ANIMATION LIMIT CAUSE CTD (Read before you bother author of animation pack)

[poblivion]

Hello everyone, lately the increasing number of cases when after installation new animations pack game crashes  (CTD). 

 

I often read here: After installing a new animation pack, Skyrim starts but CTD when loading a save.

Users often accuse the authors of animation pack.

 

The problem is that you have crossed animations limit ! ! ! 

 

Rachel explained it very well:

  On 5/5/2019 at 4:02 AM, Rachel said:

The Sexlab 500 limit has nothing to do with crashes, that's just a limit with how Sexlab was written. The real limit we are talking about is an animation limit that the game engine can handle. This varies between each persons PC, but it is somewhere between 11000 and 15000 animations. Some people can only have less, some can have more, just depends on how much they are loading on their game.

 

BTW, the limit is not just sexlab animations, it is all animations. Poses, idles, slal animations, zaz animaitons, weapon and attack animations can all add up. After you run FNIS it should tell you at the bottom just how many animations you are using. If you have to use the XL version, know that you are already in risky territory of having too many animations installed.

 

 

 

Here are some MODs that can help you solve your problem

 

Animation Loading Fix  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98204

or

Continue Game No Crash https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78557/

 

If you can't find the newly installed animations, you've probably exceeded the animation limit for SexLab.

In this case, will help this:

 

 

If you have another problem with installed animations, try the following steps:

 

You may need to reload the animations, go to the Animation Loader's MCM and then:
1. click on the "Disable All" button.
2. click on "Rebuild Animation Registry", then Wait for the message to pop up*.
3. click on "Reload JSON".
4. click on "Enable All".
5. click on "Register Animations", then Wait for the message to pop up*.
*if you like you can press "~" on your keyboard to open the console so you can watch it Register everything, just make sure you close it before you try to click on anything.

(The author of the text regarding the reload animations is MadMansGun)

I just made a copy paste ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Old thread content

 

If this is your problem, just remove some animations 

 

[Guest]

I've definitely noticed this. Suddenly game starts CTDing then i disable an SLAL pack, re-run FNIS and everything is good again.

 

[GenioMaestro]

I request help from @fore to confirm my affirmations.

The problem of CTD due to excessive animations is a problem that all of us have suffered for years. It is a limit imposed by the game and causes CTD when a saved game is loaded and when a new game is started.
If you have CTD when you click on a new game, it probably has too many animations. Remove some animations and run FNIS.

 

The exact limit is very diffuse. It is not a fixed and exact number. I think it's related to the amount of animation events that the game can handle and we still do not know exactly what that number is or where that limit is.

Each animation package needs a different number of animation events and that number depends on how are defined the animations within the FNIS files. Depending on the type of animation and the parameters of the animation, it will use more or less animation events.

 

Normally, animation packages use type "b" or "s" and use very few events. But the animations of type "AA" and "furniture" use many more events. It is almost impossible to determine how many events each pack uses.

The different combinations of packages are what make the limits of the animations different. The same combinations of packs always cause CTD in all users. But since each user has different packages of animations, it seems that the limit is different for each user. But it is not true. The limit is imposed by the game. Different combinations of packages have a different number of animation events. When the sum of the animation events within the animation packages exceeds the limit, we have CTD.

For now, we know that this limit refers in a unique and excusive way to character animations and creature animations have no effect on the limit of animation events.
The way to count the animations of characters + creatures is incorrect.
Saying that the game will do CTD because it has 10k animations in characters and 5k animations in creatures is totally false.

The game does not count the animations of the creatures.

 

The only real limit is the block of characters. It is almost impossible to have CTD with less than 10k animations in the block of characters.
But depending on our exact combination of animations, we can have a different limit in the block of characters.

"AA" animations have many animation events and greatly reduce the maximum number of animations we can install.

