Animations - with FNIS or without

[fore]

This thread is an invitation to all to discuss the use of animations in Skyrim, and  in particular for Vilja, my favorite quest driven mod. Please feel free to discuss anything you want in this area. I'm a very bad and unpracticed animator, so don't expect me to tell you how you can actually make animation files. But I can tell you quite a bit how animation files are integrated and used in Skyrim. And that's probably harder then making the files themselves.

Many of you will know me as author of Fores New Idles in Skyrim - FNIS. Isn't a shame that the best moddable game Skyrim doesn't allow us to add custom animations by default, and calls for a hacker tool like FNIS? Which of course makes using animations so much harder. So I'm here to reduce the uncertainty about using FNIS.

One thing I would like to know from you: what kind of animations do you want to see for Vilja? From the feedback I got so far I sense that there are no animators around here. And that modders and users alike miss unique animations. On the other hand I have been in touch with a few animators during the course of my development. And from those guys I often got the impression that they just didn't know what else they could animate. Most of them can't script, so the only thing what is left for them are replacers, idles and poses. Even if one of them would like to make a paired kissing animation, s/he would not be able to integrate this into the game plot.

Why not try to get animation wishes for Vilja together with animators who could design them (if Emma agrees)? 


And I have a request. I would like to tackle the die-hug bug. I have an idea what could be causing that (in the behavior files). But I need a (non-Vilja) scenario which allows me to reproduce this bug. I would really appreciate if anyone could provide a reliable test scenario. 


For everyone interested what FNIS can do for you I recommend the FNIS for Modders Documentation

[Dova]

If I recall correctly, T3nd0 also came out with a hug mod, in which the player can hug most of everybody. And users of this mod also experienced the death by hug as a killmove. Ah, here is the link.

Let me see if I think of another scenario in addition to this.

[Wolf]

Fore, just go on and brawl with someone, Uthgerd the Unbroken in the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, or Hofgrir Horsecrusher at the Riften Stables...

...and lose the brawl.

Now the player "owes" the game a death.

Then use the paired vanilla hug animation.

Amgepo made for Vilja a built-in hug-kill-bug fix. The fix does about the same what you do with the console commands. Set the player essential, kill him, remove the essential state.

[jet4571]

Hola Fore, Nice to see you here. The only major request I would have for Vilja is unique music instruments, mugs, cups, etc etc. The vanilla animation for playing an instrument is directly tied to the generic instrument Bethesda made with bad UVW mapping and all. The same with the drink animation has the crappy pewter mug. I redid the textures for the instruments a while ago but sadly they couldn't be used because Bethesda tied the instrument to the animation and not allow multiple versions.

Personal note...
I am a low poly 3D modeler and not an animator so I can create new items for use but when the animations are locked all that's useless. The Vilja team has the same issues. If it is possible to unlock the locked animations like weapons are so all that's needed is the new item to have a similar shape and scale where the hands contact It would open up worlds.

*Another personal note(Rant).
I did like the system Oblivion/FO3/FNV used for animations, especially FNV where new animations didn't prevent other mods from adding new to stop working(not sure about Oblivion but FO3 was screwed, blued, and tattooed with childish penis drawings). Skyrim got the race menu correct after years of it being fubar but went the complete opposite from FNV's animation system. Sometimes I wonder if everyone at Bethesda is a hack especially after seeing many of the models they made, I may be an amateur 3d artist but holy mother of monkey spunk I can do better than some of the stuff the so called pro's at Bethesda did for Skyrim. And my models suck lol.

[Emma]

Hi Fore . What a lovely idea! I feel like a kid making a wishing list for Santa. And, as you know, wishing lists to Santa are allowed to be totally unreasonable, so I'll just write down what comes into my head. It may be that I write something that already exists in the vanilla game; it's my working hours right now, so no time to be in the ck.

I make a list and then edit the post as I come up with more...

- kissing animation (obviously)
- animation to sit on player's lap
- hide the face in her hands (embarrassed or crying)
- playing custom instruments (Jet has explained this above)
- alternate dances (obviously)
- slower hug animation - the existing one is so short that it more reminds of a teenager who feels obliged to hug his parents.
- wave to the player to come to her
- giggling with hand over mouth
- making a piruette
- touching her ear/hair/cheek the way girls do
- stretching out the hand to touch the player's cheek


EDIT 1 - I simply add new toughts in this post in order to keep it neat and tidy.

