framework Advanced Animation Framework

[vaultbait]

15 hours ago, Chiropticon said:

I'm curious what skillset you used to create the framework itself.. What is the background involved? I've been messing around with AAF and my tech level basically makes it magic, but I have a lot of time on my hands - building triggered animation stuff might be something I could get into... well my first question is my curiosity, but I'll run on a little

 

I would love to work on and get right things like playing a piano, petting Dogmeat, hilarious victory dances, interacting with doors and all related (terminals, etc), sitting in a burnt out car and pretending to drive it around.. ? animating an entire crowd of individual actors for a dance scene to be used in a club like area, complete with the aggressive dragging of not participants onto the floor.

 

anyway, i see this is probably a discord interest, but then I'm here and I have this little keyboard so, but cheers

 

The framework itself is written in Papyrus (with a bit of Shockwave Flash for the UI bits). It relies on additional functions supplied by the Fallout 4 Script Extender and the LLFP library (an F4SE plugin), but AAF doesn't supply any additional native functions of its own. However, it sounds like you're interested in making content for AAF rather than extending AAF's functionality. The things you describe are all perfectly doable without making changes to AAF at all.

 

The bad news is that AAF's main purpose is to orchestrate animations (and it makes that very easy), but most of what you're talking about is creating entirely new animations. Once you've got them, plugging them into AAF is just a matter of writing a few XML files. Making the animations to begin with, though, is one of the toughest mod creator skills to master (arguably the toughest), in part because the established workflows for that rely on proprietary tools which are no longer legally available (in particular, very old Autodesk 3D Studio). Some progress has been made on finding ways to use the popular open source Blender instead.

 

Edit: Oh, and just to clarify, I don't mean to discourage you from trying, just making it clear that doing that takes a lot of time and patience and has a very steep learning curve (it's far beyond my present skillset). More animation content for Fallout 4 mods is highly sought after and possibly one of the most useful kinds of content you can create, if you manage to master it. Here on LL most of those animations tend to be of an "adult" nature, but AAF can play any kinds of animations you want so long as they exist.

Edited January 13, 2023 by vaultbait

[dagobaking]

On 1/12/2023 at 5:40 PM, Chiropticon said:

I'm curious what skillset you used to create the framework itself.. What is the background involved? I've been messing around with AAF and my tech level basically makes it magic, but I have a lot of time on my hands - building triggered animation stuff might be something I could get into... well my first question is my curiosity, but I'll run on a little

 

I would love to work on and get right things like playing a piano, petting Dogmeat, hilarious victory dances, interacting with doors and all related (terminals, etc), sitting in a burnt out car and pretending to drive it around.. ? animating an entire crowd of individual actors for a dance scene to be used in a club like area, complete with the aggressive dragging of not participants onto the floor.

 

anyway, i see this is probably a discord interest, but then I'm here and I have this little keyboard so, but cheers

 

vaultbait already covered the question. I can add that animating for Fallout 4 with Blender is 100% possible now. You still need the Havok Tools. But, you no longer need 3DSMax at all.

 

The process (and tools needed) are here: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/59849

 

Great ideas for new animations btw!

[VaunWolfe]

Not certain why but one day aaf stopped working. It loads up to 100% and home button works but the animations are not loading. I did a complete wipe and load and still isn't working not certain what is going on.

 

 

 

 

 

[vaultbait]

26 minutes ago, VaunWolfe said:

Not certain why but one day aaf stopped working. It loads up to 100% and home button works but the animations are not loading. I did a complete wipe and load and still isn't working not certain what is going on.

 

Check your installation with AAF_GFV.exe (obtained from Moddingham, same place as AAF), check what you've installed against The Fucking Manual (Themes, animation packs, ...), check your AAF debug log, and ask for assistance in the help channels on the AAF Discord if all else fails.

[Dlinny_Lag]

On 2/3/2023 at 3:58 AM, VaunWolfe said:

Not certain why but one day aaf stopped working. It loads up to 100% and home button works but the animations are not loading. I did a complete wipe and load and still isn't working not certain what is going on.

 

It seems I've triggered same issue. When I tried to open actors selection dialog - it doesn't display.

 

@dagobaking Techical details:

I have a lot of XML files from different animation mods and themes. I can share all Data\AAF folder content, if necessary

I use AAF 166 dowloaded from https://www.moddingham.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2

Steps to reproduce:

1) Load game, wait for AAF initialization finish

2) Press Home key - UI disaplyed

3) Press Enter key to open actors selection dialog

 - animation icon appear and "loading" animation playing

 - after a couple of seconds animation icon disappeared

4) Actors selection dialog is not displayed.