My game works with 16500 character animations if I deactivate all AA animations and furniture. When I add packages with AA or with Furniture, the limit is reduced to 14k and then to 12k and finally to 10k.
It all depends on the exact packages of animations that are installed, how many pieces of furniture and AA animations they have. Depending on how we combine them we can have more animations or less.

 

All this has nothing to do with the limit of 500 animations in Sexlab. The game does not do CTD because Sexlab says that there are more than 500 animations.
The animation packages have some files to inform sexlab about the animations of the package, how they are grouped and what tags they have. Each sexlab animation has a number of steps or stages, usually 4 or 5, and sexlab counts an animation for every 4 or 5 of the animations reported in FNIS. When the animations have 2, 3 or 4 actors, sexlab counts an animation for 10, 15, 20, 25 ... animations of FNIS.

The limit of animations in sexlab was set to 500 only to reduce the time that sexlab needs to find an animation. There is a patch to raise the limit to 750 but I have not tried it.

[Grey Cloud]

The posts will still appear in tech support because the people who suffer these kinds of problems never read anything - which is why they have the problems in the first place.

[fore]

Give me a few more days. Although I kept quiet the last 2 months, I have worked a lot. A real BIG lot. Calculating the CTD impact of AA did cost me a lot of my few remaining hairs. Because there are so many influencing parameters. And when your only way to test is to determine the number of animations when it finally starts to CTD you can imagine how often I had to run FNIS. Which is quite time consuming when you always generate with more than 20k animations.

 

More than 20k? Don't get excited too early. 26166 animations is the limit. But only when you use "b -md" animations, like in Halo's Posers. When you use only "b" it is only one third, 8722. Everything else is somewhere in between.

 

So right now I think I found all the important parameters for calculation. I need to get this into FNIS, and test some more with actual animation mods, mostly with AA. And if I will not find more serious deviations, I think I can start a closed Beta within a week.

 

Everyone experienced and willing to invest a little time with his XXL environment is invited (Oldrim only, although the results apply for both).

[Grey Cloud]

What sort of experience? I'd be happy to help.

[Nazzzgul666]

Can't guarantee i'll have time, but i might. One question out of curiosity (and a bit hope): would your update remove the limit or just add a warning if someone goes above?

[UltimaXeno]

My current animations is 12,209 character and 5,818 creature, totaling to 18,029 animations. This is my limit since now when I try to add anything new with only a few animations I CTD. My question is, is it possible to delete individual animations or do I have to remove them as a whole pack? For example, I like some of the animations in Anub's pack, but some of them I don't like, is it possible to remove the ones I don't like and keep the ones I do thereby allowing me to add more animations or do I have to remove all of Anub's animation pack?

[Reesewow]

On 5/24/2019 at 7:20 PM, UltimaXeno said:

My question is, is it possible to delete individual animations or do I have to remove them as a whole pack? For example, I like some of the animations in Anub's pack, but some of them I don't like, is it possible to remove the ones I don't like and keep the ones I do thereby allowing me to add more animations or do I have to remove all of Anub's animation pack?

It is possible to remove unwanted animations from a pack - however it essentially involves rebuilding the pack without those animations.  You could look for instructions on building a SLAL pack for modders, as it would essentially be the same approach I believe.

 

Some animators have tried to meet users halfway by releasing their animations as many smaller packs rather than a huge one for this reason - to allow you to not install animations of a type you don't need and reduce your load.

[MadMansGun]

https://www.loverslab.com/topic/124228-looking-for-a-few-good-women-fnis-75-closed-beta-animation-load-ctd-calculation/

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/1168

[Rayblue]

Found this the other day. Should help those who have very large compilation of animation mods.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98204

[Nepro]

Animation limit may cause your CTD but maybe your load order is adding additional stress by reaching reference cap.

 

Check your load order with xEdit for number of total references generated by your load order. 16K is not 20K cap. Set up your animations to the exact same number as in your topic. Then start Skyrim and type in console: coc UnownedCell

DO NOT start a NEW GAME or load existing savegame. If your game start in a small cell with chest then it is not your animation limit but reference cap. Mods like 3DNPC and Vigilant will easily add like 200,000 references and the limit is 1,100,000 something references. More about them in the topic I linked.

