I thought Khonraad rig was working only on 2.79b, but you got it working on modern Blender versions?! Madlad. Or I am just being blind and that's a different rig alltogether.
Either way, thanks for guide, definitely some good info there. Especially annotations, there is very little info about these. One thing I can add, is that if you want to find a full list of all annotations you can do that from Creation Kit: 1) Press "Open" 2) Tick the Skyrim.esm and press Ok. 3) Wait for some time until loading and initializing ends. 4) Go to "Gameplay" tab -> Animations. New window will appear. 5) In the window, navigate to Actors/Character/Behaviors/0_Master.hkx 6) Click on "+" near any IDLE, amd then click on the subentity of IDLE. 7) On right side, the "AnimEvent" list will become active, and you are free to gaze and thousands of animation events that exist there. Don't ask me what or how they work, I have no idea for 99% of them. But a good reference list to perhaps find a few useable ones for your work.
I haven't edited staff animations yet, but I don't believe there is any annotation for that. You'd want the animation stfmagic_release.hkx. There are other annotations though, which KyrgyzGuitarist helpfully posted how to find. I'll sticky the post to make it easier to find.
Thanks for bringing it up as it was a really big and useful list for the future. Sadly you are right, I couldn't fine ones for staves but I worked around it by splicing my stfmagicright_release into stfmagicright_preready and stfmagicright_readyloop and it works seamlessly.
No problem. I've updated the file to say which version you should use, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I should probably put it in the description as well somewhere.
Man, what a brilliant idea this is. After this guide, I hope to be very close to being able to update some specific Size Matters animations with Precision annotations (but it'll probably be harder than I think like everything else). Thank you PolarRobotFrog!
You don't open the files at all. I don't know what annotations Precision comes with, if any, but adding them is explained in lesson 1 in the guide.
The short version is, take your .hkx file, drag it onto dump.bat, add your annotations to the bottom of anno.txt (making sure to enter the proper activation time), save it, then drag your .hkx file onto update.bat, and you're good to go. Hopefully that makes sense.
I have now dragged the animation files onto the dump.bat and.. the anno.txt gets edited, but is unchanged. The first four lines are the same no matter which .hkx file I drag onto it. The update.bat file certainly does something. It seems to add the Precision annotations and, yay, a collision grid now appears in game where it was not before. But the animation itself if completely different from before. I don't understand. What am I doing wrong?
First off, the only way to know exactly when to time it (without having made and exported the animation yourself) would be either eyeballing it or setting an actual timer on your phone or something and physically time how long the animation is.
Secondly, when you say "dragged the animation files onto the dump.bat" do you mean you're dragging more than one at a time? If so: don't. Dumping animations only works if there's only one .hkx file in the folder at once, and you can only dump them one at a time. Which might solve the issue of anno.txt not updating, if I read what you said properly.
Lastly, the animation itself should not be changing whatsoever after updating it. The only thing I can think of is you had multiple files in the annotations folder and replaced the one you were trying to update by accident, but I can't be sure.
I dragged one, but yes, I had others in the folder! Thanks. Will make sure to have only one animation in the folder.
It's a shame I can't open and inspect existing animations, but I can do this particular task without that option. Especially if the anno file will contain the correct duration.
Ok. No matter what I drop onto dump.bat, this is what is produced in the anno.txt file: # numOriginalFrames: 7 # duration: 0.233333 # numAnnotationTracks: 99 # numAnnotations: 0
I've tried more than 5 different vanilla animations from the archive folder and a few from size matters and one from CFPAO. That can't be right...
Yeah, that's definitely not supposed to happen. I double checked myself (installed the files myself and tried dumping) and it works perfectly fine for me. Did you delete anything from the folder?
I'll try to start over. I renamed the root folder (the one called Skyrim Animation something something) . Is that bad? Anyway, clean download, clean start.
