See.... THIS IS THE s*** that the Bethesda creation club SHOULD be working on. Not bulls*** armor mods we modders can easily make better then them. I kept telling them to make more animation mods... but no, they don't think. What I want most is Power Armor melee finishers.Yea yea, I know the sword can do one, but power armored players should be able to perform awesome combat melee finishers like unarmored players. Why can't I pick someone up with one hand and slam them into the concrete. Its the only thing that keeps me from using power armor... Power armor is just visually boring in combat.
Agree on every point, the only time I ever wear power armor is in areas with so much radiation it's either suit up or die. So basically the Glowing Sea, and that's about it lol. Even then I prefer using this to a suit of PA. Combat while in PA is effing boring.
I seem to have hit a roadblock on the importation process. When I open up the export file (provided with the download) and import my clip file it appears to load it but never superimposes the animation to the rig. I've been able to convert the Power Armor animations (like a weapon reload) perfectly fine to FBX and I see it play in the import file (provided with the download) when I'm saving the clip file so I know I am indeed saving animations. Not sure what I am doing wrong but I have the CAT_ root selected when I load up the clip. I do notice in the Export file there are no layers to choose except the "Available" one and that is the one I choose when loading my clip file.
I am using Max 2015 and have been converting/creating human race animations for my weapons for a long time so pretty familiar with the process. I am hoping it is just some small setting I am missing. I would like to try to make 3rd person PA animations for my weapons if I can figure out this small hitch.
Did you toggle the animation state? There's a button above the CAT Layer Manager. Red for off, Green for on. I believe it defaults to off/Red when there are no CAT layers present. You may have to manually toggle the state after loading the CAT clip, because max doesn't do it automatically. I'll update the steps on the page to reflect this behavior.
Thank you for fast reply. This was exactly the fix. I didn't even notice that button above the layers. I don't believe the human CAT rig I use had it set to off so never thought about it being a thing for this rig.
Good to know for the future for sure though and anyone else that may have seen a similar thing. The submachine gun power armor reload animation I converted now animates correctly for the rig. Looks like I will be able to create some custom 3rd person PA animations for my weapon after all. Thanks again :) I would endorse again but alas I already had awhile ago lol
Hi its me again, sorry to be such a bother (again lol). Do the Power Armor animations use a different file other than WPNAssemblyPose.hkx to dictate the finger poses? When my power armor animation does my custom reload animation the fingers (specifically left hand) move as expected. However, when the gun goes back to assembly pose the hand/wrist will rotate as expected to the position I place it but the fingers seems to stay in a default pose. My assembly pose 3ds max file I have the fingers in the shape of a fist. The rig bones are also in the fist pose so not sure why in-game its not being reflected. I know the animation file is working since its rotating the wrist from the file, the fingers don't seem to change though. I even tried adding in an additional animation file WPNAssemblyPose_left.hkx like the human 3rd person weapon animation files reference but no change.
The human 3rd person skeleton when I manipulate the fingers for the assembly pose it has always looked as expected, I am only guessing it is another file the power armor references for the fingers or something.
Definitely no bother. I stumbled across this as well. Sorry, I don't have a magical fix for you. The only way is to either get creative with the hand pose, or edit the WPNIdleReady idles which circumvent retargeting.
To my understanding, Beth decided to leave out finger retargeting for PA. Essentially, there exist no logic for fingers to be posed using WPNAssemblyPose in the PA behavior file, like the human race has. The behavior file doesn't even contain a state machine for WPNAssemblyPose. It doesn't mean finger posing is impossible - just that you can't do it on slave anims like WPNAssemblyPose and the WPNFire slaves - they have to be posed on the actual idle animations. You can see how every rifle in-game is held with the exact same finger pose.
I spent days trying to decipher behavior files in order to cobble together logic from the human behavior, but there's 160k lines of XML and I couldn't make heads or tails of which blocks to insert. I decided to give up and pose the hand as-is. You can imagine how awkward this gets with vertical foregrips and magwell grips.
Sorry, I really should've added it to the known issues section. Probably would've saved you a few frustrating hours.
No worries at all. It is nice for once to be able to talk to someone that actually knows the animation jargon. When I first created human animations for my first weapon I pretty much was alone figuring out what each animation file was doing in-game spending months fooling around with it.
