These might be useful mods:

Actors In Charge
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6239

Actors in madness (for SI)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10150

They provide a list of animations.

I also read somewhere that there is a cook animation. Rendil Drarara has a bowl and spoon which he stirs and tastses the sppon every so often.

The singing does'nt seem to have an animation with it. Just lip sync. The pirates at IC waterfront sing every so often.

I have noticed concerning the EAT package, that if your npc has a mug in the inventory they will sit at the chair and disregard the food and drink instead.

Not always. It appears to randomly switch between one and the other. Also it doesn't have to be a mug, it could be a beer or ale.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the case. As far as I know you can only mod the PC movement speed in 17. If i'm wrong i'd love to know though. I could certainly use those functions.

Been a while since I have done aipackages but here are some of mine from tamrieltravellers itself..

Open Eat Package Setting - give any npc an a custom eat package with a time and duration..no specific location or target or food item and doing it this way 1) They will hunt and find close place aviable to set it to use 2) Will hunt for closet food source 3) If player happen to be in same cell when this happen npc will get up and move to different location

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Force Npc to Equip Item from inventory itself or always have said equipment equppied-even it other item in inventory of greater value etc..

UseItempackage no target no location..

conditiondata set to this

getequppied "nameofItem" < 0,
getequppied "nameofitem" == 0

that will force an item to stay equipped on npc ..

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Forcing idle animation on npc via faction setting

- you can go to idle animations themselves and add a getinfaction to any one of them and any npc in that faction will do that idle animation has well..

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Creature AI packages - look at MMM or Creature Alive to see example of this..



Corepc

I had a few questions about idle animations and compatibility between mods.

If two mods add a new condition to an existing idle anim, will both work together or will one mod's alteration override the others?

And if you append a new anim onto the end of unique anims and another mod also appends one on the end, will they both work together, or will one override the other? The idles list appears (when I tried to make sense of it) to be a series of fixed order nodes, rather than independent forms.

At least I found if you add a new idle to the middle of the list, the idle before it gets marked as changed as well.
And also if you delete a new idle with TES4Edit when you next load up the CS you get a bunch of errors about next idle not being found.
So . . . its hard to know how to use the thing correctly.

Correct

if one mod edit conditions on idle and add another does the same, last one will almost everytime win if they both edit the same one..

Correct about idle animation being more like nodes and not formid..

it work's like a tree..if you add a new idle the one above it will become marked has changed since something was added to tree.

and everythig down below is pushed down on the trunk but not marked has changed..

Rule of one applies -> last loaded wins.

Strictly speaking about my mods: Both LAME and Integration add unique idle anims, which appear under / over each other. They work fine.

(Although Integration depends on LAME, which may play a part.)

Other mods adding idles seem to work, too.

What can be problematic though would be a chain of animations, in which one idle triggers the next (while possible I never seen them). Or in which you have overlying and underlying groups, because it seems to me that adding something to a child makes the parent also fall under the rule of one. It's never necessary to use default parent / child categories though - in fact it never makes sense, because the parent's conditions apply to the child, and this usually include very specific getisid checks -> unusable for new NPCs.

Just checked, seems like Hex is right ... I must've seen the modMovementSpeed bit without the PC bit

Is there anyway to view the begging.ktf or forcing it to play? I've tried following beggars around and I've seen nothing. Just the dialogue in which they ask for money, which has no accompanying animation.

I don't know. The BeggarIdle is listed under Loiter, and the file is called Talk_handsClasped_Sway.kf
It might not be too obvious they're doing it. Maybe when they solicit you for a coin on the street?

I'll extract it and take a look from the kf file.

Yeah you're right. Its when they ask for a coin, they talk with their hands clasped at their fronts. Hardly a begging gesture. I mistook it for a 'normal' idle. I was expecting the beggars to put their hand/s out for change.

Yep, extracted it and its quite a bland gesture. I could fairly easily adjust some of the vanilla packages if anyone is able to put them into the game.

I thought I might draw attention to this little utility mod:

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=995826

It provides a quick and easy method of testing character animations in game. I made it for the benefit of those making animations for UV, but possibly it can be of use to others here.

I consider it to be worthwhile since animations might work fine in blender or max but do weird stuff in the game. Also it helps to judge the level of clipping that might happen with different weapon/armour configurations.

HeX

*cackles manically*

Until now to include new Idle anims I've used the same method Shivering Isles used. Which was very complicated and prone to errors, therefore needed often half a dozen or more conditions - for each NPC using the animation!

Not anymore. I found the perfect solution. By looking at how Oblivion did them. So if you think about including new idle animations, do this:

1. Create a new item, e.g. a token. Only important thing is that it has no value, no innate use, and it's type not used for another animation (so no ingredient, potion, book, weapon, etc). I'm using Misc Item. Clothing should also be safe. Let's call it "YourJustCreatedItem".
2. Create a new Idle Anim, give it only one condition: GetIsUsedItem YourJustCreatedItem, and of course specify the kf file.
3. Now give this item to the NPC, and use a standard "Use Item At" package pointing to your item.

