Just wondering why does every weapon mod have bad animations?

[Shadow]

I'm just wondering why every weapon mod out there doesn't have any custom animations at all. I've been talking with this guy that made a weapon mod but decided not to upload it because the custom animation he made for it won't work (He didn't go into detail something about it not being the right extension or something. Turns out bethesda didn't put it into the game because they were worried about "Those mods" if you get what I mean. (I call the animations bad in the title but it's just because they don't look like they fit the gun.)

[Mr Mookster]

The Creation Engine is a piece of ♥♥♥♥, that's the short answer.

Google Hitman47101, find him on YouTube. You'll notice he makes custom made animations ported straight into New Vegas. New Vegas ran on the Gamebryo engine, which you could import first person behaviors properly into. Oblivion, running the same engine, also gave the ability to do so. You can find many mods that add a change in first person animations. Snapping your fingers to cast a spell, for example.

The Creation Engine provides no way to import first person behaviors, only third. There's a lot of third person animation mods for Skyrim, and even some for F4 already too. But no first person behavior changes, because the Creation Engine just doesn't allow it, and people don't have the tools to do so.

Animations for the Gamebryo engine and games running off of it were developed through a program called Blender, which is very outdated, but still works as you could see if you saw Hitman's animation work. There is no tool like that for the Creation Engine available to the public. It sucks and pisses of me and a lot of modders, I hope I cleared this up for you though.

It brings me to question though, the combat rifle animation would fit so many gun mods better than the SMG reload animation, for example, the standalone AK-47. It just confuses me, why use the SMG reload when it clips terribly?

I have been staying away from weapon mods for this exact reason.

[engie❤cat]

Originally posted by Billy Mays:

through a program called Blender, which is very outdated

huh? you're kidding, right?

[Panda-Bishop]

Whoa, wait, that's not right at all. The reason that animations could be added to Oblivion and Fallout 3 was because Bethesda was using their own in-house physics engine (or lack thereof), which was much simpler and easier to decompile and add new index entries for new animations to.

In Skyrim they licensed use of Havok's products, which is why there was such a huge leap in animation quality, but modders quickly discovered that Havok's animation files and indexes were a pain in the ass to decompile - namely the only tool available to decompile the files were locked behind Havok's paywall - so it took a lot of trial and error before modders finally figured out how to append new animations to the indexes.

Now you'd think that it would be easier to do this in FO4 since we have all the lessons we learned from Skyrim, but that's only if there were no significant changes between the Havok Physics versions in these past few years - if there was, we're back to blindly poking at it and waiting for the Script Extender to have all the right functions before we can start adding new animations again.

tl;dr: making animations isn't any harder than back in Oblivions/FO3/FONV, the problem is there's a list in the game's files that tell it "animation number x is this file" and the only tool to decompile it costs several thousand dollars to get. You're stuck with default animations until someone figures out how to decompile it again like they did in Skyrim.

Edit: and upon further reading, I see that Skyrim had an advantage in the Havok used to have a free tool that helped with the whole decompiling issue, but that tool is no longer available. We're completely reliant on community programmers, so we're in for an even longer wait than it took for Skyrim to get new animations.

[Rokkit]

It really comes down to how much work they want to put into the mod. Very few weapon mods have their own firing & loading animation & maybe even noises! Most weapon mods though are just models that use an animation from an existing weapon. So most Assault Rifle mods have custom models but use the Combat Rifle animation & alot of the time it they just don't match up.

Originally posted by Bishop:

I see that Skyrim had an advantage in the Havok used to have a free tool that helped with the whole decompiling issue, but that tool is no longer available. We're completely reliant on community programmers, so we're in for an even longer wait than it took for Skyrim to get new animations.

Actually alot of modders have made there own programs to help other people mod with easy. Your looking at an even shorter wait then it took for Skrim. Only on PC though, sorry console guys.
Actually that's awhole nother catagory of mods that have have been made.
It's called "Modders Resources & Tutorials".

[Panda-Bishop]

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

Originally posted by Bishop:

I see that Skyrim had an advantage in the Havok used to have a free tool that helped with the whole decompiling issue, but that tool is no longer available. We're completely reliant on community programmers, so we're in for an even longer wait than it took for Skyrim to get new animations.

Actually alot of modders have made there own programs to help other people mod with easy. Your looking at an even shorter wait then it took for Skrim. Only on PC though, sorry console guys.
Actually that's awhole nother catagory of mods that have have been made.
It's called "Modders Resources & Tutorials".

No, you see, the problem is without the Havok SDK, we don't have the libraries required to properly convert animation files into the proprietary HKX format that the Havok Physics engine uses. One guy created a program that tries to do this, but he's using really limited (possibly outdated) libraries and doesn't always work. It's not a matter of modders not using the available tools, it's that fully functioning tools aren't available yet.

[Mr Mookster]

Originally posted by engie❤cat:

Originally posted by Billy Mays:

through a program called Blender, which is very outdated

huh? you're kidding, right?

Sorry, pal. A very outdated *******VERSION of blender.

2.49b to be exact.

[Shadow]

Damn well that sucks. I'm glad I'm just in the texture department of modding then xD

[Rokkit]

Originally posted by Bishop:

Originally posted by Castor Troy:

Actually alot of modders have made there own programs to help other people mod with easy. Your looking at an even shorter wait then it took for Skrim. Only on PC though, sorry console guys.
Actually that's awhole nother catagory of mods that have have been made.
It's called "Modders Resources & Tutorials".

No, you see, the problem is without the Havok SDK, we don't have the libraries required to properly convert animation files into the proprietary HKX format that the Havok Physics engine uses. One guy created a program that tries to do this, but he's using really limited (possibly outdated) libraries and doesn't always work. It's not a matter of modders not using the available tools, it's that fully functioning tools aren't available yet.

Well there coming pretty close. Animations with the proper meshes are becoming more & more common so the next & last step is just to intergrete them into the physics engine Fallout 4 uses (not sure).

Reading this guys work on it & he's using some programs from his work that his boss allowed him to use. Hopefully it mite lead to some stuff leaking out or more people getting on it, so stay viligant!

Even if it doesn't it's not like the game needs all the work like Skyrim & Fallout 3 needed (atleast not yet).

[Commander Kieling]

Originally posted by Shadow:

I'm just wondering why every weapon mod out there doesn't have any custom animations at all. I've been talking with this guy that made a weapon mod but decided not to upload it because the custom animation he made for it won't work (He didn't go into detail something about it not being the right extension or something. Turns out bethesda didn't put it into the game because they were worried about "Those mods" if you get what I mean. (I call the animations bad in the title but it's just because they don't look like they fit the gun.)

you should look now, you saw the remington shotgun, the AS-Val, the Scar-H and the VSS-Vintorez on the nexus, or the AKM on the Gunetwork?

[Kameraden]

Because most weapons use default reload animations rather than the Modder making custom animations. The default animations on this game suck to begin with so... Luckily some modders go the extra mile. Like the M1 Garand Mod has complete custom animations. Which is glorious.

[Commander Kieling]

Originally posted by Kameraden:

Because most weapons use default reload animations rather than the Modder making custom animations. The default animations on this game suck to begin with so... Luckily some modders go the extra mile. Like the M1 Garand Mod has complete custom animations. Which is glorious.

yeah, forgot to add this one