Those dreamers are creeeeeeepy!

Have you thought about a regular leaning animation against a wall? It would look good with the bored villagers in towns I think.

I think it would be nice to have some sewing animation. Also it would be nice to have an animation of making some glass staff, e.g. for the St. Delin's Quarter, the center of glassblowers' workshops. Here is a link to inspire you: http://video.mail.ru/list/666angel/281/282.html

Also there is a famous sculptor who can restore one of the dadric statues - it would be nice to see him animated.

Brilliant!

If you have the time and/or inclination, you could always spice it up a little and throw in one or two other coughing sounds for variety.

Looks great, Anteres! :tops:

This stuff is all just so mouth watering, I feel like abstaining from morrowind completely until the RELS. Mister Antares are you implementing them as you go along, or compiling them all before you get to work? Surely you have already done some for the lovely videos

This is exactly my intention for one cell in a WIP mod.
Probably, a long loop solution is the best suitable in this case.
I have made digging animation. I it is not perfect but works and could be fine for background NPCs. I can upload the nifs in case anybody is interested to test/help. IMHO it is better to find a general working solution and that to apply it for other similar animations (videos, pictures are fine but in-game tests are final and more informative).

However, we are facing another problem: how to "give" tools to NPCs?
These tools could be:

1. Lights that can be carried (not working in day time for me),

2. Weapons (not working with idles, even with "equip" function call).

3. Clothes/armor (not very elegant solution that requires serious scripting for an "active" NPC like slaves that should be freed and might not work with two-hand tools).

4. Shield. Two variants: 1. change the pivot point of the tool mesh/nif in order to fit the shield bone that is attached to the left arm (not working for me so far, I have made only few attempts in NifScope); 2. Rename the "weapon" bone to "shield" and "shield" bone to "weapon" in xAnim.nif animation file (skeleton structure). "Shield" bone should be animated in the case of two-hand tools. This works, but NPC becomes left handed and does not correctly use real weapons. However, for unarmed NPC slaves this can be fine.

5. Body part (that will be really very strange new race).

OK, granny with a broom is left-handed, but smith is right-handed. What are your solutions? Broom is, perhaps, a shield, and what is smith's hammer?

I don't know how so I get Arcimaestro Anteres to make them for me, but what he said he does is make a special pair of gloves with the tool being attached to one of the hand bones.

I don't know much about animation buuut could you create an anim with a long bit at the end that is designed to allow a script to cut it short. You can measure times in scripts so if you run a script on an NPC after you start an anim the script can force an new anim to run. For example, you have a digging anim, right? So you make it 10 secs long and for the last 3 secs you have him stand in a pose that is the same as a specific animation, say Idle4. He stands in this pose for 3secs and once you run the new anim you run a targetted script that measures the time the anim has been running for. Once you get to 7-9secs you have the script force the NPC into Idle4 and then stop running the script. The engine should take over once Idle4 has finished. I made some assumptions here but do you think this is feasible?




"Coughing" .



Personally, as I love explosions, if you could do a neat anim of someone being thrown backwards with their arms and legs flailing around I would be eternally grateful. In fact, a couple of different ones would be nice . You could think of them as a break from the hard stuff where you have to be precise. With explosions you can just move limbs around willy-nilly and it'll always look good. I would script my bombs and things to run them on NPCs :toughninja: .


Edit: Can't spell "look", apparently .

Im not sure if this is amination but iio gave me an idea. Mabye improve the dwemer satchal explosions. Those were just pathetic

Yes, this works (timer), but I have no idea what would be results in the case of activating an NPC during a looped animation: he/she can jump without starting transition sequence. I did that once for a cinematic sleeping scene: IdleX (wondering); IdleX+1 (laying down on a specified rag, starts from the Idle pose, timer); IdleX+2 (animated sleeping pose, animation loop, timer); IdleX+3 (standing up, finishes with Idle pose, timer); IdleX (wondering). By the story line this NPC should not be disturbed.
When NPC is activated he displays an Idle sequence; combat starts with equip sequences (e.g. "SpellCast:Equip" or "WeaponOneHand: Equip") that always have idle pose in the first frame.
I think that in certain cases this approach is very feasible. I hope that scripting gurus can write a clever generic script-template for that.


You are actually asking for a Knockout or Death animations replacer.

Explosions are also animations but they are usually created with particles; PCs/NPCs are animated with skeleton/bones animations (another type of animations, there are several of them).

Those animations are fantastic!
Could they be added to the OpenMW project?

Can't you change the position of the shield bone in xAnim.nif?