 

 

[Grey Cloud]

8 hours ago, Nepro said:

DO NOT start a NEW GAME or load existing savegame. If your game start in a small cell with chest then it is not your animation limit but reference cap. Mods like 3DNPC and Vigilant will easily add like 200,000 references and the limit is 1,100,000 something references. More about them in the topic I linked. 

That reddit nonsense has been around for years and has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

 

Game crashes on start? In no particular order:

1. Incorrectly configured game (memory allocation/management).

2. Too many animations.

3. Missing masters.

4. Missing or wrong skeleton.

 

 

[Nepro]

On 5/12/2019 at 2:36 AM, poblivion said:

 

I often read here: After installing a new animation pack, Skyrim starts but CTD when loading a save.

Users often accuse the authors of animation pack.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

That reddit nonsense has been around for years and has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

 

Game crashes on start? In no particular order:

1. Incorrectly configured game (memory allocation/management).

2. Too many animations.

3. Missing masters.

4. Missing or wrong skeleton.

 

 

Dude do you even read?

[Grey Cloud]

17 minutes ago, Nepro said:

 

Dude do you even read?

More than you ever will. What is your point?

[MadMansGun]

16 hours ago, Nepro said:

Animation limit may cause your CTD but maybe your load order is adding additional stress by reaching reference cap

the reference cap is a substantially less common problem and is not considered to be linked to any animation based problems.

 

the save file's string limit on the other hand can sometimes be linked to "animation crashes" because of SexLab/SLAL/MCM settings being saved into the save file (therefor increasing the number of strings you have), but this is not actually a animation problem and is also fixed by having mods like "crash fixes" installed (or by having less mods installed in general to keep the string count down).

 

 

system allocation is a more common (and bigger) threat in general: the more high res textures, animations, and script heavy mods you have the more likely you are to overload things on load, there are ways to help with this, eg:

 

adding/editing the Papyrus settings in Skyrim.ini can help with script overload:

Quote

[Papyrus]
fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.6
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=1000.0
bEnableLogging=0
bEnableTrace=0
bLoadDebugInformation=0

 

adding this ini file to "Data\SKSE" will activate SKSE's memory allocation system:

skseini.7z

go to 5:03 in this video to learn more about this ini file: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKW3fc5MFRE&index=2&list=PLlN8weLk86XjyJvXZ2MDBJRyeBPDMKZqx

but be aware of your enb settings or you may crash https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI/Memory

 

 

but none of this will be of any help if you have too many animations installed

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/1168

 

also i'm not sure if that mod Rayblue linked to actually works at all or if it's just a "digital placebo"

but i can certainly understand the theory of how "loading player animations first" could help reduce the memory hit on load.

 

[Grey Cloud]

45 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

the save file's string limit

From the Crash Fixes description page:

9 - 20/05/2016

Fixed save game string count 65536 fix didn't work completely.

 

That's 3 years ago. Anyone who is still suffering from it  . . .

 

[Memory]
DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768
ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

That's also on the CF description page.

55 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

also i'm not sure if that mod Rayblue linked to actually works at all or if it's just a "digital placebo"

Exactly. When the only place I see something is on reddit then I tend to be a bit skeptical. Especially after I read the hysteria and general claptrap it generated from reddit's finest.

[seanthiar]

- I know it's from june but I can't stop myself  - why don't you just load the patches for the problem and use FNIS XXL ? Like the string patch available here in the forum, onetweak, continue game no CTD, crash fixes and loadgame CTD fix at nexus. The only thing thats annoys is to edit a few files manually and installing jcontainers for onetweak and the string patch.

