Hey guys,

I'm making a scene, and I need two animations for it, and I was wondering if anyone knew of any that were in the game that I could use. (Since Beth seems to have taken away the Idle Animation preview area) The first is a hugging animation. It's a very dramatic scene, and if I could have my two characters hug that would really improve it, though I don't expect this. The one that I really need, is kneeling. An advlt nord is talking to his son (Who is a Child), and it wont be nearly as good looking if he is just standing there staring down at the kid while they talk. Is there any kind of idle/animation I could use where he kneels down as to 'get on the kids level' so they are roughly even when they speak?

Thanks for any pointers or input,

Alexander J. Velicky

Make sure you post KNEELING if you find it ... I have looked and I can't.

Kneeling and begging would be even better ... and kneeling and praying would also be useful

Check the Khajiits ... The caravan lot - or at least a few of them - seem to have a "squat" animation ... it sometimes runs when they arrive at camp, but the PC is there and so no camp is actually setup ... Stand just outside solitude gates and wait for them to arrive (just in case you don't know the caravans as well as I do ... having wandered about with them for what seems like months!)

I was looking at the existing animations for some kind of crouch animation myself. Unlike Oblivion if you force NPC to "sneak" they put away their weapons. This is very annoying when I am trying to make a combat dodge mechanic for the NPC. So I went looking for some other animation other than sneak. I did not find any, but I did see a "Kneel on one knee" animation.

You have to have a TAIL for those animations. I tried "TailCrouch" and it would not run on a PC that did not have a tail.

Hmmm, sneaking may work for me. It would look like he is lowering himself to talk to the child...

For the others, could I fake him having a tail or somehow trick the game into playing them anyway?

as a last resort, you could always use a chair, or a cleverly placed rock with an invisible chair marker on it (assuming this is for an NPC)

Eh, it's in the guys living room, so I don't think a rock would really work. Or a chair. Though, I'll certainly keep that in mind as it may be better than him just standing...

I could not find a way to use the tailcrouch animation, but calling the sneak animation would probably work very well for your situation actually, the issue for me is that it is not a combat animation, I think that may be why it forces the weapon out of the NPC hand. I really do not know hwy but I do know it is ridiculously annoying.

But...mmm... I wonder if I force the NPC out of combat, then run the sneak animation then put them BACK into combat.... mmmmm .... mmmmm...

have you also tried looking at "search chest" and "examine/search dead body"?

i could have sworn one of those is at least semi-kneeling/crouching, although the action may be a bit too busy for a conversation (i wonder if it's possible to play the idle at a fraction of the normal speed)


you can test them out by either placing them as idle markers and spawn an npc to sandbox them, or you can create an animation dummy out of a mannequin (modify the mannequin script to not disable ai, and select different idle properties for it to play in the PlayCurrentPose function. i don't know how else you can preview animations easily

I knew someone would end up posting ... "only Khajiit crouch", I'm losing count of times the race I am using does not have an animation of another race that I am not!

There are a few crouch related animations that are generic - search chest/body, like Amethyst says - pick flowers is another, I think ... but as far as I could find, they all have some weird hand movements etc

The khajiit tail crouch is just a crouch ... but if other races don't have it, then you are stuffed for using that.

I'll try to remember to look for something more appropriate than search-chest, pick-flowers etc when I'm working on another scene


(Please post if you find something, Alex ... I want kneeling for a non-Khajiit character, so tail-crouch won't do for me either)


(Preview Animations - I not found an easy way, either)

on a sidenote, PrayCrouchedSandboxMarker (furniture item) looks like it could work for begging (NPC is on both knees, head tilted up, arms out, palms up)

i have a quick-test "purgatory cell" that i use to test this kind of thing.

it has a simple finalized navmesh, and i just drop whatever idles/furniture i want to test, then in-game coc into the cell and spawn as many "hunter" npc's i need (if you match the same number as idles available, they will quickly fill them all up and play their animations)

SearchBodyMarker (idle marker) could work for what you need, if you can keep eye contact locked with head tracking. the only thing that is a little strange is the head bobs from side to side a bit (as if he's trying to look left to right, but is eye-locked during head tracking)

May I suggest the "HideIdle"? Or "GreybeardMeditateIdleB"?

