playing feet together creature animation

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

Hi all,

          I was asking this in a scripting thread, but it occured to me I may have more luck with people who know more about the model animations so I thought I'd try here.

 

When a creature spawns in she can be in a pose with her feet together and arms at the side.  This also happens

when a creature appearance changes and if in conversation it stays until the conversation ends. I assume this must

be an animation in the appearance's model. Is there a way to force this animation to play?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               

This show up when there no animation so they default to there pose position and when you change there appearance.

Use this to cause them to fire there animation.

DelayCommand(1.0,AssignCommand(oCreature,ActionPlayAnimation(ANIMATION_LOOPING_PAUSE2,1.0,2.0)));

adjust as needed.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

Thanks ShadowM.  That's not it though. I _want_ the feet together thing. Is there a way to force the model not to have any animation so that is stays with feet together?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               

I seem to recall that you can do it by applying the visual effect VFX_DUR_FREEZE_ANIMATION just as the object spawns (e.g. in the OnSpawn script). I vaguely recall that it might only occur when the object spawns within player view, but try toying around with it a bit.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

It's the other way around... It only stays that way if it spawns when the PC is not around (for example directly painted in the area).  It also happens when the appearance changes while in converstation and (barring VFX_DUR_FREEZE) ends when the conversation ends.  I've been playing with it but there are a couple of holes I can't plug. That's why I was hoping for a way to simply say "do this" ... '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               When you say that the appearance changes in a conversation, do you mean that it animates?  Or have you set up the conversation to actually change the appearance type (i.e. Model?)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

The latter. It's a tailoring model and I wanted it to change automatically to match the race of the PC using it.  That's really where I noticed that null-animation pose. It stays that way while in conversation and then animates when the conversation ends.

 

I find that this change of appearance breaks the VFX_DUR_FREEZE, and the re-application of it needs to be delayed 4+ seconds so you get a few seconds of hand movement and head wobble then you can re-freeze it.  However, if I change the appearance back to default human after the conversation ends the appearance comes in as if spawned in sight (i.e. fully animated in ready pose).  I can't get back to the null-animation pose.

 

If I don't change it back at the end it works pretty well. I can keep it in the null-animation pose all the time.  I think this will work as long as I paint them down or be sure to spawn them when PCs are not around (I'll probably just do the former...).

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               

Hmm, that does sound very odd.

 

It's not because the conversation has the default "nw_walk_wp" under "Normal"/"Aborted" in the "Current File" tab? (making it fire on conversation end)

 

And do you have "No Animation" set on all the NPC conversation nodes?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

No.  It's a zdlg, the normal/aborted scrips are zdlg specific scripts which fire internal bookkeeping events.  All the nodes have "default" set for animation.

 

It's actually not that bad now. I was just hoping to be able to really force that pose, e.g. "playAnimaition(foo)" and be done with it.

 

What I do now is freeze when it changes (with a 3.1 second delay or it won't take effect at all), there's a short hiccup which I can live with. Then leave it in the changed appearance instead of changing it back to the default. That's probably better anyway, likely the same PC will use it again.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               Well principally, the "Default" setting tells the NPC to run the talk animation, so it's at least worth a shot to set it to "No Animation" instead.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Invisig0th]

               

What you are describing is not actually an animation at all. It's just how the model pieces are initially oriented before any animations are fired by the engine. That being the case, there is no way to force it to happen on demand with scripting. All you can do is freeze it before the first animation fires, as you described above.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

Yes, I got that it was the non-animated stance from ShadowM's post. That's why I used the past tense "was". '>

 

I finally ended up giving up on this when I hit issues with misaligned robe models and floating smaller creatures. I'll just use the regular stance. 

You can see more details in the scripting topic here if curious.

 

Thanks for the comments and help.