I love these animations! We've been waiting years for improvement in this area.

One thing I noticed though is my character runs a lot slower than before. I feel like I'm having trouble keeping up momentum. Is there any way to speed them up? Is it a game setting set in your .esp file that's slowed the character down?

This is incredible. I like the little pause before walking - it sorta simulates acceleration from a stop to a walk. It really works well and it makes me and all the NPCs appear more realistic in the game.
Thanks!

@Stuporstar: Yeah, an animation replacer has been needed for quite a while, I'm surprised no one has made a normal one yet, the run has a longer stride length than vanilla, it looks slower but goes just as fast. The game scales the animation time depending on the distance it covers, so my long strided run is slower, but my short strided walk is faster (which is why I had to tweak the walk speed).

I haven't tweaked the run, or else this issue would be fixed, however the new run I'm working on, that I should be able to upload today or tomorrow (it's already in game, just needs some fine tweaking), goes at pretty much the same speed as vanilla, so just wait a little longer for me to upload it. Looks a lot better than this one, arm and leg movements match nicely, and the arms have got more twist to them.

@Casey Tucker: Thanks, though the back kick at the start of the walk has been removed, and so the pause is hardly noticeable now. I'll add in a tiny pause later.
Looks just as good if not better imo, you'll have to judge for yourself though.

Looks much better than vanilla :thumbsup:

Thanks, though I think there's a lot I can still improve upon.
If anyone doesn't like how parts of my animations look, whether it's just the hands or the whole thing, feel free to post why, I can always make multiple animations if I have time.

Here's the latest animations, try them out and tell me what you think of them.
http://www.4shared.com/file/134082409/5df20491/Dirnaes_Animations.html

edit: There are a couple of minor bugs with the running animation I haven't fixed yet.
The fingers aren't bent enough at the moment, and the arm animations need adjusting slightly to stop characters decapitating themselves with tower shields.
They're only minor, I'm overexaggerating about the decapitation, it's only a tap really, I'll get them fixed tomorrow.

Looks excellent, I'll try it for my upcoming new char. Hope you will tackle the female walk/run as well (as it seems) as I'm not a huge fan of Axel's sixy Walk (well, I have only seen it in videos). Keep up the good work!

I really like the updated animations, and I'm looking forward to the female ones as well. Axel's sixy walk may be useful for some purposes, but I really don't think it works as a general replacer; it's just too exaggerated.

A noticeable problem with Axel's sixy Female Walk is that it causes skirts to 'split' so that the legs show - really only looks good with pants or loincloths. <_<

And since a lot of female NPCs wear skirts, I agree with Helena that it's problematic as a general replacer.


Thanks for the update Dirnae! Just downloaded and will check out the improvements. ^_^

My animation has got a shorter stride length, so hopefully that problem wont be present. If not, I can always fix it.
Though to be fair, it isn't bad animation that's causing this, it's bad rigging (which is a common problem with BB meshes, I think they used buggy max 4 physique).

Thanks for testing it out.

Ah, rigging issues. I agree there's no bad animating going on here, yours or Axel's. -_-

Ok, did some testing.
* walkforward is nice and smooth now, well done. :thumbsup:
* walkback has a noticeable hiccup - the left foot initially kicks forward and then slides back before starting the walkback animation.
* runforward seems a bit feminine for the men, especially when viewed in 3rd person from behind and above the player - the knees need more separation, elbows could be a tad more away from the body, and the feet are flaring out (looks pigeon toed and not at all athletic ); looks good when viewed from the sides or front tho.
* foot sound playing in 1st person view is not sync'd properly for the new animations; sound plays correctly in 3rd person view.

Applied the walking and running animations to females - the legs clipping thru skirts occurs with the longer ones, but it's very minor; stock robes appear fine.


Will you be giving the runback animation a little of the Dirnae magic too?
Coming along nicely.

I just had a chance to check out the new anims too. They are running much smoother, transition-wise!
I do agree with tetchy...there is a feminine sway to the arms but that isn't the main problem. The arms are still too close to the body and should probably come back more. That along with having the back and chest out straighter and more open will look awesome. Also you might try letting the arms come back a little more while swinging each step.
So far so good though and as I said, those transitions are much smoother, unless it's just my imagination...


