Just wanted to show that it’s possible to use motion capture files to generate Oblivion animations. In game footage of the completed animation in action can be seen here.

I made the animation in 3DS Max by making my own bone rig and using some parts of Theo Habit's and Zennorious' animation tutorials (geniuses the pair of them for finding a workaround to Bethesda's apathy towards the community). I'll release my bone rig and a decent tutorial in time- I'm just formalising the process at the mo to make sure that it's repeatable. It should be possible to use the rig to create animations from scratch aswell as from mocap files.

By the way, this is why certain Oblivion fans should be a little bit more respectful towards Morrowind fans- we "Morrowhiners" generally have alot more modding experience which allows us to get things like this done... we "whine" because we know we can do stuff like this in Morrowind so why the hell not in Oblivion??!!

Anyway, my question for everyone out there (and the last hurdle standing in the way of custom animations IMHO)- how the blazes do you activate custom animations WITHOUT having to use the "forceav fatigue -1" trick? Does anyone know if the problem is with the .kf files not exactly matching Bethesdas or is it to do with Oblivion's game engine? Is anyone aware of this or working on a fix? Theo, I'm kinda looking in your direction with this one- I noticed that you had a command line program that seemed to magically validate custom made .kfs- does it address what I'm on about?

Righty- keep up the good work all (& that includes the Morrowind modding community!)

Sweet!

May i just say, that animation rocks dude.
FTW !

HOLY **** That is awesome!!!

Thats flippin sweet!!!!!!

Haha i made a funny get it the girl does flips and i said flippin sweet.

holy wow, thats neat

Very impressive work! Mocap animations are soooo much more lifelike that anything even the most creative animator can achieve, not to mention an awful lot less time consuming! Can't wait to see this sort of thing implemented in a mod (once the whole forceav trick is sorted!). Keep it up!

omg we are not worthy!!

My jaw dropped.... and is stuck to the floor.....

addikt

wow, mouth drops

holy wow, thats neat

Clearly this game needs mocap'd ninjas STAT

My lower jaw is burning...cause it dropped to the core!

*bad joke*

*is shot*

We need arrow dodging in bullet time, like in the first Matrix movie!

hahaha, oh man, that would go great with the slow motion my game goes into during battle scenes : /

O_O

this needs to get to the CS forums as well.

O.o


WOW... that's simply incredible! The simple change of animations makes Oblivion look SO much better than it already is. While the flips are impressive, the walking motion after is what all of the walking animations should look like (well, not exactly, but you know what I mean).

Simply put: DAMN.

That's AWSOME!!!

I wonder if there could be a massive undertaking to add more mundane animations as well, like for stores and such.

Kaleb, we can have a proper Sephiroth stance!

Holy...crap

Wow...

Amazing is all i can say....this means we can actually get custom animations into oblivions engine congrats...you cracked it!

The ultimate salesman maneuver

ok time to start asking questions....how many people have a mo-cap system sitting in their house lol

bump! So cellophane do you actually have a mocap system?

Glad everyone likes the animation



I can't emphasise this enough: Theo Habit & Zennorious cracked getting animations to run in Oblivion!!! They should get full credit for their work and their names should never be forgotten!!! I've only taken their work a step further and cracked using mocap data with animations.


scarface3412: No I dont have a mocap system (and even if I did, there's no way I'd be able to pull off moves like that!). That mocap was gotten free from the web some time ago (I think from 3D cafe or the like)- there's plenty of them out there, you just have to search for them.

Thats amazing.

You could not possibly have picked a more effective demonstration animation. Good work!

I vote that the first set of animations to get a work over are the combat anims. A pirouette does not make an effective attack move.

And Sephiroth's 2 handed sword stance!!!

Simply great. There's nothing stopping modders now.

Holy crap that looks so good

...but, and yes i know i am a nub, is mocap?

Motion Capture, chris.

That is incredible! Great work to everyone involved in cracking the custom animations

aha
*turns brain back on

thanks fro this lookign forward to teh tutorials on how to add custom anims so what is possible with them now creature attack anims new weapon anims?