- shaking her head in disaggrement (no-no)

[jhampa]

Great to see you here Fore. Impressive to have two of the legends of modding chatting. It would be great to see more animations for Vilja and Emma's list is perfect for how young woman acts. Hope you can do at least half of her Santa wish list. I would add Vilja angry, like really angry. Especially when the player does something stupid. The action would be her expressing her anger, arms up in the air and then looking away with arms crossed, totally pissed with her partner. That is part of reality for a real woman, eh!

[Seyheb]

I very much like Emma's list.

Incidentally, not only is the hug animation very short, but the characters are virtually flung together beforehand. It would be nice to see a more natural coming together.

[zedtsayid]

I like Emma's list but I would like to see them added for the player as well. I have noticed that there seems to be flashes of player movement in "Skyrim - enhanced camera" www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57859/? but it is glitchy, like you make a move in 1st person but it's not complete. Seeing your moves in 3rd person would seem easier to animate ( I know nuthin so am guessing) but only interacting with NPC's by clicking them with never any other action is sooooo unrealistic. It is very impersonal.

[Falion]

Sept 11, 2014 13:27:04 GMT Seyheb said:

I very much like Emma's list.

Incidentally, not only is the hug animation very short, but the characters are virtually flung together beforehand. It would be nice to see a more natural coming together.


Yes!  A 1000 times yes! Emma's wish list is perfectly awesome, I've LONG wished to see such things from Vilja! 

EDIT: Perhaps if possible, a custom POUT ( or glare depending on the situation ) for those times when the PC doesn't exactly do what Vilja wishes or needs.

[rhyls]

Emma. Hello, I just want to say what brilliant ides those are. If Fores can do those, and probably others which will come up, then I will be playing Skyrim when I'm ninety.
I intend to see if anything occurs to me.
I have started a new game just and feel guilty because I haven't been to contact Vilja,although I have kept the saves to do so via Beata at some point.

I even have her on my mobile and tell peoplle she's my girl friend, (in armour and killing a bandit) I did try to suggest a new quest for her some time ago, don't know if you saw it.
I would like to see her tell the player something is stupid or ridiculous after something he has done or said. Or even refusing to go somewhere at that time or do something

rhyls

[fore]

Sept 11, 2014 7:24:14 GMT Wolf said:

Fore, just go on and brawl with someone, Uthgerd the Unbroken in the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, or Hofgrir Horsecrusher at the Riften Stables...

...and lose the brawl.

Now the player "owes" the game a death.

Then use the paired vanilla hug animation.

Amgepo made for Vilja a built-in hug-kill-bug fix. The fix does about the same what you do with the console commands. Set the player essential, kill him, remove the essential state.

Thanks, I'll try this. Fortunately my test environment is in Whiterun. 

[questinghood]

OMG  

[fore]

Sept 11, 2014 9:10:07 GMT jet4571 said:

Hola Fore, Nice to see you here. The only major request I would have for Vilja is unique music instruments, mugs, cups, etc etc. The vanilla animation for playing an instrument is directly tied to the generic instrument Bethesda made with bad UVW mapping and all. The same with the drink animation has the crappy pewter mug. I redid the textures for the instruments a while ago but sadly they couldn't be used because Bethesda tied the instrument to the animation and not allow multiple versions.

Personal note...
I am a low poly 3D modeler and not an animator so I can create new items for use but when the animations are locked all that's useless. The Vilja team has the same issues. If it is possible to unlock the locked animations like weapons are so all that's needed is the new item to have a similar shape and scale where the hands contact It would open up worlds.

*Another personal note(Rant).
I did like the system Oblivion/FO3/FNV used for animations, especially FNV where new animations didn't prevent other mods from adding new to stop working(not sure about Oblivion but FO3 was screwed, blued, and tattooed with childish penis drawings). Skyrim got the race menu correct after years of it being fubar but went the complete opposite from FNV's animation system. Sometimes I wonder if everyone at Bethesda is a hack especially after seeing many of the models they made, I may be an amateur 3d artist but holy mother of monkey spunk I can do better than some of the stuff the so called pro's at Bethesda did for Skyrim. And my models suck lol.

Animation and AnimObjects are connected in the behavior files. But with FNIS you are able to connect ANY animation (vanilla or custom) with any number of AnimObjects. And then you can play those animations with SendAnimationEvent(), PlayIdle(), or as idle defined in the IdleMarker definition.

