HKXPack/HKXAnim - Animations in FO4

[AsariX]

 

Just something I ...

Nope. That is not supported by the game engine.

 

 

Ah, darn shame. It must be something the Second Life developers activated in or tacked onto the engine themselves then (SL is also Havok based, but each use of the engine can give entirely different files and results). And I suspect merging animations would then be, as Dexes suggests, somewhere deep in the behaviour system.

[pipdude]

Anton did some interesting things with his behavior tool: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53271

 

I'm not sure if it's an overlapping/priority system rather than simply triggering animations that affect a smaller set of bones. It looks like the logic of "priority" is handled with more of a keyword/state system.

[DexesTTP]

Ok, progress : 

 

I guess there is a need to read the original bones positions and then compute them with the skeleton before storing the animation... because what the animation does is squeeze all bones at 0, 0.

 

For the record, this was Leito's animation.

[D_ManXX2]

 

 

Just something I wonder now, which is a bit technical, so maybe you figured out whether it's included or not:

 

Do the animations in Fallout support combining animations, or playing two animations at once? This is actually something I remember from Second Life. Animations had "priorities", and the animation with the highest priority would override animations of a lower priority. However, if the higher priority animation didn't specifically animate some joint, then that joint could still be moved by an animation of a lower priority at the same time!

 

Just an example of what could be done with this:

2 animation.

The first animation is a high priority animation for raising the characters left arm to look at his or her watch. Only neck and arm joints are actually animated, other joints are left in a "default" or "neutral" state.

The second animation is a mid-priority animation for walking. Almost all joints are animated for relatively natural movement: legs, arms, shoulders, chest/spine, neck head. Basically everything.

Running these two together resulted in a checking-watch-while-walking animation. For something like this, the walk animation was usually on a loop, while the check-watch animation was usually non-looped, but just occasionally triggered on a timer.

 

That was a really simple example, but there are dozens of applications. Not only walking-while-checking-watch, but also smoke/drink-when-seated, and even trickery to set the foot in a rigid angled position for high heels (usually combined with a slightly raised hip-offset for positioning).

 

But, these things are needed:

-Neutral or relaxed states/positions for joints

-Animation priority settings (but animators need to be educated very well on this matter, or half of them will set their priority to max for no other reason than stupid arrogance >.< )

-Being able to run multiple animations at the same time

 

 

The high priority is only to prevent other animations from fucking up your own. Sometimes it is neccecary to make the animation 99 or else if you see wondering npc certain part of the body will be moving the wrong direction and the animation will not look like it is suppose to do.

 

You can even see this part happening on some of leito animation the arm will bend towards another npc that would walk really close to where the original animations is triggered.,

 

If the piority was set high then this would not have happened.

[AsariX]

 

Just something I wonder now, which is a bit technical, so maybe you figured out whether it's included or not:

 

Do the animations in Fallout support combining animations, or playing two animations at once? This is actually something I remember from Second Life. Animations had "priorities", and the animation with the highest priority would override animations of a lower priority. However, if the higher priority animation didn't specifically animate some joint, then that joint could still be moved by an animation of a lower priority at the same time!

 

Just an example of what could be done with this:

2 animation.

The first animation is a high priority animation for raising the characters left arm to look at his or her watch. Only neck and arm joints are actually animated, other joints are left in a "default" or "neutral" state.

The second animation is a mid-priority animation for walking. Almost all joints are animated for relatively natural movement: legs, arms, shoulders, chest/spine, neck head. Basically everything.

Running these two together resulted in a checking-watch-while-walking animation. For something like this, the walk animation was usually on a loop, while the check-watch animation was usually non-looped, but just occasionally triggered on a timer.

 

That was a really simple example, but there are dozens of applications. Not only walking-while-checking-watch, but also smoke/drink-when-seated, and even trickery to set the foot in a rigid angled position for high heels (usually combined with a slightly raised hip-offset for positioning).

