Furniture and animations, How they work Options

[ghastley]

I'm at the point in The Diablo mod where I need to put Greta in a Pillory where she can be rescued. I can't use the shackles for this as they go against a wall, and her developing wings are either hidden, or clip through the wall behind her. Fortunately, the work has already been done, and I just have to extract the one piece from a huge animation resource pack.

The method of creating new furniture items, and connecting up the entry/loop/exit animations is a topic that's worth documenting, as I haven't found a decent one anywhere else. This thread will hold my notes as I find out all about it.

The "sit" animation isn't a standard one, so a mod using it will need FNIS to install the extra behaviour data and animations. At least that's become a standard, and users are fairly familiar with the process.

I may also include Idle Markers, which work in a similar fashion, but without a static item, and explain how Animation Objects work. These are items that appear only when the animation is performed, such as musical instruments, or the broom. Lots of things will be common between all these.

[mALX]

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The animation packages in Skyrim didn't work as well as the ones in Oblivion did. In Oblivion; NPC's could go through loading screens and still easily keep up with their AI packages; you just had to get a little firmer with them (like using the "Must Find" and targeting an X Marker near the chair you want them to sit at; then giving them an eat package for 2 hours targeting that (named) chair; (or sleep package for 8 hours and targeting their specific named bed; etc). The NPC's in the Lucky Mudcrab were like clockwork on their AI packages; but it took forcing them to their beds and chairs this way to do it.

I had trouble in Skyrim with the NPC's not being able to follow their AI packages no matter how firm I got with them. I think I ended up just getting them to the right spot and then using a short ranged Idle Package with keywords; then using idle markers to get them to sandbox there. (example: bar-tending covered several animations including them wiping the counters with a towel, sweeping, etc).

You don't have as much control in Skyrim as you did in Oblivion; but they can do more things while sandboxing and it does look more natural that way.

Your laboratory sounds interesting! Will the NPC's on the tables be active and interact-able? Would the Player be releasing them? And if so, would they attack the player or help them?





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This post has been edited by mALX: Jan 28 2019, 05:33 PM

[ghastley]

Your laboratory sounds interesting! Will the NPC's on the tables be active and interact-able? Would the Player be releasing them? And if so, would they attack the player or help them?

If you look at the various dialogs, you'll find that you can control a lot of that. You can set a flag that prevents the NPC from using dialog while restrained. Their package can have conditions that will let you release them by changing whatever's being tested.

NPC's attacking players seems to be entirely determined by aggression settings, and there's a way to modify that value (set absolute, or change by an amount) to start it or stop it.