How to fix your animation FAQ

Here are some common questions about animation that people have asked me.

Why are there only a few animators in the Oblivion community?

Blender is a good tool, but I guess it is due to exporting animation being very tricky and getting one to work seams nearly impossible.

Can you make a tutorial about creating animations?

Why? There are already several good animation tutorials but there does seem to be a need for a "How to fix your animation" tutorial.

My animation does not work in game. What might be causing this problem?

Piece of cake! The animation might have a wrong name. When you exported your animation, you must open this animation with NifSkope and then add a WITH name. The name must be SpecialIdle_YourAnimationName.

OK! I have NifSkope open but where do I look?

I made a move animation but my character does not move in game! What is wrong?

The Player Character (PC) and/or Non-Player Character (NPC) does not move (does not change his location to be exact) because you have moved the wrong bone. Keep in mind that there are three bones which control the whole body:

• Use "Bip01" if you want to make a moving animation move (like walking).
• Use "Pelvis" if you want to make a "rotation" animation move (like turning around).
• Use "Bip01 NonAccum" if you want to make an "altitude" animation move (like jumping).

OK but now how do I fix my animation?

Well, there is not a way to fix this problem...yeah actually there is just one. Import the animation with Blender, remove "NonAccum Pelvis" and "Bip01" data and once again, make your move animation using the right bone.

What do I do when my character's body explodes (messed up) when the animation is played?

Isn't this problem really funny? Well, this happens when your animation itself is longer (or lower) than the timeline (both Blender timeline and Oblivion "textscript" ). Your timeline's end (both Blender timeline and Oblivion "textscript") must be exactly equal to the animation one.

How do I fix an incorrect / mis-matched timeline?

Fortunately this problem is really easy to fix. Start Blender and import the animation. Set the correct end's number and then export.

Why does the player's head not move correctly?

It is due to using the wrong bone, similar to the "NonAccum Pelvis" and "Bip01" problem. Keep in mind that there are three bones which control the head:

• "Bip01 Head" is for rotation ONLY
• "Bip01 Neck" is for altitude and location
• "Bip01 Neck1" is for nothing (I think)

How do I fix the player's head problem?

Import the animation with Blender, remove neck, neck1 and head data. Make your "head" move animation again but now using the correct bones.

I have tried to follow these instructions but I get the same problem. What do I do now?

Send me a Personal Message (PM) with details about your issue.

What do you want mean by "remove the "bone" data" ?

I made a forward move animation but I get two problems in game

1. The player character moves in the wrong direction (right or left)
2. Half of my character's body is below the ground!

Do you use "Full Human Male and Female Topless Import-Ready Body 1_0"? I do not know why with this skeleton but to make a forward move you must move the skeleton to the right. I do not know if this happens with other skeletons.

in short:

• to make forward move animation, you must move the skeleton to the right.
• to make backward move animation, you must move the skeleton to the left.
• to make left move animation, you must move the skeleton to the front.
• to make right move animation, you must move the skeleton to the back.

Keep in mind that you must ONLY move the "Bip01" bone. For example, if you want to make a forward move animation, you must only move the "Bip01" bone to the right and leave the other bones as they are.

How can I fix this awkward work-around?

In order to do this, import the vanilla skeletonbeast.nif. Select the armature and go into edit mode. Rotate the Bip01 +90 (to the right). This will make the bone appear to be pointing opposite to what it should (ie. along the negative y axis). This will correct the rotation problem. Now, go into pose mode and select the Bip01 NonAccum bone and press NKEY to pull up the transform properties box. Set the LocZ to 6.7414. This will correct the sinking issue. (Remember: Blender is 10x scale to Oblivion game units, so 6.7414 will translate to 67.414 in-game.) Now do all of your NonAccum transforms from this new baseline. (The animation will appear to be floating above the z-plane but will appear fine in-game.) Now all of your keyframes should have the correct rotation and elevation data built in, so set up the Anim text and save as your new animation

---

Well those were the problems that I have experienced during my first year of doing animations. I do not think that I forget anything but if I have, I will update this tutorial immediately.

Credits :

LHammonds : revised my FAQ to make it easier to understand.

Gildur Skycaptain TheMagician and v1 : help.

Reference

Avoiding Blender animation pitfalls