 

But, these things are needed:

-Neutral or relaxed states/positions for joints

-Animation priority settings (but animators need to be educated very well on this matter, or half of them will set their priority to max for no other reason than stupid arrogance >.< )

-Being able to run multiple animations at the same time

 

The high priority is only to prevent other animations from fucking up your own. Sometimes it is neccecary to make the animation 99 or else if you see wondering npc certain part of the body will be moving the wrong direction and the animation will not look like it is suppose to do.

 

 

In that case, the problem is usually that the other animation was prioritized too high. But what I've seen happening too much, is that animators maxed their own animations to circumvent that problem, instead of pointing out that the problem laid elsewhere. It's simply arrogant to assume that their animation should *always* be leading, no matter what. Many basic animations ended up locking out potential addons that could've made them better.

A simple walk, sit, stand, fly or swim animation doesn't need priority 1. Priority 4 is generally enough, leaving 3 priority ranks for custom details to add.

The solution to problems with conflicting animations is simple as well:

-advice users of the problem, and that they have other animations running that cause the conflict, which they should disable.

-Create a set of replacements for conflicting animations with proper priorities.

 

Anyway, it seems Fallouts' use of the Havok engine doesn't support combined animations, or that the feature is undocumented. Would be neat if it got hacked into system somehow, but before we would use it, some well documented guidelines would be needed with it, or we'd end up with maximum priority animations everywhere, rendering the whole feature useless.

 

[volfin]

Just something I wonder now, which is a bit technical, so maybe you figured out whether it's included or not:

 

Do the animations in Fallout support combining animations, or playing two animations at once? This is actually something I remember from Second Life. Animations had "priorities", and the animation with the highest priority would override animations of a lower priority. However, if the higher priority animation didn't specifically animate some joint, then that joint could still be moved by an animation of a lower priority at the same time!

 

Just an example of what could be done with this:

2 animation.

The first animation is a high priority animation for raising the characters left arm to look at his or her watch. Only neck and arm joints are actually animated, other joints are left in a "default" or "neutral" state.

The second animation is a mid-priority animation for walking. Almost all joints are animated for relatively natural movement: legs, arms, shoulders, chest/spine, neck head. Basically everything.

Running these two together resulted in a checking-watch-while-walking animation. For something like this, the walk animation was usually on a loop, while the check-watch animation was usually non-looped, but just occasionally triggered on a timer.

 

That was a really simple example, but there are dozens of applications. Not only walking-while-checking-watch, but also smoke/drink-when-seated, and even trickery to set the foot in a rigid angled position for high heels (usually combined with a slightly raised hip-offset for positioning).

 

But, these things are needed:

-Neutral or relaxed states/positions for joints

-Animation priority settings (but animators need to be educated very well on this matter, or half of them will set their priority to max for no other reason than stupid arrogance >.< )

-Being able to run multiple animations at the same time

Fallout actually does have something similar to this, Bethesda added it because it was clearly missing in Skyrim.

 

I don't know all the details, but they are called "flavors" and will play over top of other animations. A guy tried to explain it here in his Fallout mod description "what's an Idle/Flavor": http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6113/?

 

Clearly a lot more investigation into this needs to be done, but if flavors can be triggered over base animations, that would be fantastic.

[AsariX]

 

Just something I wonder now, which is a bit technical, so maybe you figured out whether it's included or not:

 

Do the animations in Fallout support combining animations, or playing two animations at once? This is actually something I remember from Second Life. Animations had "priorities", and the animation with the highest priority would override animations of a lower priority. However, if the higher priority animation didn't specifically animate some joint, then that joint could still be moved by an animation of a lower priority at the same time!

 

Just an example of what could be done with this:

2 animation.

The first animation is a high priority animation for raising the characters left arm to look at his or her watch. Only neck and arm joints are actually animated, other joints are left in a "default" or "neutral" state.