[Grey Cloud]

On 8/8/2019 at 7:58 PM, seanthiar said:

why don't you just load the patches for the problem and use FNIS XXL

Because if you had any knowledge of the issue you would know that XXL is not a magic wand. There is a limit to how many the animations the game can run and that limit is different for different users.

 

On 8/8/2019 at 7:58 PM, seanthiar said:

Like the string patch available here in the forum,

Which 'string patch' would that be? As I pointed out in June, Crash Fixes fixed the string limit bug in 2016.

 

On 8/8/2019 at 7:58 PM, seanthiar said:

onetweak,

Never used it, never needed it.

 

On 8/8/2019 at 7:58 PM, seanthiar said:

continue game no CTD

Never used it, never needed it.

 

On 8/8/2019 at 7:58 PM, seanthiar said:

loadgame CTD fix

Never used it, never needed it.

 

EDIT: I do use this. My mistake.

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

On 6/19/2019 at 9:17 PM, Rayblue said:

Found this the other day. Should help those who have very large compilation of animation mods.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98204

This works good. 

[SS90]

On 6/20/2019 at 6:14 AM, MadMansGun said:

https://www.loverslab.com/topic/124228-looking-for-a-few-good-women-fnis-75-closed-beta-animation-load-ctd-calculation/

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/1168

Thank you, there is the Animation Loading Fix which as per its change log says it doubled the CTD limit in its latest version. But there is no information about the limit or any article like one fores made explaining the limits. Just trying to get my head around this as the only thing I certainly understand is what fores and fnis warns us that crossing a certain limit of animation causes CTD. And there are mixed reviews of the ALF helping with such issue, many claiming mod causes them CTD and other that they are successfully exceeding the 100% limit without any issues. 

And obviously it leads to the next question how to not have so many animations in the first place. the simple but bitter answer is to reduce animation mods. And the more difficult one is to disable animations from packs, the procedure as per my understanding too risky. 

I am just hoping here that I lack knowledge of the subject matter and there is a safe way to have one's favorite animations in the game. 

[MadMansGun]

45 minutes ago, SS90 said:

And there are mixed reviews of the ALF helping with such issue, many claiming mod causes them CTD and other that they are successfully exceeding the 100% limit without any issues. 

i have seen a few people well above 100% over the past few years, so it does work. i also have it installed but i'm not even over 50% (i don't use pose or alt animation mods)

 

45 minutes ago, SS90 said:

the more difficult one is to disable animations from packs, the procedure as per my understanding too risky. 

it's not too risky, but you do need to know what your doing. i did make notes about doing it for slal packs in a few threads but i can't remember where that was.

 

basically it's:

1. edit the pack's source txt file.

2. run SLAnimGenerateForMNCv12.pyw*** (it's more up to date than SLAnimGenerate.pyw)

3. run generatefnisformodders.exe on any fnis list txt files that got updated/modified by AnimGenerate (this will make new mod behavior files for GenerateFNISforUsers.exe to use)

4. run GenerateFNISforUsers.exe (to make/update the final behavior file that the game uses)

 

***do note that AnimGenerate does not work correctly for dog/wolf fnis list files, it makes a file called "modnamehere_canine_List.txt" that you will need to copy and rename (twice) before you can use generatefnisformodders.exe on it.

 

if you mess it up somehow it will t-pose your game.

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by MadMansGun

[MadMansGun]

2 hours ago, SS90 said:

 

(i should add that this is the version i'm using)

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/11208-animation-limit-crash-fix/

 

 

[Grey Cloud]

On 9/21/2021 at 7:10 AM, SS90 said:

Thank you, there is the Animation Loading Fix which as per its change log says it doubled the CTD limit in its latest version

The mod linked by MadMansGun is the one to use. This mod/tool does not double the number it removes the limit of character animations completely. This mod works flawlessly and has done since it was released.

There are links to articles about animation limits on the description page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Electroraptor]

Sometimes I get a "FootIk" message, but reinstall the last anim. pack or mod and re-run FNIS always solve that. Thanks for your topic anyway, I'll count with it