After exporting several combat animations, I noticed the bones in the hands just don't have any keyframes associated with them. I figure this is either an error in the exporting process or the hands simply have their own animations, perhaps to account for weapons with different sized handles and such. Looking to confirm which is correct, and in the latter case, where I can find the animations for the hands themselves.

(Note: I could have sworn I already posted this, but I can't find the thread if I did. If this is a duplicate, I apologize)

I think as you found they just tend to use the bind pose for hands. Other animations like warmhands have animation in the hands.

So, in looking at the Creation Kit wiki, the page on weapons mentions this field, which I don't see anywhere: "Hand Grip: Determines the type of hand grip used for this weapon." Seems like a likely candidate for what I'm looking for. It doesn't appear this is referring to the "Equip Type" field at the top of the page, since the wiki lists that field as well, and "Hand Grip" is listed as being under the "Art and Sound" tab. However, I don't see it, or several of the other fields the wiki lists relating to animations. Were these fields removed during beta testing? Can anyone confirm?

I'd guess the value doesn't actually exist, and the wiki entry is partially copypasta from Fallout 3.

Update: I exported an anim in which I added keyframes to the hands, but upon viewing the animation in the CK, the hands remain unanimated. The animation in question is H2H_Idle, an animation which normally shows up with a closed fist. My animation has them in a more dynamic "kung-fu" sort of pose, but in the CK it shows up as neither: just the relaxed open palm (the skeleton's default position). It seems most likely to me that:
1. Normally, the hands have their animation overwritten by another animation.
2. Because I've given the hands keyframes, the override doesn't occur.
3. My keyframes and the override conflict in such a way as to make the engine go "?" and go to it's default.

Which means I need to find where those animations are coming from. Any ideas? Maybe they use the first person animations to animate the hands? I don't know why they'd do it like that, but it's worth looking into.

the "HandGrip" setting does absolutely nothing its just left overs from FO3... ALL animation is controlled by the Behavior Profiles to which we can not alter -> the thing about animations we can control are the Anim Event to Action Mapping and conditionals associated and even these are not a do whatever you want situation if what your trying to do is not defined within the Behavior graph it will not happen.


Your problem is your animations ! I am having zero issues with the hands/fingers not animating including replacing the h2h_Idle with moving fingers...

The first question would be are you using HCT or exporting as KF and converting with hkxcmd ?

If your using hkxcmd then be aware that it does not understand anything annotation related (ie: no footsteps, no attack hitframes, no sound fx of any kind, no annotations !), also its 3rd party and as such it does not fully support all of the hkx file format features and some information is going to be lost/altered slightly when converting to and from kf.

If your using HCT then its 100% your animation at fault and most likely leads back to your max/maya/xsi scene setup and export setup.

I've been using hkxcmd, which is perhaps my problem. What information can you give me on HCT?

Havok Content Tools -> official hkx exporter for Max,Maya or XSI only...

How can I do anything at all with these Anim Events? Where is the mapping between Anim Event and animation file? Can I add an event (and do I have to) when I want to add my own (LOOSE) idle animation? And what is this "Behavior Graph", and how can I read it?

I know, questions over questions. But this Wiki is a complete annoyance concerning animations. Making a search "animation" delivers 8 hits, 4 of them don't even contain that word or anything related.

Gameplay -> Animations.


You can add an action but as the game will not have a clue WTF it is, it will not help you do squat.

Anim Events can not be added because they are defined in the Behavior Files.


You can define new Loose animations ID's but as the Behavior files define ALL animation sequences as events you can not add anything new here as we can not alter these files...


These are the files that define the entire Behavior Graph there are no less then 4 of these and in the case of the Character Actor there are 21...

I know, questions over questions. But this Wiki is a complete annoyance concerning animations. Making a search "animation" delivers 8 hits, 4 of them don't even contain that word or anything related.

You wont, as Bethesda has no plans of releasing their Behavior Tool there is zero point in documenting what they had no plans in allowing us to alter.

Please tell me, you were just kidding. But I know you aren't.

We are not able to add one stupid idle to the game !?!?!?!?