The second animation is a mid-priority animation for walking. Almost all joints are animated for relatively natural movement: legs, arms, shoulders, chest/spine, neck head. Basically everything.

Running these two together resulted in a checking-watch-while-walking animation. For something like this, the walk animation was usually on a loop, while the check-watch animation was usually non-looped, but just occasionally triggered on a timer.

 

That was a really simple example, but there are dozens of applications. Not only walking-while-checking-watch, but also smoke/drink-when-seated, and even trickery to set the foot in a rigid angled position for high heels (usually combined with a slightly raised hip-offset for positioning).

 

But, these things are needed:

-Neutral or relaxed states/positions for joints

-Animation priority settings (but animators need to be educated very well on this matter, or half of them will set their priority to max for no other reason than stupid arrogance >.< )

-Being able to run multiple animations at the same time

Fallout actually does have something similar to this, Bethesda added it because it was clearly missing in Skyrim.

 

I don't know all the details, but they are called "flavors" and will play over top of other animations. A guy tried to explain it here in his Fallout mod description "what's an Idle/Flavor": http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6113/?

 

Clearly a lot more investigation into this needs to be done, but if flavors can be triggered over base animations, that would be fantastic.

 

 

That's definitely promising, that there seem to be seperate animations combining together into one motion, though he's not entirely clear whether the animations merge sequentially or parallel, it would seem they're parallel merges. So if that's the case, the trick would be figuring out how these "flavor" animations might be different from regular animations (my bet would be, either a 0-rotation or an extreme offset on the joints not used by the flavor animation) and how to trigger them in-engine. Figuring out how to trigger them would be the hard part, since that's probably part of the behaviour tree.

 

Darn, is the GECK out of beta yet? I know there's an open beta, but haven't heard a date for its official release yet.

 

[pipdude]

 

Fallout actually does have something similar to this, Bethesda added it because it was clearly missing in Skyrim.

 

 

 

I don't know all the details, but they are called "flavors" and will play over top of other animations. A guy tried to explain it here in his Fallout mod description "what's an Idle/Flavor": http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6113/?

 

Clearly a lot more investigation into this needs to be done, but if flavors can be triggered over base animations, that would be fantastic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's definitely promising, that there seem to be seperate animations combining together into one motion, though he's not entirely clear whether the animations merge sequentially or parallel, it would seem they're parallel merges. So if that's the case, the trick would be figuring out how these "flavor" animations might be different from regular animations (my bet would be, either a 0-rotation or an extreme offset on the joints not used by the flavor animation) and how to trigger them in-engine. Figuring out how to trigger them would be the hard part, since that's probably part of the behaviour tree.

 

Darn, is the GECK out of beta yet? I know there's an open beta, but haven't heard a date for its official release yet.

 

 

 

This is the keyword system I was referring to. My impression from looking at files, etc. is that it plays them during certain behaviors rather than merging animations. But, could be mistaken.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=ChangeAnimFlavor_-_Actor

[AsariX]

 

 

Fallout actually does have something similar to this, Bethesda added it because it was clearly missing in Skyrim.

 

 

 

I don't know all the details, but they are called "flavors" and will play over top of other animations. A guy tried to explain it here in his Fallout mod description "what's an Idle/Flavor": http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6113/?

 

Clearly a lot more investigation into this needs to be done, but if flavors can be triggered over base animations, that would be fantastic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's definitely promising, that there seem to be seperate animations combining together into one motion, though he's not entirely clear whether the animations merge sequentially or parallel, it would seem they're parallel merges. So if that's the case, the trick would be figuring out how these "flavor" animations might be different from regular animations (my bet would be, either a 0-rotation or an extreme offset on the joints not used by the flavor animation) and how to trigger them in-engine. Figuring out how to trigger them would be the hard part, since that's probably part of the behaviour tree.

 

Darn, is the GECK out of beta yet? I know there's an open beta, but haven't heard a date for its official release yet.

