Fallout 4 Blender Animation Kit

[dagobaking]

Fallout 4 Blender Animation Kit

View File

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This is a kit to help streamline animation creation via Blender.

 

It still takes a bit of set-up. But, once set-up, publishing game files should be much easier.

 

Includes:

 

Male and Female rigs (vanilla mesh but Zex skeleton) wrist twist and shoulder automation.

The required bonelist and havok config files for Zex.

A bat script that automates running other tools to convert FBX to HKX with one action.

A Blender add-on that automates steps needed to bake/export animations to FBX. (splits multi-actor anims into multiple FBX for you)

Detailed instructions for set-up and use.

 

Credits:

SynthOverboss - Helping me with various import solutions.

EngineGaming - Helping me also with importing and other processes new to me.

andrelo1 - For FBXImporter

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• Submitter
  dagobaking
• Submitted
  03/03/2024
• Category
  Modders Resources
• Requires
  Blender, Havok Content Tools, FBXImporter, a few free Blender add-ons.

 

[dagobaking]

FYI - There is a name/id conflict that happens when you bring multiple actors into one scene. It should actually publish fine still. But, it reportedly breaks the "convenience panel" that allows turning groups of controls off/on.

 

I'll investigate further and update the instructions to include the steps needed to fix in the future.

[ninjabes]

Quick question, Is this just for AAF scenes and third person anims or can this be used for first person animation work as well?

[Allnarta]

Thanks for the kit! I tested it and it appears to work without issues.

Is there a chance to get either creature skeleton set-ups or some kind of guide how to properly set-up skeleton/bonelist for creatures so they work with .bat converter and .py exporter? I'd like to take a hand on creatures stuff as it always lack, but for F4 and all the .hkx stuff I don't know where to begin and how to set-up skeleton from scratch.

[South8028]

On 6/7/2025 at 3:22 PM, Allnarta said:

Thanks for the kit! I tested it and it appears to work without issues.

Is there a chance to get either creature skeleton set-ups or some kind of guide how to properly set-up skeleton/bonelist for creatures so they work with .bat converter and .py exporter? I'd like to take a hand on creatures stuff as it always lack, but for F4 and all the .hkx stuff I don't know where to begin and how to set-up skeleton from scratch.

I have a rig.txt for a human/synth, a cat and a super mutant with hierarchy. But I use 3ds and hct2014. I don't know how in blender, but for 3ds it is very easy to make a rig and rig.txt. Just open any skeleton.nif and rewrite the bones in hierarchy order. Joints must be in capital letters, otherwise the bones will twist later.It's even easier to get a list of bones from skeleton.hkx. You need to unpack it into xml and copy the list, then highlight the joints in capital letters by looking at them in nif.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16694

Here is hkxPack with a window interface. Very convenient.

[Allnarta]

45 minutes ago, South8028 said:

I have a rig.txt for a human/synth, a cat and a super mutant with hierarchy. But I use 3ds and hct2014. I don't know how in blender, but for 3ds it is very easy to make a rig and rig.txt. Just open any skeleton.nif and rewrite the bones in hierarchy order. Joints must be in capital letters, otherwise the bones will twist later.It's even easier to get a list of bones from skeleton.hkx. You need to unpack it into xml and copy the list, then highlight the joints in capital letters by looking at them in nif.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16694

Here is hkxPack with a window interface. Very convenient.

 

As it turned out, all this is not necessary anymore, as there is SAMLib blender addon by Maxie (ScreenArcher Menu author, can be found on their Discord) which allows straightforward export to .hkx from blender with one ckick.

Current version has only few skeleton binaries to work with, but Maxie was kind enough to dump all existant skeletons for DLC and vanilla game, which will be included in next update, which means blender users now can export animations from blender to Fallout 4 just as is.

[dagobaking]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:01 PM, ninjabes said:

Quick question, Is this just for AAF scenes and third person anims or can this be used for first person animation work as well?

 

Sorry for the long delay replying. I forgot to click "follow" back when this was posted.

 

This is for third person animations only. A different rig would be needed for the first person animations.

 

On 6/7/2025 at 5:22 AM, Allnarta said:

Thanks for the kit! I tested it and it appears to work without issues.

Is there a chance to get either creature skeleton set-ups or some kind of guide how to properly set-up skeleton/bonelist for creatures so they work with .bat converter and .py exporter? I'd like to take a hand on creatures stuff as it always lack, but for F4 and all the .hkx stuff I don't know where to begin and how to set-up skeleton from scratch.

 

Updating the Blender Kit to handle creature exports would be pretty easy. You would just put that creatures bone list in bonelist.txt

But, in my view, to really give the community the right tools:

 

1) Someone needs to make expanded skeletons for all creatures. Just like ZEX for humans, there needs to be a similar expansion for creatures so that they can have rigged parts that don't exist in vanilla. This is not really very hard to do for someone that knows a bit of 3D.

 

2) A complete rig should be made for each creature. Not just a skeleton you can move with no IK/FK, handles, constraints, auto-movement, etc.

 

Working to get nice looking animation results from animating a bare skeleton is really inefficient.

 

On 6/9/2025 at 9:18 AM, South8028 said:

I have a rig.txt for a human/synth, a cat and a super mutant with hierarchy. But I use 3ds and hct2014. I don't know how in blender, but for 3ds it is very easy to make a rig and rig.txt. Just open any skeleton.nif and rewrite the bones in hierarchy order. Joints must be in capital letters, otherwise the bones will twist later.It's even easier to get a list of bones from skeleton.hkx. You need to unpack it into xml and copy the list, then highlight the joints in capital letters by looking at them in nif.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16694

Here is hkxPack with a window interface. Very convenient.

 

That is just the bone list to be used with the Havok tool export step. Not really a rig.

 

On 6/9/2025 at 10:06 AM, Allnarta said:

 

As it turned out, all this is not necessary anymore, as there is SAMLib blender addon by Maxie (ScreenArcher Menu author, can be found on their Discord) which allows straightforward export to .hkx from blender with one ckick.

Current version has only few skeleton binaries to work with, but Maxie was kind enough to dump all existant skeletons for DLC and vanilla game, which will be included in next update, which means blender users now can export animations from blender to Fallout 4 just as is.

 

That is a helpful tool for import/export. But, its not really about the rig side. For example, with humans, the wrists have a 3 bone twist system. Part of the job of a full rig is to automate that twist motion. I haven't looked at all creatures. But, I imagine they have similar aspects.

 

In my experience, its quite a lot of work making a full rig for each character. Its more than I'm comfortable doing for the entire creature set. But, with tools like Rigify, you can automate a lot of the work, then work in the customizations for arm twist (or tail twist or whatever the original authors intended for each char).

 

Rigify is pretty well documented and widely used. Check out youtube tutorials on it. Would be very helpful I think to have those.

 

(PS: One tip about making a rig if anyone wants to tackle that: Most auto-rigging tools like rigify assume you are making a rig for a character that doesn't exist. But, as modders, that is not our case. The best solution I found is to make the rig as normal. But, dont bind it to the mesh. Instead, just import a second armature (the skeleton) in the Fallout 4 format/structure and bind the mesh to that. Then go through and set up Transform Constraints that apply any movements to your Control Rig to the Fallout 4 rig. Then you get the best of both worlds. One armature that is exactly as Fallout 4 expects it and a control rig that is cleaned up of all the oddities that the vanilla armature has.)

Edited March 13 by dagobaking