Pandora as a replacement for FNIS? (Nemesis too?)

[AwfulGoose]

(I searched for "Pandora" and didn't find anything relating to this - apologies if a topic already exists.)

 

I saw a post about Pandora as a replacement to Nemesis/FNIS on Reddit - since it has been publicly available from a week ago.

Of course I wondered about the Creature Animations - they appear to have a compatibility tool for those.

 

Does anyone have any comment/information on this and if it is worth switching over?

 

https://kemono.su/patreon/user/70726753/post/79607029

 

 

[kamoewarrior]

35 minutes ago, AwfulGoose said:

(I searched for "Pandora" and didn't find anything relating to this - apologies if a topic already exists.)

 

I saw a post about Pandora as a replacement to Nemesis/FNIS on Reddit - since it has been publicly available from a week ago.

Of course I wondered about the Creature Animations - they appear to have a compatibility tool for those.

 

Does anyone have any comment/information on this and if it is worth switching over?

 

https://kemono.su/patreon/user/70726753/post/79607029

 

 

FNIS has been tried and tested over the years and that Pandora has been around for what? A couple of weeks? Months? If it were up to me I wouldn't cross fingers just yet.

 

FNIS Nemesis works perfectly fine for most mods so I'm not keen on replacing them and potentially messing up my setup again.

 

If you are really curious about compatibility and assuming Pandora works exactly like FNIS and Nemesis just test them yourself. Use SL Matchmaker or Hentai Creatures from MNC to test creature animations.

[MadMansGun]

i don't see any talk of LE support, so it's kind of useless to me.

[ebbluminous]

As it's a week old (public;y), probably too early for most to comment - Never heard of it til this post.

[xcrunner15]

first off idk why tf I keep seeing people linking the kemono thread LOL that one is 5 releases behind the github release which is free

 

Anyway I've used it pretty extensively. Its an absolute godsend for combat and movement animations especially when trying to cram in tons of oar conditions. Patches in 3 seconds for me usually. At full release it should support FNIS completely and it will be the only patcher you need but currently it only supports mods in nemesis format. That includes a decent number of ostim mods but not any for SL afaik. The author has a manual conversion tool for FNIS lists but its made specifically for Ostim mods and other FNIS lists require extensive manual tweaking to be recognized by the tool.

 

Eventually this list may be a godsend here but for the time being its best suited for people who don't use many sex mods. you can use it to test your combat animations for compatibility before running nemesis since it works quite well for those and patches in an instant

[shrtjsrtj]

Is it possible to run this alongside FNIS?

 

I gave up on Nemesis as it took forever and kept crashing, but if it's possible to run them Pandora+FINS I would probably check it out.

[Methos]

10 hours ago, shrtjsrtj said:

Is it possible to run this alongside FNIS?

 

I gave up on Nemesis as it took forever and kept crashing, but if it's possible to run them Pandora+FINS I would probably check it out.

You need to limit the threads Nemesis is running on by right clicking it in Task Manager and limiting the affinity to 1/4th of what your processor has. If you're using Windows 11, it will be under the details tab, Windows 10 or w/e there's probably a million things online to see how to limit processor affinity on a program.

On another note, I cannot get Pandora to run for the life of me. I have no clue if it patches properly, on top of that animations don't show up ingame. ?‍♂️

And since the genius above is crying about people not using the latest version while not linking it himself, here's the new one for everyone: https://github.com/Monitor144hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/releases

Edited November 17, 2023 by Methos

[xcrunner15]

On 11/17/2023 at 1:22 AM, shrtjsrtj said:

Is it possible to run this alongside FNIS?

 

I gave up on Nemesis as it took forever and kept crashing, but if it's possible to run them Pandora+FINS I would probably check it out.

no absolutely not. this will replace FNIS but its totally incompatible with it ingame. Believe me I tried using FNIS for sex mods and pandora for the rest but it doesnt work. If you want FNIS mods you have to wait on this one, at least until he releases a way to patch fnis stuff other than ostim. it is planned.

 

18 hours ago, Methos said:

You need to limit the threads Nemesis is running on by right clicking it in Task Manager and limiting the affinity to 1/4th of what your processor has. If you're using Windows 11, it will be under the details tab, Windows 10 or w/e there's probably a million things online to see how to limit processor affinity on a program.

