Question About Included Human & Creatures Animations.

[NicoleDragoness]

Due an HDD failure I had yo reinstall my Skyrim Legendary LE 32 bit from scratch. Succesfully, of course.

And I already have all the prerequisites (SKSE,JContainers, Havoh,HDT, etc ... ) installed.

 

My question is simple but maybe the answers will not:

 

- I don't care at all of the standard sex animations included in the SexLab Framework. Much less, also, I care about Creatures and I will never use Creatures animations at all.

  Can I DELETE all of them (this means deleting the entire "meshes/actors" folder included with the Framework) BEFORE installing SexLab?

[coolfreaky]

you might find useful  :

 

[NicoleDragoness]

Yes it is.

But I'm curious if it is possible to avoid the animations BEFORE installing SexLab just to reduce time, mistakes or possible problems.

[Taki17]

16 minutes ago, NicoleDragoness said:

it is possible to avoid the animations BEFORE installing SexLab just to reduce time, mistakes or possible problems.

SL does not come with a fomod installer, so if you activate it in your mod manager, it'll install everything. It is possible to not install creature stuff, however that includes you unpacking SL, removing the creature animation and behavior files, then repacking it again. For that, you need to remove every folder that is not "character" under meshes/actors, and inside character, every reference to creatures. Do not delete the entire meshes/actors folders though, since you'll lose some vital assets needed, not to mention the human animations too. This is what the mod above does too, except for removing the animations and behaviors, it'll overwrite them with empty files.

 

However, installing the mod linked above is infinitely easier and carries less of a risk of something going wrong.

[NicoleDragoness]

Thank you all. More clear ideas, now.

[Nymra]

5 hours ago, NicoleDragoness said:

Yes it is.

But I'm curious if it is possible to avoid the animations BEFORE installing SexLab just to reduce time, mistakes or possible problems.

 

yes, with my sexlab animation removal patch.

just install it and then start a new game?! 

[NicoleDragoness]

5 hours ago, Nymra said:

just install it and then start a new game?! 

It seems it doesn't work this way.

I did it and SexLab refused to install itself claiming some "basic file missing".

So the way is:

1. Install SexLab and do it in game.

2. Uncheck all standard animation in the related pages.

3. Use the native SexLab option to "hide excluded animations".

4, Save and exit.

5. Install your mod.

6. Restart the game.

 

Still, there is a waste of about 1.6 Gb of space that could be made free manually removing ALL the hkx files related to the creatures BUT it's very important to maintain the "fake" behaviour files anyway or the game CTD on start.

 

[Nymra]

3 hours ago, NicoleDragoness said:

It seems it doesn't work this way.

I did it and SexLab refused to install itself claiming some "basic file missing".

So the way is:

1. Install SexLab and do it in game.

2. Uncheck all standard animation in the related pages.

3. Use the native SexLab option to "hide excluded animations".

4, Save and exit.

5. Install your mod.

6. Restart the game.

 

Still, there is a waste of about 1.6 Gb of space that could be made free manually removing ALL the hkx files related to the creatures BUT it's very important to maintain the "fake" behaviour files anyway or the game CTD on start.

 

 

o_O
 

this is strange. I am starting new games with my mod activated all the time. 

are you on LE or SE? 

[Shadowbroker3495]

3 hours ago, NicoleDragoness said:

4, Save and exit.

5. Install your mod.

6. Restart the game.

Word of warning to new modders.

 

Usually above steps is the recipe for corrupting save game and making the game prone to CTD's. But it can work in this special case, since Sexlab.esm is a master mod and thus should not change load order after adding more mods (Sexlab mod usually loaded right after vanilla main files and vanilla DLC files).

 

------------

But otherwise i agree with OP. I wish standard animations were not included. Would make modding life a bit easier by avoiding unwanted animations. Probably done to avoid a lot of support questions about missing animations (i.e. people who don't know yet how to use SLAL mod). 2 versions (with and without animations) would be a nice compromise but there is probably a good technical explanation for not doing that.

 

[Nymra]

9 minutes ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

Word of warning to new modders.

 

Usually above steps is the recipe for corrupting save game and making the game prone to CTD's. But it can work in this special case, since Sexlab.esm is a master mod and thus should not change load order after adding more mods (Sexlab mod usually loaded right after vanilla main files and vanilla DLC files).

 

I am adding, removing, reinstalling, changing ESPs and their LO and even sometimes mess in the same way with ESM files, rebuild meshed patches etc. on a running game on LE and I never had corrupted savegames or an increased CTD rate.

I got to a point where I was really surprised how much abuse my saves can withstand. 

 

The only thing that I know of that seems to cause corrupted saves regularly is using Form 43 (LE) ESP on SE and uninstalling them again.

 

9 minutes ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

 

------------

But otherwise i agree with OP. I wish standard animations were not included. Would make modding life a bit easier by avoiding unwanted animations. Probably done to avoid a lot of support questions about missing animations (i.e. people who don't know yet how to use SLAL mod). 2 versions (with and without animations) would be a nice compromise but there is probably a good technical explanation for not doing that.

