Thanks for the the method tip, SaidenStorm.

However, sorry to say, but I'm still not clear, perhaps because I'm not sure what a Loose Idle is. In this post [post='']http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1349456-anyone-know-how-to-play-an-hkx-in-game/page__view__findpost__p__20342869[/post] you say "playing a Loose Idle is easy PlayIdle works perfectly for that". So a loose idle is simply triggered by, say, a script event. So what's an example of a loose idle? Would that be, for example, a rock collapse when an actor steps on a pressure plate? If I understand correctly the behaviour graph consists of anim event triggers for block, attack, jump, walk, run etc etc. These are pre-defined for actors in the behaviour graph and triggered by key presses or actor state, like being knocked to the ground, so the get up animation plays. But loose idles are not attached to specific actor actions right. So could a script, attqached to an actor, watch for a keypress or watch for a specific actor state, say, lack of sleep, and trigger a yawn animation? Wouldn't this link an actor to an idle outside the predefined behaviour graph?

I appreciate your patience

An activator does not consist of a Loose animation as a matter of fact most of these are gamebryo animations -> as in they are kf anims contained in the activator.nif itself, and in your example there would be 3 completely different objects at play -> the pressure plate, the rocks and the actor triggering them.

Loose Animations are anims that are only defined in THAT ACTORS -> RACE -> Behavior Graph its an anim that only consists of an event that links to the anim.hkx in the folder -> non loose anims are defined as events contained within states (combat 1h,2h,mag,mt,etc) and can only be called by an anim event within those states -> they also contain transitions that only allow you in or out of that animation by specified other animations.


No, ALL actor animations are defined by an event in the graph.


How? your completely missing the point without the Behavior Graph Anim Event the CK/Game has ZERO ability to link directly to an animation there is no direct input for path to anim the path to anim is defined IN the behavior graph and its called by triggereing the anim event that said anim is linked to.

Loose Anims are called through script this triggers a loose action which in the anims directory has a direct link to the behavior anim event which links to the path to the anim to play.

Trigger Action(CK/Game) -> Action Mapped to a Behavior Graph Anim Event -> Anim Event defines the path to the animation to play.

OK, I get it now SaidenStorm. Many thanks for the clear explanation

Is this the reason why they scrapped Jumping while Sprinting and Dodging while Sprinting?

Why would they need to scrap anything they have Behavior Tool and can do ANYTHING they want -> we on the other hand are far less free.

Glaring Omissions like Underwater Combat, Sprint Jump, attacking while jumping and whatever else all most likely came down to time vs gameplay as in the time it takes to make is greater then the overall gameplay plus it provides so the animators were sent to do other tasks -> and animators in this game has their hands full -> besides learning a completely new Animation Engine they also had to separate out every secondary animation type beyond Transforms and apply those separately to the nif's themselves which also required being animated to sync with the actors base animations -> they then had to set up Behavior Graphs for both the primary actor and the secondary objects -> and quite a few of the creatures are very complex in how this was done.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9063

^ BAM new animations

Actually, those were only locked and already defined in the game - they're technically not new. :/

From the FAQ:

I am a little bit confused by the files needed for animations ....
can you summarize them up giving a small explanation of what is what and what it does or is needed for with an example for each ?

SO far I see some people are making new animations and loops beeing played ingame but then I read new anims aren't possible so I am a bit confused now ... what is possible and what not and why and to what extent we can do them ?

I wanted to make some new animations like fight animation or Animal animations like walk / run / stand idles etc ....

e-gads, my head hurts from reading all this (well, some of it). I've been looking forward to animations and now we might not have them, cruel!

I have been able to successfully add a new door from a new model i have been working on, its animation is embedded into the .nif file so its all good, the nif exporter for 3ds max that I have doesnt seem to be able to import the animations for me to edit, let alone export them, so i have been manually editting them in nifskope, I have found a few issues with the nifskope implementation that would be awesome if someone could help streamline,

specifically the name of the node for the controller block, if the name isnt correct the game with CTD, except this string value needs to be typed in manually.

but now that I have my animation for the nif going well I will try and implement another type of animation.

door opening animation is simple, but what I want to attempt is an animation for the floor lowering into stairs down to an entrance, similar to the entrance to Blackreach

To make this clear... ;]
We can make new character animations. What we can not make is to ADD them along with existing ones.
Do you remember Actors In Charge type of mods from Oblivion? Well, Actors In Charge itself can be made for this game to play on will existing animations (though still with many limitations). But all other mods similar to that one with new animation can't be made, because new animation can't be ADDED to the game via CK.