I can open other dialogs, like Administrator

 

Research results:

Issue triggered when total amount of <position ...> section declarations in XML files exceed some threshold.

Issue stops triggering when I decrease total amount of <position> sections declrations. By removing whole files or by removing lines from XML files.

I didn't calculate exact amount of <position> section declrations, but it is around 2000. And no, max_array_size option doesn't affect issue triggering.

Amount of positions that does NOT  trigger issue - 2797

Amount of positions that does trigger issue - 2817

So threshold somewere between those values

 

I'm pretty sure that issue is not triggered by potential Scaleform memory limits - see https://www.loverslab.com/topic/204903-animated-tentacles/?do=findComment&comment=3991456

 

 

 

Execution path details:

From decompiled ActionScript of AAF.swf I can see that array of actors succefully passed to ActionScript code.

As the "loading" animation started and stopped then WizardController constructor was called, but showActorPreview() was not called most likely, as actor's widget is not displaying.

It looks like a crash somewhere during WizardController constructor execution.

 

 

Workaround:

Decrease total amount of <position> declarations in XML files somehow. By deleting *positionData* XML files, or by removing <position> sections inside these files.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Dlinny_Lag

[VaunWolfe]

Yep it turns out that I am hitting a  limit on xml. without the uaaf patch it is 176 and with the patch shoots it up to  394.

[jarno5]

Hitting the same issue aswell. After updating and patching the latest releases the "New Scene" function does not work anymore making animations unplayable.
So the workaround would be to reduce the number of animation packs in order to cut down on the <position> declarations?
That sucks, no idea there was such a limit..

Edit: After removing one animation pack, AAF is back in working order.
Thanks @Dlinny_Lag For this find!

Edited February 6, 2023 by jarno5

[VaunWolfe]

I found what may be my issue there is an issue with Mutated lust 1.4. I downgraded to 1.3 and it now seems to work. Oh and if you use patch for animations role that one back to 9.13.

Edited February 6, 2023 by VaunWolfe

[vaultbait]

38 minutes ago, VaunWolfe said:

I found what may be my issue there is an issue with Mutated lust 1.4. I downgraded to 1.3 and it now seems to work.

 

If you're using a patch set like Ulfberto's UAP or Indarello's Patch for Animations, you need to make sure that you only use the versions of animation packs the patch you're using says it supports. If a new version of an animation pack comes out, you should wait to upgrade to it until patches you're using have been updated to support it. Certainly feel free to try upgrading and then roll back if AAF won't load completely, but in almost every case the reason the upgrade stops AAF from loading is a patch that isn't ready for that version yet.

[-Ayleth-]

The Mod "Arbitration" from Nexus which simply overhauls NPCs breaks the UI of AAF. Not looking for support, just putting this here for people to know.

[maddadicusrex]

Is there a fix for npcs standing during sex animation? Starts fine, but after a few seconds, will pop out of the position.

[Slorm]

17 hours ago, maddadicusrex said:

Is there a fix for npcs standing during sex animation? Starts fine, but after a few seconds, will pop out of the position.

 

I've noticed it tends to happen if you're very close to a collidable object (wall, bench, barrier etc.). Not sure if it's fixable or just a problem with the game engine itself

[Vuulgar]

On 2/6/2023 at 4:28 PM, VaunWolfe said:

I found what may be my issue there is an issue with Mutated lust 1.4. I downgraded to 1.3 and it now seems to work. Oh and if you use patch for animations role that one back to 9.13.

 

Downgrading to Mutated Lust 1.3 fixed this issue for me also.

[vaultbait]

12 minutes ago, Vuulgar said:

Downgrading to Mutated Lust 1.3 fixed this issue for me also.

 

Once whatever animation patches you're using are updated to support the new version of Mutated Lust, you should be able to safely update, check with the patch author for more details/timeline.

 

Alternatively, you can play without patching Mutated Lust and the new version will work fine.

[JB.]

Something interesting. I have an AAF scene between two actors in which the player does not participate. The player is free to leave the cell leaving the actors in the middle of their scene. 

 

It doesn't become a big deal if you stay to watch the whole scene. The problem is if you leave: you find them doing those idles in the world. For example, one of those actors involved has a package to follow Porter Gage. The actor was moving around following Gage, but without getting out of the idle she had done during the AAF scene. 

