Would like to put in a request for capes, cloaks and shrouds (cape-like things; often ripped and torn). A plus would be physics enabled ones. I know these were custom modded into Oblivion using the robe models but I am suggesting brand new models with custom animations/physics that would use either the neck or head slot. If someone wants to model these and rig them I will add them in with the CK and make armored and non-armored versions and custom textures.

There are a few models in the game already that feature cloaks and capes.

I don't think they use any sort of physics simulation, which is really ridiculous. I mean, Dragon Age II had physics simulation on its clothes, and I expect more graphical fidelity from a Bethesda game.

The Xbox 360 is barely able to run the game as-is, it would crush it if they stacked cloth mechanics on top of everything else (which apparently use quite a bit of memory). But that's an argument for an earlier day and nothing worth worrying about now.

It will probably be implemented in some form on the PC, but exactly how remains uncertain. Without the Construction Kit, we can't fully understand the behaviors of things like clothing and animations. Because Havok is integrated with the animation system, perhaps it could be possible to get some actual physics in there. At the very least, there seems to be a bit more body conforming going on with things like clothing and hair, so it would seem possible to add capes that don't stick out in different directions every time a character turns to look at something.

I'm almost certain it will be possible. Someone made "physiqued" capes for Morrowind and I believe it may have been done in Oblivion if memory serves me correct. Like you said though, the CK isn't out yet so we can't fully determine what's possible yet.

Wouldn't that be just a matter of assign the right bones to the cape? It surely ain't like having a fully physiqued, floating cape, but I'm sure it will be possible as soon as we can get new clothing/armory into the game.

Damn, i thought it was about time to have full animated hair/clothing support. That most likely won't be coming soon, I guess. Let's hope TES VI will change things.

Oh God... Don't talk about TESVI yet. I just bought Skyrim on the 11th... Give us a couple years at least...

There are several cape models already, they're just attached to armors, so the animations and such already exist.

Putting capes and such in a different clothing slot would be nice, though.

So would creating/having more equipment slots. No idea how doable that is though.


By then we'll probably only have 4 or 5 equipment slots - suit of armor/clothes, weapon, shield/offhand, hat, and maybe a piece of jewelry.

People are supposed to wear cloaks so they can't be noticed, but in reality it would be a huge attention grabber. Real stealthy people hide in plain sight, figuratively speaking.

Fallout had a ton of body slots, and I doubt Skyrim will fall back to the pathetic two we had in Oblivion (amulet and tail). If there are already cloaks in the game, ripping them off shouldn't be that much of a problem!

Who cares about the attention? We just want to be DA BATMAN!

I think TES VI will be developed for a new generation of consoles and therefore things like that will be standard. Also, things like walled cities and celled buildings will be a thing of the past. Current top-notch PCs could easily accommodate this now, but 90% of Bethesda's consumers would be eliminated along with 90% of Beth's profits.

I know even with games running on current gen consoles these features are common, but few have the enormous world or complete freedom like a TES game.

Next generation I even hope to see our old Morrowind levitate again.

As stated before HAVOK is now integrated into the aniamtion system so hopefully this will be possible:
http://www.havok.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Havok_Cloth_2011.pdf

At the bottom it shows an example of a cape which should have some nice physic effects to it I guess

Clothing physics couldn't be in vanilla because 360 and PS3 wouldn't be able to handle it. As is they can barely run towns because of the burden the AI puts on the CPU.

the 360 and so on could handle it with ease, heck i know ps1 games that had physiqued clothing lol, modders were asking for physique at least since oblivion
but well, since theyre so stubborn to stick with gamebryos stone age stuff... we wont have it once again
the problems start with the non existant wind and other physical properties that would define the behavior, we can be happy they added some (unrealistic) kind of gravity

tho since they use a new havoc setup this time maybe such a feature can be activated

@past beth games
none of them had physiqued anything... not even in mods, those that claim it lie, it has always been simply animated or well rigged stiff pieces

Yea these will be NP, we had them back in oblivion and had less to work with , we mainly needed a cloth item in game with movement on it and i think there was only one in game and it was a cloth banner in necro dungeons, but we did it and im sure it will be much easier here in skyrim . I could even see them doing some flowing scarves and stuff, we just need the CK .