As for your animal example, you can make any new animations you want, but you will have to chose - whether replace some existing ones, or not to add them at all.
CREATING and REPLACING are possible, ADDING is not - that's the shortest explanation of the current situation we all are in ;]


Bassix
Just FYI ;] Your whole post is about object animations and those still use GameBryo animations. And with those there are no any particular restrictions, just like it is with Oblivion.
But in this thread we have discussion about character animations which use havok system for that, and that's completely different beast ;]

Did Bethesda ever explain why they will not release their Behavior Tool?

It is still not clear all the Saiden said stuff about bsk , behaviour files and stuff like that what's the use of those files how many file types are needed for animation and what can or not be done?

When you say replace means that if I redplace a loop animation for a new type of wolf , it will replace for all wolves or all animals ? Concerning the animals I coudl live then by using the same skeletons and animations altough many are crap looking , but as for the combat I woudl have liked to create a new set of animations for 1.5 hand fighting sword sort of like 1h swords used like 2 h and 2h swords used like 1 h ... this woudl have required a new set of anims etc ... but I can't do if is not workng then what are people adding to ?

Did Beth ever explain anything of their reasons? why for example all the features they shoot out in the Game jam that where promised befoure the game launch where instead announced as a simple week trial test? ( think of dynamic snow so many time announced and that it is showed among the Game jam stuff.... ) ....

The point is people aren't adding anything, but people are only replacing things. Every single mod out of 35 on Nexus in animation category replaces original animations and not adds to them.

As for you wolves, it depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to add some additional idle animations for original wolves - you can't do that currently. But if you want to create your own wolf with different animations, you may copy original wolf's folder with all assets there and change those animations for new ones replacing those copied original files - but you won't be able to throw any additional animations there for your wolf, because such functionality is not present in CK. So your wolf can only have the same overall number of animations as original wolf has, and adding additional ones is not possible right now, as the way how to do that hasn't yet been discovered.

And your weapon animations... if you create new anims for 1.5 sword, you will have to chose whether replace original 1H or 2H anims in game, as you can't add new anims in CK. Maybe in some future someone will find a way to overcome this issue or Beth will release updated CK. As for today things look rather grim here...

No official proprietary program was ever released for the nif file format either. We(the community, specifically programmers) had to hack the format with an open source program called Nifscope. This is really no different from that and will just require one or more people with the skills and the desire to make it so. I'd wager it will happen sometime in the years to come.

They have explained in the past several times why they cannot share the tools they have developed for third party licensed middle-ware. That explanation obviously applies to Havok Behavior.

It's a bit like the Source engine, you take the Wolf, and replace an animation for that model, it won't affect the Saber Cat because each model contains it's own animations. Same goes for making new creatures, if you make a Hyena model, duplicate the Wolf actor in the CK and apply the new Hyena model and animations to the duplicate, it'll only affect the duplicate actor which will now look and move like a Hyena rather than Skyrim's Wolf.

The problem with that is you can't create new features for a creature, it has to use the same abilities of the original creature you duplicated. If all the original creature can do is one attack, you can't add a new attack animation for it.

The reason why Bethesda won't release tools is likely because:
1. The export tools they used to get the models into .nif format have licensed material in them, meaning the lawyers won't let them release it to the public for free.
2. The Behavior and animation tools are licensed from Havok, who for the same reasons as above won't let Bethesda release the Behavior and animation tools for free. I'm sure they could SELL the modified tools for use in Skyrim and pay out royalties to Havok, but then would anyone buy it just to mod the game? The tools are bound to be expensive to buy, only work in one expensive model program and I personally wouldn't be paying for the tools unless I could then turn around and sell my mod as an unofficial DLC and hopefully get those tools to pay for themselves.

so theoretically it is possible for me to create a new animation set for a custom weapon using the already exising animations. i.e using the dagger equip / unequip with the magic cast attack animation??

I'm actually not against that idea, and you know there'd be at least a few folks out there who are "serious and dedicated" and would go for it. Unfortunately . . . piracy. I guarantee that for every legitimate purchase there'd be five people looking to crack it and you'd have illegitimate copies up on DL and Torrent sites inside a week of that release - probably sooner.

@Worm: Yes, I know Nifskope is community-made, but at least for Morrowind, gamesas gave us the Max exporters (worked from R4.2-6 iirc). I have high hopes that eventually there'll be a community-made Behavior tool to work with, I just didn't want to come across as another demanding self-entitled **** insisting people "get crackin' on it already."