On another note, I cannot get Pandora to run for the life of me. I have no clue if it patches properly, on top of that animations don't show up ingame. ?‍♂️

you do not ever need to mess with nemesis affinities. idk why that suggestion is so common but its BS. Your issues are due to mod incompatibilities. The fact pandora doesn't work either is proof of that. Remove most of your animation mods until pandora patches and add them back one by one. Do this even if you're gonna use nemesis bc pandora will fail quicker instead of having to run an engine update and a longer patch

 

 

18 hours ago, Methos said:

And since the genius above is crying about people not using the latest version while not linking it himself, here's the new one for everyone: https://github.com/Monitor144hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/releases

 

because its useless to 99% of people here in its current stage. idk whose crying but I am baffled that someone could find it on a website for piracy (probably against LL rules to post that link btw) easier than the github post

[nilead]

On 11/18/2023 at 2:39 PM, xcrunner15 said:

you do not ever need to mess with nemesis affinities. idk why that suggestion is so common but its BS. Your issues are due to mod incompatibilities.

Mostly because it works for so many. You cannot solve mod incompatibility by limiting nemesis CPU usage. It's crashes - you can. On my old rig that would be just about the only way to have it not crash. Not going to pretend to understand why that is the case, but empirically - it works.

[sfdrake]

I heard of pandora months ago, it is supposed to run both people and animal animations or so I thought..... but then so is the alleged nemesis recode too

Edited December 12, 2023 by sfdrake

[VenomousOuroboros]

Nemesis recode?  Tell me more!

[Manjimon]

Nemesis continually crashes for me and these days won't even properly launch (refuses to update its engine without throwing a Fatal Error and crashing to MO2), so I do in fact wish I knew how Pandora worked, esp. with respect to MCO and stuff. It doesn't seem to be properly setting up the MCO animations.

[xcrunner15]

On 12/9/2023 at 12:37 AM, nilead said:

Mostly because it works for so many. You cannot solve mod incompatibility by limiting nemesis CPU usage. It's crashes - you can. On my old rig that would be just about the only way to have it not crash. Not going to pretend to understand why that is the case, but empirically - it works.

perhaps if you have very dated hardware or an old windows version or something

 

 

newest version of pandora still doesnt work as an AIO but its become an integral part of my modlist setup. nemesis will not patch to completion with my mods but if I run pandora and put the meshes folder above my nemesis output folder and disable the pandora and nemesis folders from pandora output I can then wipe my nemesis output, update the engine, and it will patch correctly thanks to the pandora behavior files overriding whatever was the issue. Kinda janky but it works and even works with an FNIS output if I disable it during the patching and let nemesis override 

[hickups]

An FYI Monitor updated Pandora this afternoon with full creature support and added a python script that can convert FNIS anim's, since i have no idea how to use  said script i'm point others to it who can maybe create a guide, but needless to say the days of needing to use FNIS alongside Nemesis are well and truly numbered see the link below.

 

https://github.com/Monitor144hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/releases

Edited December 21, 2023 by hickups

[Player80]

On 12/24/2023 at 6:31 AM, xcrunner15 said:

 

 

The revolution is here: https://github.com/Monitor144hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/discussions/39

 

Add those files along with hkxcmd and hkxconv to your Pandora patch folder and add the bat as an mo2 executable. Fully automated, really bad grouping for mods so you gotta click a ton in the Pandora patcher but it actually works. The original script had no real instructions on usage and didn't make sense so this will do for now. Urge anyone with python experience to fix that up. If you distribute any patches made with it please do manually edit the info files to include author name and a link if possible as I don't want people to go uncredited and don't know how to query mo2 meta files. Also please limit any GitHub posts on this topic to discussions section not issues as it's not monitor's responsibility to debug our attempts to patch unsupported mods

 

Ran this on a 50k animation mod list based off nefaram with mco/abr and a bunch of combat animations in addition to a full suite of fnis mods from here. Works nearly flawlessly, total process takes 1/3rd as long as running fnis and then nemesis. Not a creature guy but I tested on a flame atronach and can confirm non-human behaviors work.

 

The script has a flag to ignore errors on old fnis mods with deprecated hkx code. it does produce a file but didn't seem to play ingame. Only tried on serial strip. Possibly they could be manually adjusted or converted via another method but these are not common

I keep getting the same log "Pandora Inject Patch Generator - by Monitor144hz. Ensure that hkxcmd.exe exists beside this script, as well as any optional unpacked xml files".

 

Here's my setup:

I got both hkxcmd and hkxconv from Pandora's "Graph Injection" link, but I also tried with files I've found on this forum and on the nexus. I even tried with the hkxcmd that is shipped with FNIS, both for users and for modders.

