Skyrim Animation Tutorial

by aeon
for Skyrim Slavers Guild
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Index

This tutorial contains everything step-by-step to create animations for Skyrim

• Download 3DsMax 2012

• How to unpack BSA.files
• Convert HKX.files to KF.files
• Importing meshes and animations into 3DsMax 2012
• Edit Animations
• Import to Skyrim
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

First of all:
Only for Students!
Register on
http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=download_center
and download 3DsMax 2012 as a student.

All others need to find another way to get 3DsMax 2012

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Download the niftools plugin for 3DsMax here:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1797
And install it!
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Download hkxcmd.exe from skyrimnexus here:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1797
We will need this later to export the animations and convert our created
animationfiles to the skyrim format
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

• Use the included BSAUnpacker or anyone else

• Press „Open“ and direct to your „Skyim/Data“-folder
• Open Animations.bsa
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

• Push „Extract all“ and choose a folder on

your desktop – „exported_anims“
• The Programm has no progressbar so give
it some time to extract all files
• When you are finish do the same with the
Meshes.bsa, because we will need those
later, to „exported_mesh“
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

• Now extract the hkxcmd archiv to your earlier exported „exported anims“ folder
• It should look like the picture then
• Create an output folder for the converted animations „anim-out“
• go to „character assets“ and and copy the respective „skeleton.hkx“
• to you „exported_anims“
• now we can convert the hkx animations files to a useable kf format
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Press „Windowskey + R“ and type „cmd“

Now you should see something like this

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Really short cmd introduction:

• you can see your folder hierarchy now and you have to direct to your folder
„exported_anims“
• for example ive directed to the „Desktop“
• cd – use „change directory“ to navigate
• cd „foldername“ – to popp in a folder
• cd .. – to get back
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

• Now direct to your „exported_anims“ and type „hkxcmd.exe“

• you get the cmdprogram for exporting animations
• type ‚hkxcmd.exe exportkf „skeleton.hkx“ „animations“ „anim-out“‘ like you see below
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now something like this should happen, if not, check again

We are ready to import our stuff to 3DsMax 2012

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

• Now open 3DsMax 2012

• Import the actors „skelton.nif“ from
„exported_mesh/actors/character/character assets/skeleton.nif
• with the following settings for the importer:
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Import also all needed mesh files from the folder you load the skelton:
• femalebody_0
• femalefeet_0
• femalehands_0
• femalehead

Make sure „Import Skeleton“ is unchecked now!

Or the male ones

• The _0 means its the lowest weight, _1 is the counterpart

• For our animation it doesnt really matter its just to see how the later mesh looks
like ingame
• You can also import other mesh files. For example we (SSG) use CBBE for our mod so
i imported the bodymeshes from the download folder!
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

How it should looks after

skeleton import

And after all mesh files

are imported
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now we have to freeze all meshes because

this way we dont edit the mesh accidently
and we can see the bones better

1. left-mouse-click on the mesh

2. right-mouse-click, choose as pic shows

•. femalehead
•. femalebody
•. femalefeet
•. femalehands
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

The frozen mesh with bones on the left.

If you toggle „F3“
you can switch between these to views
and this is really important to work with
the mesh
With the left view you can see how it
looks like and on the right you can
choose the right bones
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now import an animation from our „anim-out“ folder

I used „mt_jump.kf“

After the import your actor should look like this

The animation is assigned to the mesh

You can always test your animation with the

keys on the bottem right side
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

From now on you should check the autodesk learning channel on youtube because
i cant even get close to a vid with this picture tutorial

3DsMax Learning Channel

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL65F8B8755BFDAA1E&feature=plcp

Espeically you will need this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juUQapKj-6w
Because here you can see all important things about „SetKey“ and „AutoKey“

However i try to give you a damn short introdcution about all important points on
the following sites
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

When you select the whole actor you can see the keys for every frame in the greenbox
30 frames = 1 sec
Each key contains the information where the single bones have to be on that frame
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

To edit the single keys or make new one you have two tools

You always know that you are editing the keys

when it looks like this

If you edit anything without the red border,

it effectes to all keys - can be very usefull,
for example to get the actor in the right positon
and also be terrbile, when youve saved after
That accidentally.
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

AutoKey:
Everytime you edit something its automatically recorded to the key

SetKey:
With SetKey you have to use the „Keysymbol“ – button to apply your changes

Hint: Make always sure you have moved at least one frame forward when you use
AutoKey else you edit your temporally key.

