack you in your sleep use the same ID, and the different types in mournhold are also clones of each other, so this is easier to do and more practical than changing every single NPC's animation through the CS, which would take a huge amount of time . Maybe if a programme was made to find if an NPC was a certain race, assign the animation to them, and store this in an .esp file, it would be possible, but i'm not a programmer and not sure if a programme such as this could even be made :shrug:

There are about 5 types of DB assassins IIRC. Not including the leveled ones. What I was saying is that it IS possible to assign a different anim rather than the standard beast and non beast one, as if you use that mod you have 3.

Going through the CS for every NPC would take a while sure, but it wouldn't take THAT long. Probably could get it done in a day.

yeah, that's all i was getting at really ^_^ , the huge amount of time it would take, i'd hate having to go through all the lists and change each animation, but maybe i'm just too lazy
btw if a new walking animation was to be made, what would you want it to look like? maybe give an example of a game with nice anims, and also what is it exactly you hate about the old walking anims?
sorry for the questions, it's just if i do give this a go, i wouldn't want to screw it up :blink:

The walk, run, sneak and jump animations are truly awful.
It would be a godsend if someone would redo them.

Also awful is how they "treadmill" (meaning walk constantly against objects, wall, people).

What exactly is needed to change the character animations?
Could someone walk me through the steps or point me to a explicit tutorial?
I'm considering asking my animators at work if they have any interest in this.

Hmm... I always thought WoW did their animations pretty well. I'm not sure of any other suggestions though i'm afraid. Hey, if you do make some new ones I'd gladly slog through all the NPC's and assign them.

cool, for now i will probably just focus on a walking animation replacer, to be used with the animkit, then i might move onto sneak and run animations, so it will be a while before any racial replacers
(what have i gotten myself into :facepalm: ) anyway i guess i'll go look at the WOW animations to get ideas

Don't feel obligated, do it because/if you want to!

The treadmill would have to be fixed by creating a new animation system, so you're gonna have to wait for OpenMW

as for what needs to be done, you need to import the animations into max, change the positions of the keys to make it look how you want, though i would delete some of the keys that get imported into morrowind, or you'll probly end up with jerky animations, then go into track veiw, add a note track onto the animation, then add note keys where they should be and add the sequence names, eg. WalkForward: Start, WalkForward: Loop Start (btw don't forget to add notes for soundgens too). Then export using niftools as a single kf with nif to get 2 nifs (which you can delete) and a kf. I'd use liztail's animation kit to split up the animation before importing so you just edit the part you want to, then use the animation kit to put it into the game. Well, this is what i do change animation

Please do ask your animators at work as well =)

yeah, a group of proffesional animator's would be a hell lot better than just me , please ask them, and sorry bout the messy instructions, here are a couple links to some websites that helped me learn this stuff

Ren's tutorial for creating new head meshes, explains how to do note keys at the end -> http://web.archive.org/web/20070527052417/home.wnm.net/~bgriff/MW_Tutorials.html

the niftools wiki -> http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/NifTools

and a tutorial in the niftools wiki that shows how to do key notes in max aswell -> http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/3ds_Max/Conversion

i'm not too sure bout animation in blender, but you should be able to find some useful tutorials in the niftools wiki

btw, what do you guys hate bout the walking animation, is it just the forward and backward animation or the side ones too? and can you give me specifics of what you dislike, so far all i've done is reduced the swinging of the arms

This will not work, believe me.
The discussed above female animations I have created for a specific NPC and definitely not for general use. I was asked to make them public separately from the mod. Then they were used as an example by LizTail for his outstanding MW Animation Kit.
I have received several requests for their improvement (feet were not animated, but I did them for high heels; hands were animated not that good, I tried to fix that; not realistic, but that was my goal ? this particular NPC should have exaggerated animations; etc.). This was a nightmare, very frustrating work?without expected result that could satisfy both sides.
Animation is an art similar to creating textures: you can like it (animation) or not, but it is very difficult to explain and animator to understand what exactly should be changed.
Moreover, I was sent once a perspective bvh for male walking circle, I did the job, technically everything was correct (transition poses, loop smoothing, note track, etc.), but in game result was horrible ? original animations look definitely better.
Another issue: with MW skeleton (it's structure is hardcoded and cannot be changed) and low-polygon models that are already skinned (down compatibility problem) it is very difficult to achieve "realistic" smooth animation without severe mesh distortions, clipping with clothes/armor?Therefore I am making (testing) my animations even for specific clothes/armor meshes.

