Skeleton files hierarchy help

[ahahlberg]

I'm having trouble with AAF animations where any animation that starts with a nude female leaves the end of the breasts (nipple area) pinned in space yet allows the rest of the body to move around, shrinking and growing the breasts to match wherever the female moves.  I had recently reloaded a number of AAF animation files because the developers had removed them from nexusmods because of nexusmods recent policy changes.  But my question doesn't have to do so much with that specific set of circumstances so much as trying to understand what the hierarchy of skeleton relationships actually is and how changes in skeleton files affect animations.  And specifically, I'm interested in why the default skeleton.nif contains strings that have _CBP embedded in their names.  I'm using the Zaz Extended skeleton 1.85.
My four-year-old installation of Fallout 4 has been running pretty well for all this time.  And I only discovered the modding world early last year thanks to MXR, starting first with extra quests and gradually discovering the whole new world of AAF and the associated animations.  And up until last week when I found out so many animation authors were no longer supporting their product on nexusmods and I began switching over to the new locations like moddingham and such as the official locations, everything was working just fine.  And one  of the mods I had been using was the breast physics mod CBP.
But after I switched over I ran into the animation problem.  The breast physics mods continued to work correctly in normal gameplay but any attempt at AAF animations involving females resulted in the stuck nipples situation.  So I tried to research the problem here and ran across a recommendation for the use of the nifskope tool to examine the skeleton files and possibly correct some strings that might be causing the problem.  And when I used nifskope to look at the files I did see that the breast, butt, and balls strings all contained the _CBP string in their names.  So I tried removing the _CBP from the strings but that made no change to the problem.  So I used Bodyslide to rebuild the FemaleBody.nif and that restored the _CBP strings in the FemaleBody.
So I used nifskope to look at  the general skeleton.nif file, and found that the _CBP strings were in there too.  So I tried removing the breast physics mod (I use Vortex) but even after that the problem remained - the symptoms were the same and the _CBP strings were still in the skeleton.nif and FemaleBody.nif.
So what I'm trying to learn here is where I should be looking to discover why the nipples get nailed in place at the beginning of an animation and yet all other body parts work as before.  And males are unaffected.  My theory had been that the breast physics mod had changed the skeleton vocabulary of movable parts and that somehow the nipples get left out of things the animations are looking to animate.
So can anyone tell me where to start looking for conflicts or how named skeleton parts are associated to animations.
And I do want to stress that the game plays fine and that male-only animations work as well - only female anatomy is affected and only in AAF animations.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me figure this out or point me to an explanation that helps.

[Indarello]

5 hours ago, ahahlberg said:

I'm having trouble with AAF animations where any animation that starts with a nude female leaves the end of the breasts (nipple area) pinned in space yet allows the rest of the body to move around, shrinking and growing the breasts to match wherever the female moves.  I had recently reloaded a number of AAF animation files because the developers had removed them from nexusmods because of nexusmods recent policy changes.  But my question doesn't have to do so much with that specific set of circumstances so much as trying to understand what the hierarchy of skeleton relationships actually is and how changes in skeleton files affect animations.  And specifically, I'm interested in why the default skeleton.nif contains strings that have _CBP embedded in their names.  I'm using the Zaz Extended skeleton 1.85.
My four-year-old installation of Fallout 4 has been running pretty well for all this time.  And I only discovered the modding world early last year thanks to MXR, starting first with extra quests and gradually discovering the whole new world of AAF and the associated animations.  And up until last week when I found out so many animation authors were no longer supporting their product on nexusmods and I began switching over to the new locations like moddingham and such as the official locations, everything was working just fine.  And one  of the mods I had been using was the breast physics mod CBP.
But after I switched over I ran into the animation problem.  The breast physics mods continued to work correctly in normal gameplay but any attempt at AAF animations involving females resulted in the stuck nipples situation.  So I tried to research the problem here and ran across a recommendation for the use of the nifskope tool to examine the skeleton files and possibly correct some strings that might be causing the problem.  And when I used nifskope to look at the files I did see that the breast, butt, and balls strings all contained the _CBP string in their names.  So I tried removing the _CBP from the strings but that made no change to the problem.  So I used Bodyslide to rebuild the FemaleBody.nif and that restored the _CBP strings in the FemaleBody.
So I used nifskope to look at  the general skeleton.nif file, and found that the _CBP strings were in there too.  So I tried removing the breast physics mod (I use Vortex) but even after that the problem remained - the symptoms were the same and the _CBP strings were still in the skeleton.nif and FemaleBody.nif.
So what I'm trying to learn here is where I should be looking to discover why the nipples get nailed in place at the beginning of an animation and yet all other body parts work as before.  And males are unaffected.  My theory had been that the breast physics mod had changed the skeleton vocabulary of movable parts and that somehow the nipples get left out of things the animations are looking to animate.
So can anyone tell me where to start looking for conflicts or how named skeleton parts are associated to animations.
And I do want to stress that the game plays fine and that male-only animations work as well - only female anatomy is affected and only in AAF animations.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me figure this out or point me to an explanation that helps.