The good thing about both is, that you only need a few keys for an animation,
Because the empty space between two keys is autofilled with transformations
and rotations
Just test this via setting one key to the zero frame and one to the last frame
and you only rotate the arm by 90° or so, then push play and you will see its
very smooth
But this doesnt fit always, to get an awesome animation you have to spend much
time on all those small things that make it more real
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

One last thing we have to take care of before we start

The „NPC COM“ bone is static and cant be edited

But that also means we cant move the pelvis
Some persons dont have this problem, i had and
so i will mention this here
Maybe you just test to transform that bone if something
strange happens you have to make the following step:

On the Upside you can see menus like Edit, Tools etc
Go to „Animation“ and then „Bone Tools“
Click on the bone in the picture and uncheck „Bone On“

Like i said sometimes its by default, sometimes not

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

The Root Bone tells the game later, where the ground
begins, so this person would jump out of the ground
Make sure all bones etc are always over this point
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

The animating itself is very easy, because you can only transform and rotate bones
if you dont want to destroy the animation

Rotate

Transform
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now you can think about what you want to do if you just want to edit an animation
You can do it this way, otherwise you have to get rid of all those unneded keys
1. Select the whole actor
2. Select all keys (in the look upper pic box)
3. Push delete
4. Now you bring the actor in the right pose and you
can start animating step by step
with AutoKey or SetKey
If you need more frames you can do so
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

In the end your first animation should look a bit like this

Maybe about 8-10 keys, doesnt matter, we are still learning.

But this nice autofill function in 3DsMax brings a problem, because Skyrim needs a
Key for every frame
But we can handle that:
1. Select the whole actor
2. Select „Animation“ then „Save Animation…“
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

3. Check „Segment“
4. Define your animationlength in frames
5. Check „Key per Frame“!
6. „Save Motion“
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

7. Load the animation again, leave everything as it is and press „LoadMotion“

Now it should look like this

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now select the whole actor again and press

right-mouse-button and select „Dope Sheet“

Next page we see the Dope Sheet, take a short look and get to the next page with
the explanation
Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

1. Expand the NPC ROOT as you can see in the red circle
2. Check that the „-start“ is at zero and „end“ at your animations end

Now we can see why we have imported the skyrim animation earlier
These notes tell the game, where the animation starts and where it ends
Close the dopesheet

Now we can export our animation

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Choose your desktop and save now this export window

should appear
Make sure yours looks the same and hit „Export“
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Copy your „myanimation.kf“ to your „exported_anim“ folder and open cmd again if
you have closed it. Direct to the folder again and type:

Hkxcmd.exe convertkf „skeleton.hkx“ „myanimation.kf“ „myanimation.hkx“

 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

As you can see there is our hkx file for Skyrim

The yellow warning is unimportant, its just because we have disabled the NPCCOM
earlier!
 Skyrim Animation Tutorial by aeon for SSG

Now you have a working animation for Skyrim and you can test that by copying
it to:
Skyrim/Data/Meshes/Actors/Character/ Animations/female/

Rename it to „mt_idle.hkx“ and start the game

Now your character should do your animation everytime she stands still!
You can also put it in the „male“ folder!

This is just a first solution many modders working on a few ways to implement those
animations in the game

Happy Modding
by aeon

http://skyrimslavers.wikia.com/wiki/Skyrim_Slavers_Guild_Wiki