The Skyrim animation system is totally different from what Bethesda did in any one of their old games. Since they were so much criticized so much for Oblivion's lame and monotonous animations, they threw away their old engine intrinsic animation system and replaced it by a state-of-the-art external tool, Havok Behavior. Unfortunately this tool is commercial, and it is totally unsuitable for modding. That's why they didn't give us their Behavior project files which we would need to make comparably easy changes to the animation system. 

[fore]

Sept 11, 2014 9:54:55 GMT Emma said:

Hi Fore . What a lovely idea! I feel like a kid making a wishing list for Santa. And, as you know, wishing lists to Santa are allowed to be totally unreasonable, so I'll just write down what comes into my head. It may be that I write something that already exists in the vanilla game; it's my working hours right now, so no time to be in the ck.

I make a list and then edit the post as I come up with more...

- kissing animation (obviously)
- animation to sit on player's lap
- hide the face in her hands (embarrassed or crying)
- playing custom instruments (Jet has explained this above)
- alternate dances (obviously)
- slower hug animation - the existing one is so short that it more reminds of a teenager who feels obliged to hug his parents.
- wave to the player to come to her
- giggling with hand over mouth
- making a piruette
- touching her ear/hair/cheek the way girls do
- stretching out the hand to touch the player's cheek

Thanks, Emma. That's a good start. Now animators what is desired. Can I ask a few animators I know if they would like to join? Or do you want to contact the first (most promising) lead yourself before?

Maybe one remark at this point. Paired animations may seem to be the solution for positioning and other animation issues. But they are not the cure for everything. In particular character scaling. No animations, not even paired ones change when characters have different sizes. That's why the vanilla hug looks so awkward. When partner sizes are different, but even when they are similar. Because the Skyrim animators have built in some buffer so there wouldn't be too much clipping between custom races. But the only chance is to make a set of adjusted kiss animations, and execute the one which is most suited for the current pair.

Only for a "touch players cheek" animation I see a remote chance to make this perfect. There is a behavior technique called IK (inverse kinematics) which lets some bones move relative to the environment and modifies the animations accordingly. HBT supports foot IK (so characters move their feet according to the floor shape), and hand IK. Skyrim uses foot IK, but not hand IK. So I'm lost on how to make it work. I talked with an ingenious guy, zartar, about this. Maybe I can motivate him to look further into this. 

[Wolf]

Sept 11, 2014 9:54:55 GMT Emma said:

Hi Fore . What a lovely idea! I feel like a kid making a wishing list for Santa. And, as you know, wishing lists to Santa are allowed to be totally unreasonable, so I'll just write down what comes into my head. It may be that I write something that already exists in the vanilla game; it's my working hours right now, so no time to be in the ck.

I make a list and then edit the post as I come up with more...

- kissing animation (obviously)
- animation to sit on player's lap
- hide the face in her hands (embarrassed or crying)
- playing custom instruments (Jet has explained this above)
- alternate dances (obviously)
- slower hug animation - the existing one is so short that it more reminds of a teenager who feels obliged to hug his parents.
- wave to the player to come to her
- giggling with hand over mouth
- making a piruette
- touching her ear/hair/cheek the way girls do
- stretching out the hand to touch the player's cheek

- the kissing and hugging animations are really demanding and we would need someone skilled to do this. Paired animations are always tricky due to the different scales of the actors. It's incredibly hard to find the lips of the one vis a vis. The kissing animation mod that was withdrawn from Nexus(although or because it was no merged paired animation) needed a manual adjustment before it worked on one specific couple.

Stretching out the hand or even walking hand in hand is also very challenging.

- I think we can get Vilja to sit on the player's lap already now. Of course there will be a lot of clipping due to the different chairs, but it could work. Just move an invisible chair on the player's lap when he is sitting, turn it 90° and most probable Vilja will automatically sit on the player's lap.

- for playing a custom instrument there is already a mod with an realistic lute as animobject.
www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34110/?
As I said already there are also eating animations with sweetrolls etc.

- waving at the player to come, that we have already in the game and I used it for Vilja's dancing on the table. "Come join me. It's fun" she says and is waving at you.


- making a pirhouette. Of course we can make her rotate when she is dancing. But this wouldn't like like a pas de deux.