A brand new download, just a single file from archive into annotations, and I still get the same anno.txt content. I don't know what else to say in order to troubleshoot or reproduce this error. The first time I try to use the dump.bat (after a new unzip) Microsoft Defender SmartScreen warns that the file is unrecognized, but I can click Run anyway, and something happens. But it's just the same content in anno.txt...
In that case, I'm at a total loss. I haven't the faintest idea why it's working on my end but not on yours. There might be something I failed to include in the download files, I guess, but I don't know what that would be, nor why it would still work fine for me without whatever it might be. That's really the only thing I can think of, but it doesn't seem very likely.
Not that I'm aware of. Not for modern versions of Blender, at least. The only .nif model importer addon for Blender I know of is for ancient versions, and at that point you'd probably need to find an older rig as well.
Unfortunately, I'm the only person I know of that's done first-person animation modding so, well, comprehensively. I know KyrgyzGuitarist has done some first-person animations before, but I don't think they've touched bows or crossbows.
If I am understanding this correctly, you should only be using the hand bone, not the forearm or bicep bones. The rig uses IK (inverse kinematics), so wherever you put the hand bone, the arm will deform automatically.
I guess, the apex of the hit of the swing(or stab) being at the center where the cursor is. Say an enemy is right in front of you, the chest area being the goal (for generalized animations).
Oh, I see. Unfortunately that's just trial and error. There's no way to tell exactly where the center of the screen is, as it's nigh impossible to get the camera in Blender into the exact same spot the camera in-game is. But if you've got it centered in Blender it's probably pretty close.
Well, I'll be damned, someone did it.. A viable in-death tutorial, tools / structure plus a candy (rig). I've spent alot of time digging the web, going from github to japanese sites for information. The most usefull i've found was "AnimationToolsN3" with the "SAE.blend" update somewhere in LL site. Edit : deleted link
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Or I am just being blind and that's a different rig alltogether.
Either way, thanks for guide, definitely some good info there. Especially annotations, there is very little info about these. One thing I can add, is that if you want to find a full list of all annotations you can do that from Creation Kit:
1) Press "Open"
2) Tick the Skyrim.esm and press Ok.
3) Wait for some time until loading and initializing ends.
4) Go to "Gameplay" tab -> Animations. New window will appear.
5) In the window, navigate to Actors/Character/Behaviors/0_Master.hkx
6) Click on "+" near any IDLE, amd then click on the subentity of IDLE.
7) On right side, the "AnimEvent" list will become active, and you are free to gaze and thousands of animation events that exist there. Don't ask me what or how they work, I have no idea for 99% of them. But a good reference list to perhaps find a few useable ones for your work.
That annotation list might come in handy down the line, so thank you for letting me know!
How do I open and edit an hkx file? Add the Precision annotations?
The short version is, take your .hkx file, drag it onto dump.bat, add your annotations to the bottom of anno.txt (making sure to enter the proper activation time), save it, then drag your .hkx file onto update.bat, and you're good to go. Hopefully that makes sense.
Thanks.
The update.bat file certainly does something. It seems to add the Precision annotations and, yay, a collision grid now appears in game where it was not before. But the animation itself if completely different from before. I don't understand. What am I doing wrong?
Secondly, when you say "dragged the animation files onto the dump.bat" do you mean you're dragging more than one at a time? If so: don't. Dumping animations only works if there's only one .hkx file in the folder at once, and you can only dump them one at a time. Which might solve the issue of anno.txt not updating, if I read what you said properly.
Lastly, the animation itself should not be changing whatsoever after updating it. The only thing I can think of is you had multiple files in the annotations folder and replaced the one you were trying to update by accident, but I can't be sure.
It's a shame I can't open and inspect existing animations, but I can do this particular task without that option. Especially if the anno file will contain the correct duration.
# numOriginalFrames: 7
# duration: 0.233333
# numAnnotationTracks: 99
# numAnnotations: 0
I've tried more than 5 different vanilla animations from the archive folder and a few from size matters and one from CFPAO.
That can't be right...
Anyway, clean download, clean start.
thanks for your quick reply!
Edit : deleted link