Forcing Idle Animations

This tutorial was written with hope that you, the reader, will learn to to force an Actor into an idle animation. Please note that this tutorial does not cover creating and exporting the animation. You can find a tutorial for that here.

Requirements

1. You will need to have already created your custom .kf file, and put it in meshes/characters/_male/idleanims/. If you have not, you should probably do it now.

2. You will (obviously) need the TES Construction Set.

Creating The Token

Okay! Fire up the CS, select your plugins and wait for it to load. Once you've got everything up and running, we're going to create a MiscItem called an Animation Token, these are useful when you want only your Actor to use this idle (like in this tutorial). So open up the Items tab, and double-click on MiscItem. Right-click anywhere in the newly opened list and select New and a nice little window will pop-up. If you wish to, fill it in with the following options, otherwise, fill it out however you want it.

File:ForcingIdleAnimations1.jpg

And hit OK. That's that over and done with, onto creating the Actor!

Creating The Actor

Okay, leave the MiscItem tab open, and now double-click on the Actor to pop it open, once again, right-click and select New. Fill it in with following options if you want.

File:ForcingIdleAnimations2.jpg

Nothing on the right is necessarily important at the moment. Now, click on the ... beside the Script drop-down list. Now up in the menu, click Script and click New... and then copy and paste this little script into the text box.

Copy and Paste:

scn AnimationActorScript
begin onload
	pickidle
end

Then click the little picture of a floppy disc, you shouldn't get any errors, close the window. Now click on the drop-down list, find the script (if it's not there, then click OK and open the window again). We're not finished with the Actor yet, so once again open up the MiscItems list, find the AnimationToken and in the Actor's Window, click on the tab Inventory on the right side. Now drag the AnimationToken into it. Now that we're done with the actor. Click OK.

Creating The Animation

Now that we're done with all the annoying items and actors, it's time to put our idle animation into our plugin. In the menu, click on Gameplay, then go down to Idle Animations. A brand spankin' new window should pop-up. Up the top on the left hand side, you should see something that says Characters\_Male\IdleAnims. Right-click it and select Insert Child. A blank bunch of text boxes and other things will pop up on the right side. In the ID text box, let's put AnimationIdle (this really doesn't matter) and leave the Animation Group Section: as SpecialIdle [IMPORTANT]. Now, click on Select Animation File, browse to your .kf and double-click it (Note: If you get the error 'Invalid Directory' then you didn't put it in the right place. Read the Requirements.) If all goes well, instead of Select Animation File you should now see something like Characters\_Male\IdleAnims\Example.kf. Time for the last little annoyance, conditions.

Creating The Conditions

Yes. I find conditions so annoying that they require their own section. Anyway, since I'm lazy, I just took a screenshot of what your conditions should look like. Click on New in the bottom right and conditions away.

File:ForcingIdleAnimations3.jpg

Of course, if you didn't use the ID AnimationToken, then replace it with whatever ID you used.

Last Few Things

There's a couple of things still to do. Put that actor in a cell, any cell. Save your plugin, fire up Oblivion, and watch the animation!

Written by Fella.