I would recommend to read my remarks about NPC/PC animation posted on this Forum, there you can find answers to many of the posted questions.

And the last but not the least: I am a hobbies, modding MW for fun when I have inspiration and time for that.

My best regards,

Good luck,

Axel

Males
-They walk like they have a stick up their ass, or like they're flaunting their "package" to the ladies. :hubbahubba: The arm movement seems unnatural to me as well.
-Why do their crotches swing from side to side? It's not a big deal, until you're wearing some armor that gives you a pouch there. :rofl:
-They run like somebody out of an action movie or something.

Females
-When they walk, their arms bob around like they've gone numb or they're vestigal.
-They run like the female Terminator does in Terminator 3.

In general the idle animations look nice and smooth, but the walking animations are very stocky and forced.

I have just reduced the movement in the arms so far, and made it so they don't kick out their legs out fully while walking ( just a little thing that annoyed me), i haven't fixed the crotch movements yet, and i've tested the animations in game and they seem to work fine
i've only done the walk forward animation so far, hopefully more to come

@a1x2: i've just made the movements less exaggerated so hopefully i shouldn't have those problems, and i didn't notice any in game, and i've deleted most of the original keys that were unneeded and let 3ds max fill in the gaps, giving quite a smooth result
i experienced the jerkiness in max, and it was due to the large amount of keys, which would require precise editing to get a smooth result, so i just deleted the ones not needed. Can you link to the forum you mentioned, i would like to take a look at it, btw thanks for the advice, i'm trying not to sound ungrateful, it's just that i got it working fine in my game. Also am i right in that it's the thigh bones, not the pelvis that causes the crotch movement? and would you happen to know if it's transforms or rotations that causes it?

@stonefrog: ty for suggestions, i will try to get rid of the crotch movement and i will have a go at running animations when i've finnished the walking ones

That's awesome that you are working on animations!!!

Here is this post:

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=883042&hl=

Here are original Max blank animation files that I have converted (skin instead of physique) to be used with Max versions higher than 5.1 with NifTools plugin that supports only skin:

http://www.4shared.com/file/97719385/6c8a318c/MW_AnimBlankfiles_forMax51and_higher.html

I would be happy to share with you all information I have collected about creating MW animations.

Thanks for the support, it isn't a full recreation of the animations, i suspect if i were attempting that i may have come across many errors already, no what i am doing at the moment is just editing the existing animations to make them look IMO better, that way i can get the animations done quickly and hopefully neatly. I've downloaded the tutorials and will look over them, thanks for putting all this useful stuff in one place . I'm working on walkforward.kf right now. As i've said, i've made the animations less exaggerated, and all i need to do to get it finished is fix the crotch movement :dance:

On that subject, i'd like to ask if anyone knows which bones cause the wierd crotch movement, i suspect it's either the Bip01 L Thigh and Bip01 R Thigh, or Bip01 Spine. I tried removing the animations from Bip01 Pelvis and the crotch movement remains, however doing the same for the thighs or spine creates.... problems <_<

Are you working with imported bone animations or with base animations created/imported by RX31 on the CS biped?
Note that both exporters (official and NifTools) are sampling key frames (no interference with tricky controllers). Therefore deleting of some keys might produce bad results and it might be easier to create animation from the scratch than to edit originals.

Finally, our savior has come.

All hail the great animation replacer. :bowdown:

Praise the lord!

agreed. one of the small handful of things that tarnish an otherwise amazing game. best of luck!