skyrim se First serious sexlab build. I have several animation questions . . .

[ghostdog01neo]

I've been modding Skyrim for years, and though I loathe getting into individual file editing, I can do it if I have to.  I do make simple patches, merge patches, bashed, etc.

 

I've got several Sexlab mods in and working.  I've some across several animations I don't care for.  I am also at ~17K animations in Nemesis, and haven't added any sexlab combat or creature mods yet.  I fear I am going to hit that (21K?) limit.  Questions:

 

1.  I only want dog, wolf, and werewolf creature anims.  Do creature anims that process through FNIS count against the Nemesis total? Is there a way to pick and choose which animations get installed somewhere in the several mods needed to make creature sex work?  Preferable outside of MCM, before those anims get counted in either FNIS or Nemesis?

 

2. If I unselect an animation from either ZAZ or SL Anims in MCM, does that preclude them from getting counted next time I run Nemesis?  If not, how might I remove them completely from what Nemesis processes and what sexlab uses?  (I'm talking whole catagories here:  Foot sex, pony, titfucking . . . in other situations I want similar anims from one pack over another) 

 

3.  Due to my characters stature, many animations do not line up well.  I tried the automatic resizing option in sexlab, but found the result jarring as hell.  If I want to edit individual animations to fit my character, will those changes be applied globally?  If I save alignment changes to an NPC character, will that apply also to that NPC vs other NPC animations?

 

4.  How is the editing best done?  should I set the animation time for each stage to be as long as possible, and edit the animation as it plays?  

 

5.  When animations play, there is this whole bizarre dance the actors go through, I am assuming it's to line them up correctly for the animation.  It's kind of unnerving.  Is there a way to avoid this, other than fading to black before the scene start?

 

I would like to say, for new users, IMO 90% of the information I've been after is here, on this site, in text, waiting to be read.  I'm a big fan of not expecting the mod community to do all of the thinking for me, and get the frustration that arises from the same questions over and over.

 

I know this is a lot, but if it means anything, I've gotten quite a Sexlab modlist going, and appearing thus far to all be in working order.  This is attributed entirely to the vast information available about the process, the mods, and from the mod makers and users on this site.  The sexlab community does itself tremendous credit, I think, in providing information and support, and I want to thank you all for that.

[scarebear2403]

Mods outside of animation packs are a drop in the bucket in regrds to anim count. If you have all your animation packs installed already you should be good. Zaz and devious devices will also hog up a lot of slots.

 

1. Yes they do count. Some packs offer choices, others are all or nothing. Sexlab also has a limit. But you can disable animations you don't want and rebuild the registry. You will be discounted the slots. But you can't be discounted fnis slots. Zaz is a good example of an animation slot hog. 90% of the anims will never get used in most peoples load orders.

 

2. No. It is generated into a single hkz file for each different entitiy (actor, troll, dog etc.)when generated. That is what fnis is counting.  Removing animations from sexlab registry is easy (see 1.) You can also deselect the animations you dont want in sexlab animation loader when you build your registry there.

 

3. Scale is tricky. Different animators use different scale. Sexlabs scaler is buggy and as you said jarring. Best to scale to what fits most of your anims and manually adjust any outliers as you go, Anything you manually adjust will be remembered on that save. Not sure about imported settings, never tested or if I did I dont remember if it works.

 

4. Depends on what you are editing. Not sure how to answer this.

 

5. Fade to black or put up with it. Its unavoidable. It's the same in sims 4 and fallout 4. Entities need to be aligned first.

[anjenthedog]

I have one player who's ~5ft tall (in realworld #s). I think I can at least partially answer #3,  and 4, the first two I hain't any idea. I select all the animations I register in a piecemeal fashion rather than clicking the "select all" button, but I get where you're going., FNIS processes it all so it all contributes to load no matter if they're used or not, right?

 

As to adjustments Globally? No-ish. that is, no you can't edit one single animation sequence (or one animation sequence step) and "magically" solve a global fit for all steps and all sequences. Doesn't work that way. Each sequence Stage needs to be adjusted, and each sequence is unique, so its stages need to be adjusted...for every sequence you intend to use. It sure would be nice, but afaik there's no mod that does that as of yet

 

I configure SL for manual sequence stepping, then set the position adjust so that it affects only the current step. Once a given sequence is adjusted for a given set of participants, it should remain so for that set of participants (or for equally sized representatives of members of that group). But each new animation sequence needs to be adjusted. (ie adjust in situ)

 

Edit: The reason I do it that way is because there are often minute differences (side to side, forward backward, up down) between a given sequence's

stages, that WHEN a non stage-only adjustment is used, it mispositions another stage, then you adjust that stage and now you've screwed up the one you adjusted before... best imo to adjust each stage independently, so that they're all saved in SL's sequence position json file for that set of participants as close to dead on as possible. And same goes for manual sequence stepping, because adjusting position can take more time than automatic sequencing sometimes allows... And now you've repositioned one sequence, Yay!

 

And of course, you'll ultimately have to accept (ie internally cope) that you'll often run into unresolvable body mismatching "in the wild", until such a time that some brillig mod author figures out how to use mouth nodes and other nodes to auto aim heads and hunch bodies like real people do to account for a foot  (ie ~30.5cm) or more, or less of height difference Especially if you any NPC body randomizers 

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by anjenthedog
clarifications

[ghostdog01neo]

Thank you @scarebear2403 and @anjenthedogboth for your replies.  Between the two, I've got the info I need.

 

@anjenthedog, you said:

 

1 hour ago, anjenthedog said:

And of course, you'll ultimately have to accept (ie internally cope) that you'll often run into unresolvable body mismatching "in the wild", until such a time that some brillig mod author figures out how to use mouth nodes and other nodes to auto aim heads and hunch bodies like real people do to account for a foot  (ie ~30.5cm) or more, or less of height difference Especially if you any NPC body randomizers 

 

 

I am waffling back and forth on body randomizers.  Love my big-boobed character, but when I see identical copies of her body everywhere, it kinda looses the charm.  My only reservation is that it may make body mismatching even worse.

 

Thanks again.

[anjenthedog]

FWIW, with AutoBody, there's a spell (?shout?, I can't recall) that you can use to undo any changes to a targeted NPC if they offend (drops them back to whatever they were before the mod applied its changes), and another to apply a particular Bodyslide preset to a targeted NPC, so there's that... and you can also reduce the number of presets in the "pool" that the randomizer accesses for its global changes to NPCs, although I don't know the details off hand. I think it's by using some sort of ini file. the mod page should provide details

Edited July 14, 2023 by anjenthedog