By doing so I could not only cut down the number of idle anims in Integration by 75%, I also can remove a lot of failsafe checks. The method used in Shivering Isles instead (UseItemAt NONE, with a lot of conditions on the Idle Anim, like specifying place, NPC, AI package, allowed modes, etc) was a lot more complicated.

I know, probably most of you already know about this three step method about, but... I feel totally stupid and delighted at the same time currently, so :wacko:.

That's very similar to the method I use in UV, though mine is for scripting animations rather than package based idling:

My idles have just one condition (getitemcount token > 0), where I have a token for each different animation.

My scripts add the token to the appropriate NPC, call pickidle 1, then remove the token again after a couple of frames and call pickidle 0 (allowing the current animation to complete). Note that this technique doesn't work well for looping animations - only those with a fixed duration. It is however very useful for event scripting.

This method has worked solidly enough for me, though I use a locking system to ensure that no two idles are played simultaneously on the same NPC since that's a recipe for CTDs. The NPC is 'locked' while the animation is playing and 'unlocked' after a timer with the same duration as the animation completes.

As far as I can tell this animation doesn't exist. I have been through every UseItemAt package in the vanilla game and there are none using a broom. Plenty using a hoe or rake, but no broom.

Perhaps this is only available in Shivering Isles or with Shivering Isles. I haven't looked at that yet as I only use CS 1.1.

I just discovered this thread and really like the idea of expanding the list of possible anims for NPCs. We at Silgrad Tower just recently added SI compatibility primarily to increase the number of possible anims. With that, I do a couple of observations/questions:

• When adding an idle anim, order matters much as it does for an INFO record. Each IDLE record contains a DATA record which consists of the form IDs of the parent anim (usually just a group, not a real anim) and the previous sibling anim. Thus adding an IDLE except at the start of a group will result in another being altered as well and deleting an IDLE in the middle of a group requires that the following IDLE be changed to replace the newly deleted previous anim. The version of Gecko currently in beta does merge such IDLEs w/o error, but remember not to "overclean" your mods of seemingly extraneous altered anims; there's a reason that they are there.
  
• Another area we've ventured into is anim objects; it's always nicer if your Dunmer mattock doesn't magically transform into an Imperial hoe during the anim. Has anyone else added new idle objects?
  
• If a mod like ST were to decide and get permission for using another mod like AiC, how would that work in terms of both the CS and in not exploding the setup when a player either does or doesn't have AiC installed?

Thanks,
Steve

First of all, I'm just going to point to http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=999587&hl=.

Now that this is out of the way...

1. You can remove the idles altered. The CS will complain at the first startup, but this sets the custom idle to be working while being clean.
2. Adding new idle objects is very easy, they're just another kind of objects to define (and combine with a new idle anim entry, using the same kf file). However it wasn't done yet, because likely no one ever bothered to do so .
3. AiC and AiM use Vanilla kf files. If you set them up to be used by AI packages, you don't need these mods at all. Instead you have several options, the imho best I have outlined in a previous post here. Or use the thingy linked above . As for unique new idle anims, simply change their kf file names and include them as new anims (including them also in the download). The method used for the player is by far not the best when used for NPC AI packages, so there's no need for mod deisolation here, neither for mod merging.

I'm confused with the game's use of the animation objects too.

I added a bottle (new formid, but not a new mesh) and cloned the DrinkBottle idle, which is set up for the potionSkooma, to use it instead. Both point to the same .kf file. The bottle the character drinks from is not the same bottle as the skooma animation - which is a potion bottle, is not the animation object either, but a wine bottle. The characters who have the AI package to use the potionSkooma are not drinking from the rather small potionSkooma but a regular potion bottle. So the item used in the animation is not fixed by the .kf file, or the item that is being used. Where does it come from?

From the animobject.

Animobjects link "themself" to anims (i.e. AnimObjects have a selection in which you can choose in which animations they're used).

Keep in mind that what you're trying to do is tricky - potions are in a catch all thingy, so it may be that you need to use a misc item token instead.

But the animobject mesh is a potion bottle, and the one being used is a wine bottle in my test.

If I drop it, it's one mesh. If I give it to an NPC who is set up to drink it, it's another mesh, which neither character posseses.

I will give the "not a potion" part a try as well, in case that exposes any clues.

- You've set up a new AnimObject in the CS pointing towards your mesh?
- You've tried to use a misc item to trigger the animation?

(Last one may or may not important. Let's say you want to give someone a special book to read, with a new anim. THe normal book reading anim triggers true when GetIsUsedItem book becomes true, so also for the special new book. I'm not exactly sure how the hierarchy thingy for animations work ,though.)

Can Anyone comment on the 'OnFire' animation? and whether it can work for any NPC/PC?
Any info much appreciated