The way I did to stop her is to do an Actor.PlayIdle(IdleStop) in certain stages of my quests, so at the end the user won't see that. But I thought maybe you could find this report useful.

Edited February 20, 2023 by JB.

[Rix142]

Hi,

 

What is the best way to disable 1 animation from a AAF animation mod?

 

Is it by deleting the animation from the mod esp using FO4edit or just removing the xml info for that specific animation is enough? or both maybe?

 

 

[riot_punch]

1 hour ago, Rix142 said:

Hi,

 

What is the best way to disable 1 animation from a AAF animation mod?

 

Is it by deleting the animation from the mod esp using FO4edit or just removing the xml info for that specific animation is enough? or both maybe?

 

 

 

remove/hide the animation from the xml files.

[dagobaking]

On 2/20/2023 at 10:45 AM, JB. said:

Something interesting. I have an AAF scene between two actors in which the player does not participate. The player is free to leave the cell leaving the actors in the middle of their scene. 

 

It doesn't become a big deal if you stay to watch the whole scene. The problem is if you leave: you find them doing those idles in the world. For example, one of those actors involved has a package to follow Porter Gage. The actor was moving around following Gage, but without getting out of the idle she had done during the AAF scene. 

The way I did to stop her is to do an Actor.PlayIdle(IdleStop) in certain stages of my quests, so at the end the user won't see that. But I thought maybe you could find this report useful.

 

AAF has a feature to stop idles like that once you travel a certain distance away from the scene.

 

Maybe there is a case where you see them again without having traveled very far away from them?

 

Or, if some vars get cleared, it could lose track of what idles it needs to clear.

 

Or, if some mods are added/removed the stored references might become broken so that the clearing feature fails.

 

Just some theories on the cause...

[Empty3301]

How can I make it so that during the beginning of the scene, the clothes from the character are not removed at all? I selected the desired setting during installation but it still happens

[vaultbait]

On 2/23/2023 at 8:21 PM, Empty3301 said:

How can I make it so that during the beginning of the scene, the clothes from the character are not removed at all? I selected the desired setting during installation but it still happens

 

It's likely whatever mod is starting those scenes is undressing the actor(s) before calling AAF, since several popular mods do exactly that. Make sure you test with AAF's on-screen interface to start a scene manually, in order to rule out that possibility.

[dagobaking]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:21 PM, Empty3301 said:

How can I make it so that during the beginning of the scene, the clothes from the character are not removed at all? I selected the desired setting during installation but it still happens

 

In addition to vaultbaits advice, you can learn how to fine tune those settings here: https://bitbucket.org/dagobaking/aaf-framework/wiki/XML/equipmentSet.md#!equipmentset

[Empty3301]

5 hours ago, dagobaking said:

 

In addition to vaultbaits advice, you can learn how to fine tune those settings here: https://bitbucket.org/dagobaking/aaf-framework/wiki/XML/equipmentSet.md#!equipmentset

Thank you both for your reply

[N.Gamma]

Is there something like a spot light function or addon for sex scenes to illuminate them in dark places?
If so how can I activate it or where can I download it.

Is there any way to specify that clothes should not be taken off during sex scenes?
I use fingernails mods that are always taken off which I want to keep.

[vaultbait]

51 minutes ago, N.Gamma said:

Is there something like a spot light function or addon for sex scenes to illuminate them in dark places?
If so how can I activate it or where can I download it.

 

This is the closest solution I'm aware of to what you're describing:

 

53 minutes ago, N.Gamma said:

Is there any way to specify that clothes should not be taken off during sex scenes?
I use fingernails mods that are always taken off which I want to keep.

 

There are a couple of ways to go about it. You can directly edit AAF's equipment set data XML to specify which biped slots you want stripped during animations, or you can register keywords which will cause AAF to skip stripping specific items that have that keyword. The latter approach is more flexible, but is most easily accomplished with the help of Roggvir's No-Strip Items Manager which gives you an in-game interface to be able to add and remove a no-strip keyword from specific items.

 

Note that this is specifically about AAF's own stripping mechanism, but some AAF-using mods have their own stripping routines which they apply prior to AAF handoff. In some cases (for example, Violate), these sorts of mods are nice enough to also check for AAF no-strip keywords and avoid removing the same items AAF would skip, but some mods (like Sexual Harassment or Hardship) don't take that approach and instead give you some configuration options of their own to avoid stripping certain slots/items.

[Empty3301]

I reinstalled the mod, chose in the settings so that the clothes would not be removed, started the scene manually and still the clothes are removed, maybe some mod makes changes by overwriting the main mod?