Keep it up, Dirnae! :thumbsup:

Oh, one last thing. You might also try changing the way the feet/calves sort of flop outward. Watching it as we speak, that is what gives it a feminine look, I think. Hope that makes some sense.

to Dirnae

1
link doesn't work to me . any chance of a pes download ?

2
if you like to make new animations for replace the original weapon attack animate, that will be a big face lift to many people.
npc's attack animation looks like they hold a mouse in their hand, they just click click click......that's why I allways use bow.

I finally got the chance to test the new one out, and it looks great! I can finally stand to play in 3rd person again!

I would like to put in my request for a new jumping animation please. If we had that (and a new weapon swing), we'd be set!

@tetchy: I need to convert the new WalkForward to a WalkBack animation, I could do RunBack while I'm at it.
Though I'd prefer to iron out all the problems with RunForward before I do that.

I'll work on adding those improvements then, though I've been looking at the animation kit and can't figure out how I'm supposed to add 1st. person animations, does anyone know how to?
Sounds are played with note keys, so it's not hard to get them right, the reason they're off in 1st. person is because 1st. person is still using vanilla animations.

@Artistika: I'll try some of your suggested improvements, sounds good. It's gonna start to look like an upgraded version of the original I think with these improvements, which should be very good.

@Stuporstar: I might do a jump animation soon, doesn't sound too hard compared to what I'm doing now (though I could be wrong). I have been working on some handtohand animations lately, it's just gonna be punches atm, however I could put in some optional kicking animations if anyones interested (though legs wont show up in 1st. person, and it might react badly while running/walking).

Thanks for testing tetchy, Artistika and Stuporstar.

@sphinx, I'm not uploading this anywhere like PES or TESNexus yet, it's a beta atm really, and as you can see I'm updating it quite often, it'll just cause needless complications to upload it at either of those sites.
I can upload it on Rapidshare or Mediafire if that'd be better for you.

Cool. There are certain similarities between the changes I recommended and the original MW anims but I think it's only because those postures are generally "realistic" to running. So, there will be similarities since MW did at least *try* to emulate a real person running , though not very well I'm afraid.

The walk is perfection...did I already say that? What inspired the perfectness of that animation? Did it take very long to get it to this point? I can't see a thing that I'd change about it.

The walk is about 2000% more natural compared to the standard animation. I miss the pause from the earlier version, although it was a bit too much.

There is a little foot sliding going on with the walking animation, it slips a bit forward after planting. Noticed it on tiled flooring, does anyone else see this?

Thanks Hrnchamd, I'll remove it in the next version.
I'll add a tiny pause back in while I'm editing it for the next version too.

@Artistika: I got through about 6 or 7 walk animations before I was happy with this one. It was inspired by several sources.
It took a while to make it though it used to take me much longer to make animations. Practice makes perfect (well moderately good) I guess.

I wouldn't call it perfect, I'm just an amateur when it comes to animation.

to Dirnae

by using web proxy, I finally downloaded the file. thanks.


feedback:

just see it ingame. nice. and I do not think the walk speed is too fast. I think no need to use the esp file, the speed is just ok.

the one-handed weapon animation by djok is it releaced and or were can i read about it?

Glad to hear you could download the file sphinx.

Same here, I don't even use the esp. Perhaps one would need it if their Speed attribute is very high. I wouldn't know since I'm running a fairly new game.

Thanks for the update, nice to see :thumbsup:

How about a jump animation too, as was suggested earlier. :nod: I think I hate that animation almost as much as the original walking animation.

Do you think Bethesda knew how ridiculous the walk was but did it on purpose? I've always wondered if it was some sick joke they were playing because it seems nearly impossible that none of the devs would have noticed how weird it was and not said anything, unless they wanted it that way. I can't imagine that they would have thought it was...ack, anyway.
Still using this and am getting used to the run more. After using it a lot, I notice there is also a little "hop" to it like he's taking a leisurely jog or something. Could be partly what looks "feminine" about it. Still as I said, I'm getting used to it and I'd take it over Vanilla any day.
You've been quiet for a few days (more than a week even?) and I'm nosy because I love this project. Working on anything exciting that we should (would like to) know about?

^^ These animations looks so nice ingame. Here is my setup, its simple but I think its a nice combination:
female
-walk = axel's sixy walk
-run = Dirnae's run

male
-Dirnae's walk and run

Hey, that's my set-up too. *chuckle*