When Kodlak dies aren't the other companions just kneeling there looking at him. I don't remember them moving their heads or arms much if at all.

For the hug, is there a vampire feed/embrace animation that you could use? I think I saw some threads on that animation in the past.

Agree that that kneel/pray animation might work for talking to the child.

For hugging, try this:

Idle property pa_HugA
Actor1.PlayIdleWithTarget(pa_HugA, Actor2)

There is an idle with exactly the same animation as that property.

The hugging animation even works for having an NPC hug the player (though depending on equipment worn it MIGHT look slightly funny if the player is in first person mode, not 100% sure)

Not sure about kneeling

Oh wow this thread is getting places.

The praying will actually work perfectly for something else, (I need a guy on his knee's, looking up, going, "Noooooooooo!!!!") and I'll try the HugA stuff. Though I've got to wait for the voice acting to come in from a few people, but I'm writing this all down. Good stuff.

There are a bunch of hkx animations that would work if you look under the Character Anim tab, but I don't know how to get them to become Anim Events so that they work with Papyrus... does anyone know how this works?

AV, what did you ever come up with? Sounds like I'm going to be doing something very similar. I have a scene where I want 2 old friends to fondly embrace one another with a hug, and another scene later where a Thalmor pig kills one of them and the other falls to his knees by his side in anguish as his friend dies before his eyes. I actually need to figure out how to specifically make the Thalmor mortally wound him, he falls to the ground in the wounded animation but doesn't die just yet, then the player and my other character kill the Thalmor boss, then my character goes to his friends side as he finally dies. (This is going to be a challenge I think!) Sorry for hijacking you thread.

Ah, I actually ended up not using any animations. The kids are a lot taller than I thought, so it wasn't too bad. Plus the guy looking down at the kid endearingly actually worked out great for filming. As for hugging, I just substituted the emotional impact of seeing them hug by making the guy start walking away, then turning around to look back one more time before going off to war. It has the same effect, and I need no unique animations.

So I improvised... Sorry if that doesn't help.

No prob AV, thanks. I'll probably need your help with my death scene though, lol. But it's still on the drawing board right now, and I have to build he dungeon it will take place in so it's a way off. I'll probably start a thread on it when I get there. Thanks again.

One question though, does this mean we finally get to see at least a damn teaser soon?

Haha, alright I'll watch out for it and help if I can.

And yes, I'm actually announcing the project tomorrow!!! I'm soooo excited. I have about 80% of the trailer done, I'm finishing up today, then getting everything ready and tomorrow at about 2pm Mountain Time (GMT -7) I'll be announcing it. I'm really excited to see what kind of reaction I get, and moreover that I get one at all. I've been working on this for 7 months now and other than my testers and voice actors I haven't told a soul!

For hugging, I still think you should try what I mentioned in my previous post in this thread, I've tried the animation in-game myself and worked fine imo.

Gee, thanks, worked for me and now I can hug my cats whenever they save my tail (and it happens very often)
http://raksha-the-khajiit.tumblr.com/post/22880004308

Now I wonder if you can free camera during this. Even 'tfc 1' does not work for me in that case. It probably has something to do with me using this script at the and of conversation, and when you are in conversation game seems to block everything.

for actors better to use command
Debug.SendAnimationEvent(Actor1, "zFNISc301");zFNISc301-HugAnim;
(If you want the animation to the many stages)
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It is also possible to import a lot of animations from Oblivion (like praying on knees)
http://jpegshare.net/0f/c1/0fc11902e7b916af57ec4743a61c5ae5.jpg.html