Hey all, quick question...

I'm working on a new type of locomotion, (essentially a vehicle that allows you to still use a weapon).
Originally I thought the lower body played different animations from the top, but now I'm not so sure.

So my question is: Do I have to create a new movement animation for every weapon, every item, etc?

Example: Say the locomotion is for a Horse like in Oblivion... Would I have to create all of these?

(using 1 weapon as an example)

2hand_Rifle_idle_Forward_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Fire_Forward_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Reload_Forward_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Jam_Forward_horseback

2hand_Rifle_idle_Left_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Fire_Left_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Reload_Left_horseback
2hand_Rifle_Jam_Left_horseback

Etc, etc, etc...

Is there another method I could use to save some time and file-size? Like something to do with bone priorities?
The best case scenario would be to animate the legs and spine, and have the vanilla animations override the arms...

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated... I'll do what I have to do. This mod is carrying over into New Vegas.

Animations are played by Type
Idle
Movement
Weapon
HandGrip
SpecialIdle/DynamicIdle

Only one of each type are ever allowed to be played at the same time.



You can't .......
The Animation Sequence Index does not support new animation sets -> it only supports MT(no weapon out) and one for each weapon type so anything you add (given your own reference) to the 2HR(movement) anims will apply to ALL rifles and there is no way to localize these animations on a per weapon basis.



Unless your planning to use these as Special Idles non of those will be recognized by the game, and if your are planning on doing SI's then your going to have an issue with looping as SI's will not play in a loop period all the game does is continue playcalling the anim which means it will have a very visable pause every time the anims ends and begins again.



Another method, yes there are already mods that do basically what you want except they use activators or furniture and for the most part all have sync issues because the player and the mount are 2 seperate entities.

There is also http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SaidenStorm#p/u/24/z2lS86wCRU4



Kinda getting ahead of yourself here -> almost the entire NifTools team that decodes these things have taken a long break from the scene myself included so any decoding of and updating of the exporters is most likely not going to happen anytime soon after release -> your should prepare for at least 4-6 Months post release to be able to do anything of any real value to FO:NV and thats only if they release the Updated CS without it plan on an even longer wait as a completely different set of people will need to decode the updates to ESM/ESP formats.

I realize that. I wasn't very clear though... I mean I'm making this for FO3, but I plan to make another edition for FO3:NV. Sorry for the confusion.

Thank you so much for all of that information! It was very helpful.

Despite all of this, maybe you can humor me a bit more then?

Lets say I use something like a scripted Animation Interception (http://www.project-valhalla.org/Adding_custom_animations)

If bSomeVariable" == 1 && IfGetControl == SomeButton ;If the player is "mounted" and "walking"
Play my animation instead
End

Could it work this way then? For an example with your glider (very cool btw!): your actually walking I assume... but because you used a custom animation - THAT is why you can't use your weapon?

There has to be a way...

The so called VeliV method was not created by him Oblivion modders including myself have been using SI's in that manner for some time -> but yes it will work in that it will allow you to play an anim at will but not a looping animation and also doing this locks by Bi-Lateral movement (as in you are not allowed to move forward/backward + left/right)

As for the glider it is a weapon, versions created after that video added mini-missiles that shot out of the middle, but I never got far enough to making it secondary weapons compatable.

Okay, so it seems it is possible, but difficult. If it locks movement as you say, then maybe a script could force movement (update Player.posx etc...)

But how could I essentially "lock" the legs in an animated position, and leave the upper body in tact so the player still has normal weapon functionality: fire, reload, aim, etc?

You could, only problem with updating the players position is it tends to studder based on frame rates and the speed that your moving the player -> even with fast frame rates, it maybe acceptable though.



You can't SI's also lock weapon use so you can not fire a weapon while under the influence of any SI -> the only solution to is to detect the fire button press and simulate firing -> FireWeapon works but you need to expect problems with the auto-aim not functioning correctly and thus firing off weapons held position instead (which for 90% of all weapons is not aligned to the crosshair), I am/was working on a mod that allows for firing from out of cover and to do some jumps/dodges while firing (think Max Payne) and ran into a ton of auto-aim issues with it.

As for locking the legs my best solution that still allowed for weapon use was to make the mount a weapon so it got its own HandGrip and Attack anims -> this allowed me to correctly align the player to the mount also it made them both one entity so I did not have to bother with positional sync issues -> from there the glider did not need any movement anims but the dragons did so I used what I explained already used FOSE to detect what buttons I had pressed and it forced SI's to play that animated the mounts and then detected fire button presses to simulate weapon firing -> did not turn out to be an appealing solution to mounts so I let it go.

There was also the problem that I could not silence the normal walking anims so it never sounded right, which annoyed me.

Thanks for all the detailed info. You really know your stuff, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share what you know with me. This gives me a great assessment of the challenge ahead. It will be a lot of work, (and maybe for nothing), but no one ever said modding was easy. :fallout:

For what I want to accomplish I think the worse case scenario would be disabling 3rd person view while using the special locomotion item. That way animations for the player wont matter anymore.

Thanks again. I'll come back if I discover anything useful.

I would hope he knows his stuff, since hes the first (And for a while, only) person to have made custom creatures with their own animations for oblivion.