How to start non-idle animations?

[greyspammer]

Hello everyone and Merry Xmas!

 

Here's my question: I already know how to play idle animations. But when I open an actor in the CK and go to the animation tab, I see that there are a lot more animations available. Some of them even play in the preview window. And, despite having googled for the better part of today, I cannot figure out how to play those animations.

 

As an examle: IdleBookDoubleCheckTable.hkx. How does one play that from a papyrus script?

 

I've also found ObjectReference.PlayAnimation and Debug.SendAnimationEvent in the CK wiki. But they require an event name which I don't have.

 

 

 

[Guest]

Use Debug.SendAnimationEvent(ActorThatPlaysTheAnim, "NameOfTheAnimEvent")

 

To find names for the anim event you have two options:

1) Vanilla Animations: Open CK go in the menu Animations, find how the animation you wish to play it is called. This will be the "AnimEventName"

2) Animations added through FNIS: find the file FNIS_<ModNama>_List.txt, open it. You will find the anim event names just before the actual animation file name.

 

[greyspammer]

Use Debug.SendAnimationEvent(ActorThatPlaysTheAnim, "NameOfTheAnimEvent")

 

To find names for the anim event you have two options:

1) Vanilla Animations: Open CK go in the menu Animations, find how the animation you wish to play it is called. This will be the "AnimEventName"

2) Animations added through FNIS: find the file FNIS_<ModNama>_List.txt, open it. You will find the anim event names just before the actual animation file name.

 

First, thanks for hint no. 2. I didn't know that and will certainly keep it in mind.

 

Now to the problem: The animation I mentioned (IdleBookDoubleCheckTable.hkx) does not show up in any of these two locations. The only character anim in the animation window in the CK is Actors\character\behaviors\0_Master.hkx. The rest are animals. The file I'm looking for (actors\character\animations\idlebookdoublechecktable.hkx) is not in the list.

 

And neither does it show up in any FNIS file, probably because its a vanilla animation.

[Guest]

It is a vanilla animation.

You have to expand all the idle categories in the "character" animations, until you will find it.

(I don't remember its AnimationEvent name.)

[greyspammer]

It is a vanilla animation.

You have to expand all the idle categories in the "character" animations, until you will find it.

(I don't remember its AnimationEvent name.)

 

I feel really stupid, but I cannot find it. I went through the idle categories thrice. And then, just to be safe, I expanded all nodes in the entire tree and did an incremental search (typing "idlebookdouble"). But it stops at IdleBook_Reading because there's no match for the 'd' after the 'k'.

 

Am I in the right window? I selected Gameplay -> Animations from the main menu bar.

[Guest]

The window is the right one.

But there is a possibility, that the animation you are looking for, is a part of a HK anim composed of multiple stages.

In this case there will not be an evident animevent (there is one, but not visible in CK.)

 

Possible quick finding: edit Skyrim.esm using TES5Edit. (Of course you don't have to modify it.)

Search for the name of the animation everywhere using the search tool.

 

 

In any case, here the standard AnimEvents regarding "books":

 

IdleBook_Read, IdleBook_PageTurn, IdleBook_OnePage, IdleChairBook_OnePage.

 

 

If you still don't find it, just use FNIS to add an AnimEvent to the HKX anim (that you have to copy and move in a folder following FNIS for modders instructions.)

And then you can use is.

 

[fore]

IdleBookDoubleCheckTable.hkx is part of a rather complicated furniture animation structure started with "IdleTG06TranslationEnter". 

 

Since it's only an example for you it would be too much to fully investigate and and describe what this whole structure does. It'S even possible that you cannot call said animation without a script.

 

If you want to better understand what is happening in the behavior files, you can use CondenseBehavior, available at Nexus. But even with that it requires some experience to understand animation structures like this.