 

 

 

This is the keyword system I was referring to. My impression from looking at files, etc. is that it plays them during certain behaviors rather than merging animations. But, could be mistaken.

 

http://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=ChangeAnimFlavor_-_Actor

 

 

A "behavior" seems to be some sort of container defining what a character can/can't do when in the state of that behavior, as well as defining the animation to use while in that state (so you won't get a running animation when you walk normally or when you sit down, the behavior cleared those animations and defined the proper base animation to run).

 

The "flavor" is sort of an override to that. When your character stands still, the default standing animation defined in the behavior has legs slightly apart, your arms hanging down, your back straight.

The flavor animation "adjusts stuff". Ranging from "check the pipboy", to "raise hand to smoke", to "move weight onto other leg, then go back to normal". These flavor animations will generally be much shorter (1 - 10 seconds, while the behavior animation would be 20-40 seconds), and would in many cases not animate all joints (they could, but no point having them re-define the same data and risk the whole body snapping around because the transition is out of sync).

 

It's all just theorizing on my end, but I can't see why else they would seperate the function to use flavor animations from regular animation use.

[pipdude]

Because they have different conditions. Do you have the CK? You can find the flavors in the behavior tree and see how they are designating a percentage likelihood of the flavor playing during idling, etc.

 

I haven't seen any cases where the same flavor animation plays over different circumstances in the game (ie. smoking over standing idle and also same smoking anim over sitting). Is there an example of that happening?

 

There are "sub-graph" animations that appear to animate only parts at a time. But, they appear to belong to a parent rather than merge with any animation via priority.

[volfin]

Because they have different conditions. Do you have the CK? You can find the flavors in the behavior tree and see how they are designating a percentage likelihood of the flavor playing during idling, etc.

 

I haven't seen any cases where the same flavor animation plays over different circumstances in the game (ie. smoking over standing idle and also same smoking anim over sitting). Is there an example of that happening?

 

There are "sub-graph" animations that appear to animate only parts at a time. But, they appear to belong to a parent rather than merge with any animation via priority.

 

Maybe the F4SE people could add in some functions to tap this. because this would be very useful. Think if you could set an "armbinder" flavor to play 100% chance over walks etc, it would remove the necessity of making an 'armbinder version' of every animation, for example.

[AsariX]

Because they have different conditions. Do you have the CK? You can find the flavors in the behavior tree and see how they are designating a percentage likelihood of the flavor playing during idling, etc.

 

I haven't seen any cases where the same flavor animation plays over different circumstances in the game (ie. smoking over standing idle and also same smoking anim over sitting). Is there an example of that happening?

 

There are "sub-graph" animations that appear to animate only parts at a time. But, they appear to belong to a parent rather than merge with any animation via priority.

 

No CK here yet, I'm waiting for it to get out of Beta so I can grab the "finished" version, rather than risk the beta messing up something permanently.

But that's some good questions, whether walking flavors could be assigned to sitting behavior, and how these sub-graph animations work and what they do. The system as a whole is very modular, allowing many replacements and plugins. It's just (as always) a question of if/how/where.

[pipdude]

 

Maybe the F4SE people could add in some functions to tap this. because this would be very useful. Think if you could set an "armbinder" flavor to play 100% chance over walks etc, it would remove the necessity of making an 'armbinder version' of every animation, for example.

 

 

It looks like you could accomplish something similar by adding the same armbinder animation to a few different sub-graphs. It will be interesting to see what modders are able to do with this new functionality.

[DexesTTP]

To keep you guys up to date :

 

I finally decided to make the tool work much like the old HKXCMD tool, by loading the animation data + the skeleton file. It's a little more work for me at first, but in the long run it will pay off (no need to create a HKX file by actor, just a rigged Blender/Max skeleton).

 

I finished most of the Skeleton handling and (although I'm not so sure about the formulas) most of the maths behind the transforms. The last thing to do now is to create the animation file from "scratch".