I'll definitely look into those idle animation files and see if I can fake it with the foregrip pose I am trying to achieve. Since I am using custom subgraph directories setup by keywords I don't have to worry about any of the animations overriding any other vanilla weapons or when my gun does not have the foregrip on it.
While it is disappointing Beth didn't use the same structure for PA like they did with human race to make animations easier at least I now know it was not something I was doing wrong to get the pose to look right. Being able to have a complete set of animations for my weapon including 3rd person PA is good enough for me.
If you are wanting to create animation files you'll need the tools and know how to do it. I believe the mod description page for this mod lists a lot of the links to that documentation.
That's correct. So far it's only been tested with idles, motion and weapons, but it should work for most types. I haven't tried the furniture versions yet, though.
Word. Thank you. Gonna put this to use. I've started diving into what it will take to get a super mutant one too, but thanks for the point in the right direction...
Super happy 3rd person power armor animations for weapons is now possible. At the same time dreading now having to make more 3rd person animations for my weapon mods lol.
Thanks =) I have so many other weapon mods I want to make but they take such a long time to develop. Been working on my next gun since last October lol.
Sweet, now it could be possible for alot of things. Like having an NPC kneeling with a hand on one of their knees... Or even better... Animators could possible add physics to a slightly modified Power Armor Skeleton :3 Which by that I mean Cloth Physics :D I crave the addition of a cape on my suits :P
Right? I've been dying to have a draped cloak over my power armor, kind of like Master Chief in the Halo 5 trailer? The only thing I want as much as that is to be able to keep my power armor rusty when I upgrade it.
31 comments
- CAT_RArm_Hand should now be constrained properly. Sorry for the inconvenience.
- Updated filter configurations in ict_presets.hko
I am using Max 2015 and have been converting/creating human race animations for my weapons for a long time so pretty familiar with the process. I am hoping it is just some small setting I am missing. I would like to try to make 3rd person PA animations for my weapons if I can figure out this small hitch.
Did you toggle the animation state? There's a button above the CAT Layer Manager. Red for off, Green for on. I believe it defaults to off/Red when there are no CAT layers present. You may have to manually toggle the state after loading the CAT clip, because max doesn't do it automatically.
I'll update the steps on the page to reflect this behavior.
Good to know for the future for sure though and anyone else that may have seen a similar thing. The submachine gun power armor reload animation I converted now animates correctly for the rig. Looks like I will be able to create some custom 3rd person PA animations for my weapon after all. Thanks again :) I would endorse again but alas I already had awhile ago lol
The human 3rd person skeleton when I manipulate the fingers for the assembly pose it has always looked as expected, I am only guessing it is another file the power armor references for the fingers or something.
To my understanding, Beth decided to leave out finger retargeting for PA. Essentially, there exist no logic for fingers to be posed using WPNAssemblyPose in the PA behavior file, like the human race has. The behavior file doesn't even contain a state machine for WPNAssemblyPose. It doesn't mean finger posing is impossible - just that you can't do it on slave anims like WPNAssemblyPose and the WPNFire slaves - they have to be posed on the actual idle animations. You can see how every rifle in-game is held with the exact same finger pose.
I spent days trying to decipher behavior files in order to cobble together logic from the human behavior, but there's 160k lines of XML and I couldn't make heads or tails of which blocks to insert. I decided to give up and pose the hand as-is. You can imagine how awkward this gets with vertical foregrips and magwell grips.
Sorry, I really should've added it to the known issues section. Probably would've saved you a few frustrating hours.
I'll definitely look into those idle animation files and see if I can fake it with the foregrip pose I am trying to achieve. Since I am using custom subgraph directories setup by keywords I don't have to worry about any of the animations overriding any other vanilla weapons or when my gun does not have the foregrip on it.
While it is disappointing Beth didn't use the same structure for PA like they did with human race to make animations easier at least I now know it was not something I was doing wrong to get the pose to look right. Being able to have a complete set of animations for my weapon including 3rd person PA is good enough for me.
Thank you. Gonna put this to use.
I've started diving into what it will take to get a super mutant one too, but thanks for the point in the right direction...
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20797/