 

 

Sexlab should just include its own SLAL pack instead of the script based animation files. Like also DD should have its animations in Form of SLAL... its just the standard way of dealing with Sex Animations these days and all mods should respect it.

While making a SLAL pack for as many anims as the Sexlab Standard ones is ofc a bit of work...

 

[NicoleDragoness]

21 minutes ago, Nymra said:

I am adding, removing, reinstalling, changing ESPs and their LO and even sometimes mess in the same way with ESM files, rebuild meshed patches etc. on a running game on LE and I never had corrupted savegames or an increased CTD rate.

 hehe ... I'm like you, in fact. And btw I'm on LE 32bit because I still have a 32bit computer (cannot afford a new one).

[Shadowbroker3495]

47 minutes ago, Nymra said:

I got to a point where I was really surprised how much abuse my saves can withstand. 

Yeah, also my impression that you can get away with a lot of things in LE version. Not so much in SE version i think. Also you seem to have a lot of modding experience. Fiddling with mods in the middle of a playthrough, probably not the best start for new modders. But ofc people are different. Some like challenges, other people prefer plug&play.

 

55 minutes ago, Nymra said:

The only thing that I know of that seems to cause corrupted saves regularly is using Form 43 (LE) ESP on SE and uninstalling them again

Yeah, very confusing about form 43 and 44. LOOT reporting mods with form 43 as wrong version in SE and when mod creators sometimes try to change to form 44, then it doesn't work. But then again, it is Bethesda... "It just works" quote from Todd Howard

 

[Nymra]

2 hours ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

Yeah, also my impression that you can get away with a lot of things in LE version. Not so much in SE version i think. Also you seem to have a lot of modding experience. Fiddling with mods in the middle of a playthrough, probably not the best start for new modders. But ofc people are different. Some like challenges, other people prefer plug&play.

 

yeah, true, new modders. eeeh, mod users
I think many just slap too many mods into their games and sadly most also dont know how to handle their mod organizer, which I think is a key part of problems. 

It took me quite some time and also making my own mods to understand how ESP overwrites work and I m still learning...

 

I just think new users could save themselves some time "adjusting" their game using a save that they slap and abuse by testing mods and then start a new game on that ESP load order as soon as they got their stuff sorted out.

"New game" is just such an annoying process still... wish ALL mods would save their MCMs and autoload them too, teehee... I wish  

 

2 hours ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

Yeah, very confusing about form 43 and 44. LOOT reporting mods with form 43 as wrong version in SE and when mod creators sometimes try to change to form 44, then it doesn't work. But then again, it is Bethesda... "It just works" quote from Todd Howard

 

 

yeah, ok, SE is a different beast ofc, I dont have much experience with it since I got my LE to be surprisingly stable with MRSTs stability guide. 

I m just jealous about the ESP limit beeing gone, but on the other hand I got used to merging so much... hmm.

 

it just works and we also will have to work with it for another decade I m sure..

[Nymra]

3 hours ago, NicoleDragoness said:

 hehe ... I'm like you, in fact. And btw I'm on LE 32bit because I still have a 32bit computer (cannot afford a new one).

 

ah, then I understand why the 1,6 gb are such a deal. while checking on my folder it was only 180 MB of file size (sexlab meshes). that should not be a big deal even on older machine? 
 

[NicoleDragoness]

@Nymra

 

Please, where I can found the MSRTs Stabilry Guide you were talking?

 

On 10/3/2021 at 1:50 PM, Nymra said:

The only thing that I know of that seems to cause corrupted saves regularly is using Form 43 (LE) ESP on SE and uninstalling them again.

 

What about the reverse, using Form44 (SE) esp in the LE? I tried before and they seem to work. It's only important to have HKX for LE and unpack the SE BSA using the loose files with LE, if I understood correctly.

[Nymra]

Just now, NicoleDragoness said:

@Nymra

 

Please, where I can found the MSRTs Stabilry Guide you were talking?

 

 

its linked in some of my mod pages. Made my skyrim get a second life basically (I was on the verge of switching to SE...)

 

 

he also made the Animation Crash fix that allows us to load alot more FNIS anims than before. I think it is linked in his guide too.

 

 

Just now, NicoleDragoness said:

What about the reverse, using Form44 (SE) esp in the LE? I tried before and they seem to work. It's only important to have HKX for LE and unpack the SE BSA using the loose files with LE, if I understood correctly.

 

I m using some Form 44 on LE without issues. Have not tried uninstalling them yet to check for corrupted saves tho...

on the other hand, I think I already uninstalled aroused creatures which was SE form, hmm.

Might depend on a case by case situation.

 

HKX and meshes, yes. BSA files with large file counts are advised to be repacked for LE to decrease skyrim startup times. I noticed this indeed with the new voice file mods.