Can anybody tell me what am I supposed to do with the defaultmale/female.hkx?

I'm using a custom race (Ashen), and I want to assign completely different animation source for this race. I learned that an advlt mod in Skyrim Nexus ("Stripper Companion" or something) managed to do just that allocating a custom defaultfemale.hkx for the behavior graph

I tried to simply use its folder structure (unchanged) and assign the very same defaultfemale.hkx to the behavior graph, but it doesn't do anything

I took a look in it (with hkxconverter) and saw a bunch of lines that I assume are paths to the actual animation data themselves

Can somebody explain me how this particular system works?

defaultmale/female.hkx are the places to define what animations this race can have. Adding new animation file & path just make the animations recognizable by the game. If you want to play these new animations, well, you will need to modify few more hkx files. Take a look at other behavior file, and you will know

When you said "other behavior file", do you mean other .hkx or behavior files created by other modders?

I'll see what I can get. I tried use the data from "Stripper Companion". I assigned the race to its defaultfemale.hkx, but for some reason some of the animations are not recognized, which happens to be the important ones (the runforward and stuff)

As far as I know, modders couldn't create new behavior files (yet), they can just modify the existing behavior files

Animations in Skyrim are more complicated than in previous TES games. They have their own conditions (how to play), and transitions (which animations will play next when the clip's over) and triggers (when to notify other conditions/events while animation is playing)

To be short, defining new animations in defaultmale/female.hkx will just tell the game that this actor (or Race) can play this animation. It doesn't tell the game how & when to play it. You should look at other hkx files (behavior file) for more details

If you want to use existing Race's animation, your race and the race you want to switch to should have the same skeleton rig. Or you will have some problem. If you satisfy the above condition, the easiest way to play new Race's animation is to make the new race use 'Morph Race' data in the CK

EDIT: Another easy way to add new animations without messing with the defaultfemale/male.hkx is to use "fore custom animation" mod

To clarify, modders cannot create new behaviors solely from within the creation kit. It is believed that Bethesda wanted to avoid the explosion of six-based mods like what happened with New Vegas. However, it is possible to create new behaviors now, and you can do so using the Havok behavior tool, which is conveniently being offered for free at the moment. A guy by the name of Theru posted an introduction of sorts of how to create new behaviors over at the nexus, go http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/624251-progress-in-behavior-filesalmost-done/ i you want to see the original post.

It is? Where at?

Ya, I saw that thread, apparently its not fully functional at the moment

Jesus! I skimmed through theru's thread and there seems to be so many steps involved and lots of logic applied in order to just play a simple god-dang honest-to-god not-illegal animation

Still, no pain no gain. I'll see what I can dig up, learning by myself is much better. Many thanks for you folks.