And while I'm at it, can you skin a shield to a skeleton?
Sorry if I'm missing something here, I'm just wondering if anything along these lines could be done. :shrug:

That's an interesting idea: to skin a shield mesh ("Right Wrist") to the weapon bone without any skeleton modification!! I will check that.

It is possible to change the position of the shield bone in xAnim.nif. But in this case it would be necessary also to animate this modified skeleton and it is difficult to predict how game engine attaches shields (position, could be a lot of in game trial and error testing). xAnim.nif like Oblivion skeleton.nif contains only skeleton structure (and some other important nodes), but no body meshes or animation data. BTW, many other Gamebryo games use the same approach. Attached to an NPC xAnim.nif (new skeleton) has priority and can interfere with other (original) animation sequences (kf files) that are based on another (original) skeleton.

Hope it works fine then! ^_-

And thanks for the info, I really need to get round to learning some more about this kinda thing.

edit: btw, I'd like to see someone using the muck shovel, though this might class under farming animations. Maybe you could have Netch herders herding netch (though I have no idea how this would be done).
Egg Miners collecting eggs would also be good, as would more standard stuff like people leaning on tables, boxes and walls, though this might require some clever animation of the root node/bounding box.

Looks excellent! Some tips, though:

Video 3: the drummer looks good, but the sounds don't match the motions. Drummers hit the drums harder, too. Maybe that could be tweaked. (Also the sounds correspond to 2 drums, I think)

Video 5: Smiths put more effort in than that-- he might occasionally step away for more force. But his foot slides across the ground too, which is bad.

Video 6: Perfect! Trust me, they look totally absorbed in the book, don't make the motions any smoother or anything.

Video 7: Again, music doesn't match the motions. This one is harder to sync, I think.

Video 8: He needs to not tip the tankard until it gets to his mouth... unless he's drunk. The way eh holds it now he'd pour it onto his lap before it got to his face.

VIdeo 9: Awesome! Maybe if their hands waved a bit more not-in-sync, though...

Great work! Can't wait till this is done.

you should concider doing an animation for horse/dragon ridding that way we can replace the saddle that has the groin and lower leggs attatched to just the saddle. that way you can ride horses/dragons with what ever clothes and armor visable pluse you could animate the pc/npc to flow right and reduse clipping issues that still exists with the horse ranch mod. oh and im not shore of the scripting know how but you can add animation to the pc in game by having them scripted through adding clothing to the player, i beleve thats how the wolf transformation is done in bloodmoon, i read that in a thread some were on here. anyway awsome animation much needed cant wait for a download

What you should fix is the jumping animations.It looks too stiff.

what about this music for the bard?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYdCz8WGJHA&feature=related

If it is ok, I'll contact him to include his music in the mod

Hmm, this video turned up after that one, related:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIG_qNidydg&feature=related

Also on acoustic guitar. me thinks, much, much better =)

EDIT:
Or my favorite, more fit to the alien world of nirn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6kif1NK_Lk&feature=related

Lol, tis also beautiful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UPEI5yQR_s&NR=1

I think it's insane to try to match the animation with the music. People are getting way too picky and not being happy or satisfied with the amazing accomplishments being done.

The same animation will make it possible for modders to use in their mods with different music. The drum animation will make it to where you can only use one song for every drummer, if they are a nice generic pace like the originals then all will be fine. Remember Lady E's Minstrels? There was only one speed, and AA is offering to do two for fast and slow songs, that is plenty enough work.

Thanks you so much AA for this incredible work.

I like the music ^

I agree.

Hello, Arcimaestro Anteres. Your work is really impressive! I saw that it was a discussion of music and decided that perhaps i can help with that.
I took my guitar and recorded this little tune. I hope that my modest abilities would be one. You can use this tone to their bards, if you want.

Regards, Der Juvas.

P.S. And sorry for my English.

http://rapidshare.com/files/258375894/Old_Goblet.mp3.html

MD5: 254F11768E8EDDE041C02754A477D1CE

you're too humble, that tune is wonderful :goodjob:

this one sounds awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UPEI5yQR_s&NR=1

mabye you could have more than one bard playing seperate instruments, one on the guitar,one on the harp, and one on the Dulcimer. they could play it together. Although that might take some sound editing to get them all to the same speed.

I don't know if it has been suggested, but is it possible for you to add an animation to the guards who carry their spears, so that they can stand guard with them and hold them in one hand like a popper guard?

Thank you very much! I'll surely use it! :goodjob: The music is woderful and fits well the world. I'll make a bard named Der Juvas who plays this music!





it is more a pose than an animation, but I could give it a try later, when I am done with all the other projects