Extended Creature Skeletons

[sXEEL]

Extended Creature Skeletons

View File

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Working extended creature skeletons. Artists can now create full-fledged animations featuring creatures. Still, skinning of the models is required for in-game use.

 

Currently, these are only available for the dog and feral ghoul. I also can't guarantee that your game won't have any bugs like model freezes, etc.

 

You can use these developments in your projects as you wish.

 

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• Submitter
  sXEEL
• Submitted
  04/21/26
• Category
  Modders Resources
• Requirements
  Fallout 4 ver. 1.10.163.0.
  But, I don't see any reason why these skeletons wouldn't work with the next-gen update. Although, I haven't tested it.

 

[lee3310]

This is great news. @darthroman Is the last active FO4 animator for creature as far as i know. He might be interested in providing the skinned meshes for those.

[darthroman]

1 hour ago, lee3310 said:

This is great news. @darthroman Is the last active FO4 animator for creature as far as i know. He might be interested in providing the skinned meshes for those.

skinning a mesh is a real pain for me, both in Outfit Studio and 3D Max. 😁

[EngineGaming]

@sXEELEver thinking of collaborating? I can also skin meshes to nearly perfection from what we got: Creature resources 1 and 2, and add bones to existing skeletons as well. Interesting that you managed to edit inside of hkx, and if it works without CTD, that would be a bonus!!

Little note: the dogmeat can also be realigned (updated) the bones: for the penis, a base bone as a parent before penis and balls bones. The feralghoul is ok.

[sXEEL]

15 hours ago, EngineGaming said:

Ever thinking of collaborating? I can also skin meshes to nearly perfection from what we got: Creature resources 1 and 2, and add bones to existing skeletons as well. Interesting that you managed to edit inside of hkx, and if it works without CTD, that would be a bonus!!

I'm not currently considering collaboration. I'm too busy IRL and Fallout 4 has become a bit boring for me. And as I mentioned in the description, you can use these developments however you like, including modifying them, adding bones, etc. But keep in mind that simply changing the bone positions isn't enough; you also need to make the corresponding changes in the hkx file. Honestly, I don't really understand how it works. I was mostly acting on intuition. But in the end, everything worked, and I even managed to skin the models a bit and test everything in-game with a few animations. However, there is a problem with ghouls freezing when they die and I don't know how to fix it.

 

16 hours ago, EngineGaming said:

Little note: the dogmeat can also be realigned (updated) the bones: for the penis, a base bone as a parent before penis and balls bones. The feralghoul is ok.

Do you think a base bone is necessary? Why?

[darthroman]

3 hours ago, sXEEL said:

I'm not currently considering collaboration. I'm too busy IRL and Fallout 4 has become a bit boring for me. And as I mentioned in the description, you can use these developments however you like, including modifying them, adding bones, etc. But keep in mind that simply changing the bone positions isn't enough; you also need to make the corresponding changes in the hkx file. Honestly, I don't really understand how it works. I was mostly acting on intuition. But in the end, everything worked, and I even managed to skin the models a bit and test everything in-game with a few animations. However, there is a problem with ghouls freezing when they die and I don't know how to fix it.

 

Do you think a base bone is necessary? Why?

You have freezing model because some bones and ragdoll unmapped IDs are wrong in skeleton.hkx or the critical number of bones has been reached and needs to be reduced

[sXEEL]

On 4/22/2026 at 7:16 PM, darthroman said:

You have freezing model because some bones and ragdoll unmapped IDs are wrong in skeleton.hkx or the critical number of bones has been reached and needs to be reduced

Thanks for the advice. I looked at the skeleton.hkx file again and found an error in the parentIndices section. This didn't solve the problem, although it seemed to reduce the number of body freezes. I'm not sure about the bone count. I'm also concerned that some information is lost when converting from hkx to xml and back. If that's the issue, I'm completely helpless.

[darthroman]

8 hours ago, sXEEL said:

Thanks for the advice. I looked at the skeleton.hkx file again and found an error in the parentIndices section. This didn't solve the problem, although it seemed to reduce the number of body freezes. I'm not sure about the bone count. I'm also concerned that some information is lost when converting from hkx to xml and back. If that's the issue, I'm completely helpless.

Don't worry, for this to work, your new bones need to be at the end of the list, and when you export them (let's say from the Havok Creation Tool), you give the skeleton a text list of bones in strict order. And insert only your new bones and their coordinates into the original source skeleton.

[sXEEL]

On 4/25/2026 at 6:48 PM, darthroman said:

Don't worry, for this to work, your new bones need to be at the end of the list, and when you export them (let's say from the Havok Creation Tool), you give the skeleton a text list of bones in strict order. And insert only your new bones and their coordinates into the original source skeleton.

That's exactly what I did. Plus, I added the new bones to the unmapped list at the very end.

[gamermk13]

Should we expect new animations or new creatures?

[sXEEL]

On 5/1/2026 at 7:09 PM, gamermk13 said:

Should we expect new animations or new creatures?

Well, I definitely won't be making skeletons of new creatures anytime soon.

[judge007]

@sXEEL

 

Is this usable as is or is it a modders resource?

[sXEEL]

On 5/8/2026 at 6:57 PM, judge007 said:

@sXEEL

 

Is this usable as is or is it a modders resource?

I think it's both. This mod modifies the in-game skeletons, adding new bones. However, without skinning, this mod has no effect. That's why I added it to the modders resource section.

[judge007]

Thank you.