 

Although I can't really give an ETA as the same thing as before happened (other work to do) I'll post the finished version with a DL link as soon as possible.

 

 

Speaking of finished version. I don't know how doable it is, but maybe if the skeleton was rigged not only to the CBBE body but to the vanilla body (male + female), it would be more... "suitable" for other people. If someone want to tinker with that while I finish the animation converter, I'd be happy to add that as downloadable file in the repo (you'd keep all available copyright of the file of course).

[Leito86]

To keep you guys up to date :

 

I finally decided to make the tool work much like the old HKXCMD tool, by loading the animation data + the skeleton file. It's a little more work for me at first, but in the long run it will pay off (no need to create a HKX file by actor, just a rigged Blender/Max skeleton).

 

I finished most of the Skeleton handling and (although I'm not so sure about the formulas) most of the maths behind the transforms. The last thing to do now is to create the animation file from "scratch".

 

Although I can't really give an ETA as the same thing as before happened (other work to do) I'll post the finished version with a DL link as soon as possible.

 

 

Speaking of finished version. I don't know how doable it is, but maybe if the skeleton was rigged not only to the CBBE body but to the vanilla body (male + female), it would be more... "suitable" for other people. If someone want to tinker with that while I finish the animation converter, I'd be happy to add that as downloadable file in the repo (you'd keep all available copyright of the file of course).

 

Is it going to use the command prompt or some simple ui?

[DexesTTP]

Is it going to use the command prompt or some simple ui?

At first, a command prompt, because making an UI takes time while using the command line takes none - and I'm sure you guys won't like it if I say "I have the tool, but I'm making a GUI so it will be another 2 weeks before I give it to you."

 

Depending on what time I have, I'll release a GUI for the tool between one day and one month (estimate) after the command line tool release.

[asdasd123123]

 

Is it going to use the command prompt or some simple ui?

At first, a command prompt, because making an UI takes time while using the command line takes none - and I'm sure you guys won't like it if I say "I have the tool, but I'm making a GUI so it will be another 2 weeks before I give it to you."

 

Depending on what time I have, I'll release a GUI for the tool between one day and one month (estimate) after the command line tool release.

 

Well you're coding in Java so you could just utilize JFrame or JavaFX. With the scene builders it wouldn't take more then an hour or two to fully build the GUI and map the buttons to action listeners. 

[nhgb6]

When getting an animation working in-game, how do you specify where it should occur? Let's say you want an NPC to tap dance on a specific box. From what I understand, the workflow would be:

 

1. Blender to create the animation and save as a collida file

2. DexesTTP's upcoming tool to convert to .hkx

3. CK to put it in-game

4. Scripting tool (Papyrus?) to write triggers for the animation

5. CK to set attachment nodes for where the animation should take place when triggered

 

Please let me know if this question belongs in another topic.

 

[Guest]

When getting an animation working in-game, how do you specify where it should occur? Let's say you want an NPC to tap dance on a specific box. From what I understand, the workflow would be:

 

1. Blender to create the animation and save as a collida file

2. DexesTTP's upcoming tool to convert to .hkx

3. CK to put it in-game

4. Scripting tool (Papyrus?) to write triggers for the animation

5. CK to set attachment nodes for where the animation should take place when triggered

 

Please let me know if this question belongs in another topic.

 

For now, it is OK to ask here. This is the main thread for FO4 animations right now.

And your series of steps is correct (but probably you need to switch 5 and 4)

And your point 5, is not really related to the animations, but to the actors that will play the animation (you move an actor to the marker/node/static/whatever) and then play the animation. Same as Skyrim.

[DexesTTP]

Hey !

 

Sorry, no good news. I'm still working on the tool, although sparsely (I don't have much time/energy to put on it at the moment).

 

Just to say that I updated the main post to add general information about the animation state in FO4 and to clearly show that there is two tools. If you see anything more to add to it, let me know.

