So I'm working on this mod that has two (non-hostile) super mutants, and I've realised too late that they can't sit or sleep. I love TheTalkieToaster's http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6773 mod, and it got me wondering whether it's at all possible for sit/sleep animations to be developed for the muties.

In Oblivion, I managed to make it so that skeletons could use lich's spellcasting animations, thankfully that worked because skeletons, humanoids and liches were all more or less identical in the animation department, but super mutants are a bit different. Still, if they can wield axes and so on, can they use beds and chairs?

Or are weapons handled differently to furniture?

We had a thread about this some time back.

It's not doable unless basically a professional animation person converts the humanoid animations over.. And, there doesn't seem to be anyone around who is willing.

Aww.

I know, believe me.

I need these same things, and there's no help to be had. I post about it now and then, hoping someone who can do it will make it a little project out of it.

There is an animation in Broken Steel which Fawkes can do while he activates the purifier, and it looks the same to me as the one Charon does when he activates it. I'm expecting that animation was worked with using this sort of process. But that's a one-off thing and the animation happens to not be useful for anything but that scene pretty much.

sigh. bah!

What happens if you force a human animation on a supermutant? With PlayIdle eg? I wouldn't be too surprised if it works.

Oh, it works. The animation plays. I have done this to Fawkes using console commands (Umpa dance animation to be precise).

However.

What happens is, the mutant's body gets completely F'ed up and distorted, and it looks so bad that you'd never use it for anything.

Observe Wasteland Dancin' . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbyhpsv-6sM . There is a very very brief shot of a human dance animation being applied to Dogmeat. The dog's body is all twisted and distorted. When you apply that animation to Fawkes it looks so bad that... well, lets just note that the Wasteland Dancin' director declined to use those animations on Fawkes mkay (although he appears briefly in the vid, he has not had the animation applied to him).

* cries for some animator to ride in and be the knight on the white horse and convert some animations over for us to use for mutants *

so if you make an animation, what are the steps needed to test it?

if someone made a SM sit animation, i think the chair would have to be custom as well (or at least modified) for the SM mesh to look right while sitting.

Sitting on the floor is for the best IMO... I picture chairs going splat under a mutie's weight and well, it would be funny to watch that but it would be a different animation and would require a destructable chair...

umm ... as far as how to test it umm... I don't know the dirty details on the internals but, I was able to call Umpa's Dance Animations down on Fawkes by using console commands, I think the command was 'playidle'. I don't have a clue as to how the whole thing was being made available to me via this command by the .esp.

You could make empty furniture markers and place them on sturdier stuff.

hrm....ok. i'll have a looksee at Umpa's mod.

does anyone know where the SM body mesh is located?


@Tubal:
i thought the furniture markers were hardcoded in the game? or are empty ones available already? if not, do you know how to make one?

sorry for all the questions... i am thinking i might have a go at this...

You must mean Creatures\SMSpineBreaker\Skeleton.nif

The engine does not protect an animation from running. As an example, you can call a 1st person animation on the PC in 3rd person, resulting in some quite funky movements. The thing that limits if an animation can be played on an actor are the conditions defined by the animation.

I doubt they're hardcoded, they seem to be attached to nifs somehow. "Markers\FurnitureMarker15.NIF" for example.
No idea how to make one though.

There's a way to attach idle markers to furniture in mods I believe, I've seen people talking about it.

But that is the least of the difficulty with this problem we have. We don't even need furniture markers to make mutants do things necessarily. The thing we cannot do without is animations that have been adapted for their differently-sized bodies.

i was actually looking for the actual mesh object for the super mutant, not the skeleton. anyway, i've found it (or one, at least) under SMcaptain.nif. thanks though.

i've got close to zero experience animating organic models[*], but it is something iv'e been interested in doing for a long while now. i think the sitting animation is not too complex, so i'm going to try and make at least a rough animation of the SM sitting on the ground. if i'm successful maybe someone else (**cough**saidenstorm**cough) can come in and clean it up and make it look more natural.



[*] i've actually gone through the blender noob-to-pro section on animating the walkcycle, but i could never make it look right.


E:
i can't believe i didn't see it earlier, but the mesh i was really looking for is "m01_smspinebreaker.nif"

You want the skeleton for animations though.

Saidenstorm kinda doesn't help in that sorta way, but lucky you if he changes his mind and does.

I think that if you feel like trying, you should, but I think what you're trying to make is very tough to get looking good. Ideally you need the animation of assuming the sit position, and then the sit-idle, and then I presume he should get back up again. Maybe the sit-idle won't be so bad. But the action of getting down and up again... yikes... I think getting-up may be helped by the fact that they do get off of the ground after being knocked down (and you could reference those animations) but the controlled action of sitting down... oh hell good luck with that .

There is already animations for SM's sitting cycle(specialidle_sitcycle.kf) and sleeping cycle(specialidle_sleepcycle.kf), they never got set up to be usable in-game though so they just sit in the files un-used -> they were never taken past the testing phase and as such would need to be cleaned up and the Middle Sleeping/Sitting sections legthened as right now they are animated to only sit/sleep a second or so.

Your problems with this idea is not the animations its...

1) Creatures can not use Furniture, or anything specifically designed with the Player/NPC's in mind. -> They can use IdleMarkers Though or they can be scripted to emulate sitting on furniture.
2) Creatures can not play True Looping Special Idles -> not even the Player/NPC's are able to do this any longer in Oblivion you could call a True Looping SI on Player/NPC's Actors but it no longer works, the game treats all anims as Clamped anims and just recalls the playcall if they are set to be Looping -> so you end up with flickering unless you animate the entire cycle into the anim (Entry, Middle and End).

Speak of the devil!

That's neat that there are rudimentary SM sit/sleep idles in the game now. Maybe they meant to do it and ran out of time, or... something.

It would sure rock if you did anything at all with this, you know.... . I tried, yo... and I'm so helpless...

A workaround for this problem would be to make a Super Mutant race, scale it up, and make it look like a super mutant as much as possible. Then you are free to use any NPC animation you like

Cant make a SM race as you can not set seperate Skeleton.nif Path's like you could for Oblivion.

I worked with this a little bit as an experiment. I don't know how viable it is. I bet that making an NPC race kinda forces the body to be formed like... an NPC! This may be the same thing that saidenstorm is saying.

I am thinking that if you used a piece of armor that you force-equip on your special characters, and the armor was designed to look like the mutant you wanted, it could maybe go over well, except for the face. I think you'd end up using Beth's GECK face editor to create the face.

The result would walk, run, and do everything and look sorta human at it, be aware. That may not be a problem depending on what you were trying to do, but then again, it might be.

Ok this time I have to 'ninja' back . I think the costume route is the best way to go. I am working on a supermutant costume the last few weeks for my sleeping mod. It needs still a lot of work but the vanilla animations look already perfect on it. Only some Umpa animations make a bit of troubles on the shoulders as can be seen (warning possible big spoiler ahead for the next update of 'See you... It's time for bed')

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTjyQdtrOm4.

that's pretty damn neat!

Costume.

What programs do you use to create it?