This just can't be true. And this by a company that claims in their blog


What a disappointing misdirection

The community can not in one breath complain that Beth has not upgraded their animation engine in years and at the same time condemn them for upgrading to something they have no license to release the tools for... beyond the fact that Beth did not release any gamebryo kf tools either so this is not even the smallest of surprizes that they are not giving out HBT... Give it some time and modder aggrovation and someone with the programming skills will come along and write a tool for us -> just be prepared to wait a few years for it.

But they didn't market Oblivion with full-throated promises to be the greatest moddable game of all times. This time they did.

In Oblivion they just didn't provide tools to create new content. This time they PREVENT us from integrating this content into the game. That's a different level of "NON-SUPPORT".

I understand what your saying but at least they used Behavior, because had they used any other system we would not even be able to create animations right now as without Havok providing the source for HCT we would be screwed like we were going into Oblivion where it took nearly a year just to decode the new kf format -> and this time we were not only provided with source code to create converters and exporters/importers we also got an official exporter -> thats a hell of a lot more then previous games.

Having been a primary contributor on the crappy 3rd party tools getting some hate here, I do wish they were better and I wish I had more time to better support them but its still better than what we get for most games. I dont think Dragon Age 1/2 or Mass Effect 1/2 or Witcher had any tools for importing and maybe Witcher had exporters but came out like at least 6 months or more after initial game release. NWN2 didn't have an exporter for at least 6 months or so after release. This game has an amazing level of customizability out of the gate but it could still be better.

We are not that bad off as Havok tools we need do exist and are publicly available (at least mostly). The HBT issue can be overcome but looks maybe somewhat hard and I may try my hand at it but its a fair amount of work and I don't have that much time to figure it all out. As SaidenStorm says though it is still better than what a lot of games get in terms of support. Stay tuned or maybe help out if you can.

Hrm, downloading the Havok tools now, thanks for the lead. Latest version is 2011, but I hope it's compatible with 3DS 2012.

Does it support or easily convert IK animation? It would be super if so.

Havok 2010.2 is not known to be compatible with Max 2012. The packed files probably are not compatible but the XML files may be. You cannot install both 2010.2 and the 2011 at same time that I'm aware (though one could probably make a copy of the important tools like AssetCc2.exe from 2010.2 if you wanted to run 2011 for file conversion).

2011.2.0 is not compatible with Skyrim you need 2010.2.0 and its not compatible with Max 2012 :/... -> well the highest install is for Max 2011 but you can always just move the files over and see if they work.

I just downloaded 2011.3 from their site, no idea what kind of compatibility I'm going to get out of it. Not going to mess with it until tomorrow, or I'm not going to sleep tonight.

Sorry guys, when I'm a little (or a lot) slo-mo again, but I have a couple of questions concerning HBT.

1. In the Havok download area there is no HBT version available. On Havok's HBT page only links like to the license department. But I found a link at one of Intel's sites where you can download HBT 6.6 (from 2009). Wouid that be sufficient, if ... ? (see next point)

2. Browsing through the HBT help I saw that .hkx behavior files are "thin" files, for the game only. HBT can load .hkb files only. Which we don't have. So if Beth refuses to release their develoopment hkb's we can't do anything EVEN IF we had the proper HBT (e.g. 6.6)

3. Even if we had both the proper HBT and the hkb's that wouldn't help for modding in many/most cases. For example one of the most common animation tasks: adding idle animations. The relations between idle files and anim events seems to be stored in the "idlebehavior.hkx". So if mod A adds an idle, it would have to change this hkx. So would mod B do. And both mods would be automatically incompatible. So from the beginning it would probably be better in this example to have an independant tool which hacks the idlebehavior.hkx content based on some ini data. A task for a mod manager.

1. That is same version we found and discussed in the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336657-rel-havok-animation-converter-thread-2/page__fromsearch__1 threads. I would envision that we might be able to use the older version to author XML files which are then up converted to newer version via AssetCC2 to the 2010.2 equivalent. (Wishful thinking since they changed file formats quite a bit during this time).

2. AssetCC2 can convert some of these files but not all. I've not completely tried figuring out what it can and cannot do. But it gets further than my tools due to being able to understand HBT files.

3. If we can get the SDK tools to do the merging then it would in theory be possible to write a tool which could be included in NMM or Wrye Bash if there was sufficient demand due to wild success. Would it be possible to just stub in a couple dozen or more idles which could then be managed easier with simple file replacements?