 

Do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

 

I should probably ask this to the author themselves but since you managed to make it work on your end, I might as well try here first.

 

EDIT: Learned to read properly right after asking here...

I needed to put the bat, py and the two executables alongside Pandora's executable, not in another folder

Edited December 26, 2023 by Player80

[ravensane]

How is this going? Was this able to be a standalone for anyone yet? And not to pry but how heavy of a SL and animation packs are you able to push through it?

[hickups]

We've arrived Gentlemen, we have arrived, one install, one button click no conversions needed everything in one place kiss FNIS and Nemesis good bye, https://github.com/Monitor144hz/Pandora-Behaviour-Engine-Plus/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha if you havent subbed to Monitor's Patreon yet drop the man a sub he bloody well deserves it.

Edited January 3 by hickups

[MadMansGun]

FAIL, still no LE support, no argonian/khajiit tail animation support, and no creature paired/killmove animation support.

 

Edited January 3 by MadMansGun

[Just Don't]

22 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

FAIL, still no LE support

Ah lets face it, if someone is still playing LE in 2024 it's not because they care about the modern stuff. For LE FNIS is perfectly functional, save the 15 or so mods relying on Nemesis there's no need for anything else.

 

It's still green, I'd wait an official release and a few weeks on top of it to iron out the most common issues before trying it.

[MadMansGun]

46 minutes ago, Just Don't said:

if someone is still playing LE in 2024 it's not because they care about the modern stuff

i can't use SE/AE to create animations, the max plugin only works with LE files, also the GOG version of skyrim that i use for SE port testing does not come with the creation kit so scripting in SE is also out of the question for me.

[ebbluminous]

4 hours ago, Just Don't said:

Ah lets face it, if someone is still playing LE in 2024 it's not because they care about the modern stuff. For LE FNIS is perfectly functional, save the 15 or so mods relying on Nemesis there's no need for anything else.

 

It's still green, I'd wait an official release and a few weeks on top of it to iron out the most common issues before trying it.

Waiting is my plan

 

Can't wait til kill FNIS with fire

[Just Don't]

11 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i can't use SE/AE to create animations, the max plugin only works with LE files, also the GOG version of skyrim that i use for SE port testing does not come with the creation kit so scripting in SE is also out of the question for me.

You can still create LE files and port them to SE. It'd be nice to have this new tool in LE too for playtesting or whatever, maybe that's something that is added later. But its existence shouldn't pose any threats to the process you already have.

Also I understand you're going out of your way to support both releases, but using GOG instead of the regular Steam release is like shooting yourself in the foot with the lack of CK and all of that. SE was even given for free to anyone who owned LE prior to the SE launch on Steam.

[MadMansGun]

gog version does not have to deal with that update bullshit, so the lack of a CK is far outweighed by having a test platform that will fucking run when i tell it to.

and as stated above max can't work with SE files, also SE hkx files can't be back ported* to LE, the LE to SE processes deletes a bunch of data from the files.

 

*then there is the extra annoyance that this porting bullshit should of been unnecessary in the first place, the hkx files i directly export from havok 2010 work in both game versions WITHOUT porting, but everyone else (including both the fnis & nemishit programs themselves) uses hkxcmd, which does not create proper hkx files for skyrim, just LE or SE "compatible" files.

 

[Just Don't]

3 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

gog version does not have to deal with that update bullshit, so the lack of a CK is far outweighed by having a test platform that will fucking run when i tell it to.

You can prevent Steam updates in several ways. Acquiring the game again in a different platform only to avoid 2 mins of setup is a bit extreme. But you do you.

As for the LE to SE thing, I don't know, I already shared my thoughts.

[shrtjsrtj]

4 hours ago, Just Don't said:

You can prevent Steam updates in several ways. Acquiring the game again in a different platform only to avoid 2 mins of setup is a bit extreme. But you do you.

As for the LE to SE thing, I don't know, I already shared my thoughts.

 

Steam had a big UI update last year and it nuked my only update when launch settings for Skyrim, that was fun.

 

Why try and fight it with hacks and tweaks when for the cost of a cup of coffee or two, it'll be something never you have to worry about again? Especially on a test platform?

 

I recently bought AE on GOG even though I already have SE on Steam just to get away from Steam nonsense. I'll be giving Pandora a go when I get things set up but I'm wary of the .NET 7 requirement, any Linux users tried out Pandora yet?