Animation discussions

[ElvenScoundrel]

As I'm delving into animating and the like, I had a few questions which hopefully someone with animation experience can answer.

 

First, how many frames should I go for? Like, in the example of an idle animation to replace vanilla ones, what's the ideal number?

 

Also, I know Blender has this thing where it fills frames between intervals of 5, should I rely on that?

[gregathit]

It really does depend on which game you are animating for so it is important to spell that out so folks can give you more than just general advice. 

 

For Oblivion I tend to use 5 and sometimes even 10 frame skips.  It just depends on what you are doing and what level of preciseness (is that even a word?  LOL!) you are looking for.

 

For idle animations I would use the vanilla animations as an example.  Stick to the number of frames they have or something close to it.  Now that is by no means a hard or fast rule but rather a good guideline.  If you have an idle animation that needs to be longer for something like a big hip sway, breasts bouncing or something, then go for it.  Just be careful not to make it too long (say double or more the vanilla length) or you could run into oddities.  Nothing game breaking or anything like that, it is just if the animation is too long it may not complete.  This really isn't too big a danger for most idles so again, make it as long as you need it to be, and no longer.  Most will loop anyways so keep that in mind (other than those specifically designed not to loop of course - like combat animations and such).

 

Depending on the game you are after advice on I'll move the thread to that section as it will get you more attention from those who mod that particular game. 

 

 

[ElvenScoundrel]

It really does depend on which game you are animating for so it is important to spell that out so folks can give you more than just general advice. 

 

For Oblivion I tend to use 5 and sometimes even 10 frame skips.  It just depends on what you are doing and what level of preciseness (is that even a word?  LOL!) you are looking for.

 

For idle animations I would use the vanilla animations as an example.  Stick to the number of frames they have or something close to it.  Now that is by no means a hard or fast rule but rather a good guideline.  If you have an idle animation that needs to be longer for something like a big hip sway, breasts bouncing or something, then go for it.  Just be careful not to make it too long (say double or more the vanilla length) or you could run into oddities.  Nothing game breaking or anything like that, it is just if the animation is too long it may not complete.  This really isn't too big a danger for most idles so again, make it as long as you need it to be, and no longer.  Most will loop anyways so keep that in mind (other than those specifically designed not to loop of course - like combat animations and such).

 

Depending on the game you are after advice on I'll move the thread to that section as it will get you more attention from those who mod that particular game. 

 

Well, like I previously mentioned I was looking for Fallout New Vegas animations. I've been wanting to change a few 1h, 2handautomatic and unarmed animations, and was unsure of how long they should be, or if I should use Blender's animation frame filling tool thing. Honestly, I'm more looking for more 'realistic', smoother animations than the vanilla ones, and possibly some sex animations for you Sexout folk if I ever get that far.

[gregathit]

Ok, just so we are on the same page, when you are animating just do your pose and then skip forward 5 or 10 frames and continue animating.  Blender by default should auto fill in the stuff in between to get from one key frame to the next.  It should still be fairly smooth depending on how fast the animation is playing and how far you have moved something.  Most of the animations you are taking about are combat ones so they will be a cycle_clamp which means it plays once and that is it.  I recommend keeping your animations fairly close to the vanilla frame lengths (slightly less or more depending on the animation) or the animation will seem sluggish or too quick. 

 

Sex animations are a completely different animal in that they are a looping animation and you mostly will build the animation with two bodies in blender and then export them one at a time.  That is the easiest way to do them I've found.

 

I recommend you start by tweaking the vanilla idle animations to start with, as that will give you a feel for how to animate things and give you something easy to test.  You can hone your skills that way fairly quickly and then move on to something more complex.  I would conquer the combat and other short idles before trying to tackle sex animations, but do as you like.

 

Beck11 and D_MANXX2 are the resident animators for FNV sex animations so they may be able to help you a bit more than me.  I spend most of my time playing with Oblivion LPK animations.  While some of the things are similar there are differences.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Moving thread to FNV general section.