Dont we have physics banners already? I remember going into that nightingale cave and it had a waving banner right at bthe start it waved way more than the banners you see near towns
so guess we just have to use those as an example and attach it to a player, I hope they hurry with that CK...

I throw my vote in for capes and shrouds/mantles as well. Quite frankly I was surprised that they didn't include capes and cloaks in this game, seeing as how some of the most popular mods from the previous two games were cloaks and capes. We had cloaks in Daggerfall, and they were awesome! You could put the hoods up or down, or throw the edges over your shoulders or draw them in close. And there were different qualities of cloaks. What happened with that?

guys, what you are talking about are NOT physiqued capes... they merely loop one and the same animation over and over again, no matter in which direction you move, no matter from where the wind blows and so on...
that applies to those banners waving in the "wind" too, its just an animation not a wind force making a piece of cloth flow with it...

Yeah, but it seems that there's no suport to animated clothing either.

True, and I would be satisfied by something like this. What would be better is 2-8 animation loops that could be switched based on orientation to the wind - but is there an existing mechanic for comparing orientation to the wind? I know in the water there is a force applied to your character that could be used, does the same happen in wind, I haven't noticed? Also we would probably need some sort of easing or separate animation loop between the transitions, and possibly billowing and creating greater drag in the water, idk.

Mostly I would like more slots altogether. I miss having separate cuirass, pants, and pauldrons - Its visually more united, but is less gameplay in terms of collecting and crafting sets of armor. And the notion that I can only wear one ring at a time is annoying to say the least.

That's an animation. It looks like Havok, but you can walk right through it and it never stops. It was probably generated through physics, but in its final exported form, it's an animation just like any other.


It's a possibility, but like I said above we have no idea how it actually works. It would have been able to work in Oblivion if clothing could have havok, then it'd just be a means of creating a havok'd cape and sticking it on there. The problem was that the player skeleton disabled all havok whenever something was equipped.

Skyrim, we know, uses Havok behavior, but that doesn't necessarily mean that elements of the player's skeleton, at least while animating, conform to the havok system. What I have seen though is that characters are able to pick up and drop havoked objects. I don't know if it might just be a really well-designed deletion of the object, animation of something that looks like the object, and re-insertion of an object, but I'd like to believe that the animation system this time around has its own physics capabilities. If it does, then actual, physics-based capes are more probable than not.


There were never physics in a modern sense back in the days of the PS1. Havok the company was only created in 1998, a full three years after the PS1 was released in '95. And it took until 2003 for it to be included in a game, so you're talking PS2 era.

Think of current consoles like the old enchantment system. You can only have a Common Soul Gem for current consoles. You can add several enchantments to it like Havok, Dynamic Lighting, Shadows, etc, and they all take away from the total number of charges. You can make one effect really good, but that would use a lot of charges and leave very little for everything else. Skyrim has maximized its charges on the 360 already through whatever balance that it currently has, and cloth physics couldn't be added to the enchantment without making something else less powerful.

PC games, on the other hand, are more like Grand Soul Gems currently filled with a Common Soul

I actually lol'd at this! Let's all hope that we have full access to the Havok engine capabilities within the construction kit, eh? I am super stoked about trying to enable cloth physics for as much as possible in the game, in addition to a million other mods.

Such a waste of grand soul gem. /sigh

In the .nif files, Skyrim introduced the LagBoneController, you can see it in action in the fire trail behind a flame atronach. If we can somehow add working constraints to a live skeleton, it would work for capes. Without any constraints, it's likely to clip through the body when the character moves backward/sideways. We'll have to see.

@proditius
no im actually talking about ps1, was some mecha anime fighting rpg game, forgot the name but the characters had flowing capes that moved with your movement, sure they clipped with your body like throttle assumes it might happen if those trails work but they were not predefined animations

@havoc
well 1998 is still ps1 time dude , the ps2 came about round 2000
anyway i didnt say anything bout havoc, they aint the only ones creating physique for your pc, heck even blender has a buildt in system that i assume aint from havoc (not using blender anymore)

@kitty
interesting...
if that bone has a predefined movement aka "laggging behind the body following its path" it might be exactly what we need lol, just animate a piece of clotha and rig it to that bone... ttho the waving of the cape might not be too realistic depending on movement speed but at least better than nothing... lol hurry up fixing nifskope so we can check that out