Please describe in short

[South8028]

9 hours ago, ahahlberg said:

I'm having trouble with AAF animations where any animation that starts with a nude female leaves the end of the breasts (nipple area) pinned in space yet allows the rest of the body to move around, shrinking and growing the breasts to match wherever the female moves.  I had recently reloaded a number of AAF animation files because the developers had removed them from nexusmods because of nexusmods recent policy changes.  But my question doesn't have to do so much with that specific set of circumstances so much as trying to understand what the hierarchy of skeleton relationships actually is and how changes in skeleton files affect animations.  And specifically, I'm interested in why the default skeleton.nif contains strings that have _CBP embedded in their names.  I'm using the Zaz Extended skeleton 1.85.
My four-year-old installation of Fallout 4 has been running pretty well for all this time.  And I only discovered the modding world early last year thanks to MXR, starting first with extra quests and gradually discovering the whole new world of AAF and the associated animations.  And up until last week when I found out so many animation authors were no longer supporting their product on nexusmods and I began switching over to the new locations like moddingham and such as the official locations, everything was working just fine.  And one  of the mods I had been using was the breast physics mod CBP.
But after I switched over I ran into the animation problem.  The breast physics mods continued to work correctly in normal gameplay but any attempt at AAF animations involving females resulted in the stuck nipples situation.  So I tried to research the problem here and ran across a recommendation for the use of the nifskope tool to examine the skeleton files and possibly correct some strings that might be causing the problem.  And when I used nifskope to look at the files I did see that the breast, butt, and balls strings all contained the _CBP string in their names.  So I tried removing the _CBP from the strings but that made no change to the problem.  So I used Bodyslide to rebuild the FemaleBody.nif and that restored the _CBP strings in the FemaleBody.
So I used nifskope to look at  the general skeleton.nif file, and found that the _CBP strings were in there too.  So I tried removing the breast physics mod (I use Vortex) but even after that the problem remained - the symptoms were the same and the _CBP strings were still in the skeleton.nif and FemaleBody.nif.
So what I'm trying to learn here is where I should be looking to discover why the nipples get nailed in place at the beginning of an animation and yet all other body parts work as before.  And males are unaffected.  My theory had been that the breast physics mod had changed the skeleton vocabulary of movable parts and that somehow the nipples get left out of things the animations are looking to animate.
So can anyone tell me where to start looking for conflicts or how named skeleton parts are associated to animations.
And I do want to stress that the game plays fine and that male-only animations work as well - only female anatomy is affected and only in AAF animations.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me figure this out or point me to an explanation that helps.

You need to start with outfit studio. In os, you can visualize the bones and their zones of influence. It is also worth understanding that simply removing some bones from the body does not solve anything. Because the weights of the bones are a complex, not separately existing bones. The skeleton and body mesh are also complex. Each vertex of the mesh is tied to one or another of the bones of the skeleton. If the vertix is not tied to some cbp bones, it must accordingly be tied to some other bones. Otherwise, it floats in space out of sync with the skeleton. If you don't know what bones are and how they work, you just need to change the body and skeleton. It makes no sense to manually remove or add bones if you don't know how it works.

[Oldwolf58]

10 hours ago, ahahlberg said:

I'm having trouble with AAF animations where any animation that starts with a nude female leaves the end of the breasts (nipple area) pinned in space yet allows the rest of the body to move around, shrinking and growing the breasts to match wherever the female moves.  I had recently reloaded a number of AAF animation files because the developers had removed them from nexusmods because of nexusmods recent policy changes.  But my question doesn't have to do so much with that specific set of circumstances so much as trying to understand what the hierarchy of skeleton relationships actually is and how changes in skeleton files affect animations.  And specifically, I'm interested in why the default skeleton.nif contains strings that have _CBP embedded in their names.  I'm using the Zaz Extended skeleton 1.85.
My four-year-old installation of Fallout 4 has been running pretty well for all this time.  And I only discovered the modding world early last year thanks to MXR, starting first with extra quests and gradually discovering the whole new world of AAF and the associated animations.  And up until last week when I found out so many animation authors were no longer supporting their product on nexusmods and I began switching over to the new locations like moddingham and such as the official locations, everything was working just fine.  And one  of the mods I had been using was the breast physics mod CBP.
But after I switched over I ran into the animation problem.  The breast physics mods continued to work correctly in normal gameplay but any attempt at AAF animations involving females resulted in the stuck nipples situation.  So I tried to research the problem here and ran across a recommendation for the use of the nifskope tool to examine the skeleton files and possibly correct some strings that might be causing the problem.  And when I used nifskope to look at the files I did see that the breast, butt, and balls strings all contained the _CBP string in their names.  So I tried removing the _CBP from the strings but that made no change to the problem.  So I used Bodyslide to rebuild the FemaleBody.nif and that restored the _CBP strings in the FemaleBody.
So I used nifskope to look at  the general skeleton.nif file, and found that the _CBP strings were in there too.  So I tried removing the breast physics mod (I use Vortex) but even after that the problem remained - the symptoms were the same and the _CBP strings were still in the skeleton.nif and FemaleBody.nif.
So what I'm trying to learn here is where I should be looking to discover why the nipples get nailed in place at the beginning of an animation and yet all other body parts work as before.  And males are unaffected.  My theory had been that the breast physics mod had changed the skeleton vocabulary of movable parts and that somehow the nipples get left out of things the animations are looking to animate.
So can anyone tell me where to start looking for conflicts or how named skeleton parts are associated to animations.
And I do want to stress that the game plays fine and that male-only animations work as well - only female anatomy is affected and only in AAF animations.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me figure this out or point me to an explanation that helps.

Which body are you using? if you are using CBBE body you need to use the Zex skeleton 2.0 which has the breast bones as well as the cbp bones. I don't know if the 1.85 version does but it sounds like a version for the Fusion Girl body. The 2.0 skeleton will work with both bodies and should fix the stretching issue.