I've been digging into Blender, getting ready for some mage mods, and possibly a creature too (if skyrim yet proves to have more worth exploring). Does anyone have an idea until we might see development start, or for that mater, how much may be needed? Obviously, with NifSkope still being updated, people are still getting their head around the new format. I get that. I do wonder myself how much new stuff they've thrown in their. I can see they've still got meatcaps and stuff to worry about.

So, what do we know, what do we don't? Anyone coming back to work on these? Are the changes that big that it might be more than a while till things pick up. Not trying to demand anything of anybody, a lot of people haven't even beaten the main quest yet and are still having fun with the vanilla game. I'm the same. It would be nice to know what is going down, or what may.

Would be nice if we were able to add animations this time. That was a general issue for most modders in Oblivion.

I thought that had been resolved before Fallout 3 came out?

Haven't been too much into the Fallout modding so you might be right about that, i sure hope so

Animations have been possible quite shortly after Oblivion came out already. Akatosh mount is from May 2007 and it was not the first mod using new animations. So maybe half a year after release it was possible.

Actually it took me with considerable help from Tazpn 9 Months for us to decode and myself to Hex Edit working animations into Oblivion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4j_YPbDIeg I had just gotten activator animations working about a month earlier but none of the exporters had any working exports for well until after Akatosh Mount got released which was well after a full year after Oblivions release.

New animations without an official Exporter are not going to happen quickly.

I was pretty sure you released the 'flying eye' type creature a good bit earlier, but seems I was wrong. Couldn't find it on Nexus anymore so I had to guess.

Saddly yes it took what seemed like forever :/.

I am kinda hoping on the outside chance that these new animation files are just renamed .kf files with a few pointers/whatever is needed to work within Behavior because that way it will take less time to get everything up and working and more importantly get the exporters and tools updated to read/import/export them correctly, but I will not be holding my breath.

I have only briefly looked over them myself I am waiting for the CK to be released before I do any real modding and by extension decoding.

Speaking of which what happened to your creature mods? I can't find them anywhere, not even on your website (and the PES ones were taken down?).

Animation support for Blender into Oblivion came out about 18 - 24 months ago.....this time last year I was making complete custom creatures via blender for Oblivion.

Trouble is, this time the animations are a completely new format, so we have to start from scratch again.

Slight Update on the .hkx animation files.

The good news is Havok behavior gives out their SDK free and the latest is able to load up the Skeletons and Animations and play/blend them all dynamically from the stand alone tool so there is hope that the Respective Exporters will be able to export Character Animations and work ingame.

Bad News is I will need some time before I can test anything as I no longer have a version of Max that the Plugin supports but there has been some talk over at NifTools so someone else may be looking into this working a working exporter/Max combination.


I'm Dling the SDK still so I do not know just how detailed it is in this regard but it should make things much easier for Amorilia this time around, and for anyone who takes over the Max Exporter if anyone steps up.

Cool stuff Saiden, I know Ghogiel was barking up that tree as well.
I downloaded the SDK last night, but I haven't played with it yet.

If you need the max exporters I can probably assist on 2 fronts but need the current niftools team to complete the nif.xml file decryption so niflib can be updated. The existing max niftools can be updated then once niflib can be compiled with the new object model. The second front is not for a public forum so I'll leave it at that. No promises unfortunately. Dont forget to get the 2010.2 update for Havok as that I believe is the version they are using in the game. Newer versions might work but I would try to use the version used in the game if possible first.

This thread is brimming with win.

It surely warms my heart knowing that the modding community is still in good hands. Good luck, guys, and keep up with the awesomeness!

I'm really glad to hear that....maybe this time we will have reasonable tools for creating animations for Skyrim within a few month rather than years.


That was always going to be the biggest problem, having to wait for the exporters to be created. I have also heard that they are moving the exporters up to python 3.2 (i cant remember the exsact version they were gonig to), so i think they might be doing a bit of an overhaul in general while making the skyrim version.

It's great what you guys do for us artists. I have two creatures ready to go for skyrim, just begging for custom animations.

When you talk about custom animations, does this include custom rigs or just extra animations for existing ones?

I hope there will be an exporter for blender, that's my weapon of choice to animate stuff...

I do hope that the Havok Animation retargeting thing is as cracked up as it looks from the preview videos. Have some interesting ideas w/ that and will save considerable development time.