 

Also, I think it may be a good idea to add links to tutorials to the already done things. I'll do some for the HKXAnim tool once it's out, but for the other things I'm not so familiar with it. So if anyone has links to some good ones let me know.

 

 

[Guest]

 

 

...

 

 

Just to say that I updated the main post to add general information about the animation state in FO4 and to clearly show that there is two tools. If you see anything more to add to it, let me know.

 

...

 

About the "Creating Animations", probably you are meaning the tool to "convert animations, created by such tools, to HKX".

Sections "How can I help making this mod?", and "Contributors" are duplicated.

[Supertin]

What's currently missing from the workflow for getting animations into the game via 3ds Max? Rigged skeleton & the tool for converting the resulting animation to hkx?

The main post says the rigged body is already done, but I have only seen the blender one.

Also, do we need HCT? If not, does it matter which 3ds Max versions people have?

 

If there is a working scene with rigged body, I'll be happy to work on a controller rig similar to the one pornphile made for Skyrim.

[pipdude]

What's currently missing from the workflow for getting animations into the game via 3ds Max? Rigged skeleton & the tool for converting the resulting animation to hkx?

The main post says the rigged body is already done, but I have only seen the blender one.

Also, do we need HCT? If not, does it matter which 3ds Max versions people have?

 

If there is a working scene with rigged body, I'll be happy to work on a controller rig similar to the one pornphile made for Skyrim.

 

My understanding is that it can be done with HCT in 3DS Max once we get a skeleton converted to 3DS Max.

[Leito86]

 

What's currently missing from the workflow for getting animations into the game via 3ds Max? Rigged skeleton & the tool for converting the resulting animation to hkx?

The main post says the rigged body is already done, but I have only seen the blender one.

Also, do we need HCT? If not, does it matter which 3ds Max versions people have?

 

If there is a working scene with rigged body, I'll be happy to work on a controller rig similar to the one pornphile made for Skyrim.

 

My understanding is that it can be done with HCT in 3DS Max once we get a skeleton converted to 3DS Max.

 

 

This tool should make HCT unnecessary.  Once the tool is out and I'm able to get some test anims ingame, I might make a character rig.

[JoshNZ]

Just My 50cents.

I got the win on skyrim.I got the win in fallout 3 and in NV.(Ob was a fail , no tirg functions)

Ok my code sucks comperd to LL. Hell I even use LL over AP. But I got anims in and working non-replacer first.

You guys got me for fallout 4. But I bet my mod gets posted first. There should be a AP in a day, 2 tops.

 

As for the guy that bosted about porting ump's anims... Bet he is a beth dev. 

I have got HKX export from max working. My xml looks 100% like beths.I'll post a max file soon. But I was getting the same bug as you guys. (I was useing the NIFTools inported Skelly)

I'm nicking the blender skelly you guys made... I'll give creit.I could not get HKX2FBX to work.

 

Fallout thanks you all.

 

 

P.S. (Off topic... posted in the wrong place hard (My first post on LL that I know of))

 

Screw you guys for making the AP anims disabled by defult on the last SexLab. OK i am not as good as leto. Some-of them are OK-ish. Skyrim AP was more a teck demo then a true mod.(You guys took code from me and made it just so much better) But not ALL of my anims sucked THAT BAD that you disabled them. ***Sulks for days***

 

P.S.S. (Fully on topic)

To the guy doing the blender rig. when you export the hkx from max you need to change the ExtractMovement Settings, you have to change one of the alinment settings. Look at a beth xml and a fresh max export xml.

the bett xml...

Alinment 0 0 1 0

aliment2  0 1 0 0

Fresh max...

Alinment 0 0 1 0

aliment2  1 0 0 0

 

I know thats a shit eplanation but im at a net cafe posting this. Covert your export to xml and see.

Like I sead once I get a Running looks OK Export I'll come back and post you guy a Max save with the anim options set up right. 

C U SOON...