I think what sets mocap so far ahead of manual animation creation is the fact that the artists never can quite get the weight shifting properties of movement in a character just right. A lot of the animations in Oblivion and other games, while usually good, don't have the proper balance/counterbalance movement in the character (the powerattack spins, anyone?).

Just a little observation I just noticed that I wanted to point out =)

Also, what exactly is the status of making .kf files? Does anyone have a link to the thread or anything? (I can't find it, and the forum search isn't playing nice) Last I checked, it still took the civ4 exporter.

The sheer determination to break boundaries set by others is just fantastic. Well done.

If there was sound in that clip, I couldn't hear it over the sound of me #$@%ing myself.

Let the animation revolution begin!

This is really cool, I can't wait to see what develops in the weeks to come.

too true.

lol what animation is that in the video? Because I've seen the exact same sequence used in other moddable games

It pleases me to hear that you managed to get motion capture animations into Oblivion, motion capture can be so much better than making animations by hand, at least for things that you could actualy make in real life of course. It is always good to see modder acomplish good things that Bethesda never designed the game to acomplish.



Considering it's motion capture I think it's normal to see it in other games, after all it is based on real motion. Not something someone made on the computer.

........ I'm speechless....... This is fantastic!And thats an understatment!!! Excellent work!

I can see a VERY good "Enhance combat mod" coming along from this.

Unarmored combat in particular good be revamped upto something matrix style.

Mix that with Soul Calibre 2 sword/polearm/axe/hammer fighting and this would rock.

Now lets say you take 2 combat skills (unarmored and sword both at Expert level), and you can unlock advanced combination fighting techniques. Instead of all slashing how about a fight going something like:
Slash,slash *parry* punch into left/right slash, kick, backhand punch, slash, spin into "Rough Divide [FF8]" style upper cleave.

Hows that for an idea

I... I... I just... I...

Congratulations. Truly amazing work. I'll just sit here and keep shaking my head in amazement now.

Marry me?

well my ingame char =P

That's actually incredible.

Can anyone help me get my jaw off the floor?

Sure!

*picks up jaw*

*lady N dies from the posiblities*

First order of business in my opinion is to get us some better jumping animations.

Or cloaks and scarves!

I'd like to sign your petition, good sir

YES! Like for falling, the Agent falling-then-crash-into-the-ground-making-a-small-crater move!

so could something like kicking be added... that and crossbows?!? that would be awesome!

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=552981
Sign!


That seems entirely possible now, but it will still take a while to be perfected.

There are so many of them on the floor that I dont know which one belongs to who.

Mine's easy to find, it's the one that broke the floor.

I have no jaw.

um, I think we better keep our hopes tucked in for a bit longer guys... If we ALL take a shot at trying this out then we can create a whole range of new things alot quicker... let the Tutoral get released... give some time for others to learn how to create such magic... even I will give this a shot since only I know how to enchance my gaming experiance

do it! yay! lol. it would be nice to have kicking and crossbows, i have always liked xbows better than regular for some reason... and then the kicking, roundhouses and powerkicks would be nice (: oooooo, it would be so awesome to have that stuff.

WTF?!?! That time draws nearer...I can see dragons flying over Cyrodiil as we speak...Well, looks like you just 'freed' up a whole buch of peoples time with this. Good Job !

~Gorgo~

Someone get me some new underwear.

lol, yea... somebody get me a new graphics card rofl

Someone just get me a mop and a bucket, I have lots of drool to clean up. O_O

My foot itches with excitement .... oh wait that's my athlete's foot...
Anyway awsome work to all of you that made it possible to get this. Can't wait for the great mods to be created through tthis breakthrough.

Thats better than every single one of oblivs animations combined....nice.

oh.... oh my.... thats absolutely splendid!
makes me want to run out and buy a motion capture device lol
wonder what they go for...

..stunned silence.....


Well said.

Uhhhh, how would you mocap a dragon? lol

I could use a good pair too...

Most impressive work. I really love when the character takes a couple steps at the end. Looks so fluent.

EDIT: How long before someone replaces all the walking/running animations with this?

This is an excellent bit of work. Definitely lots of things that could use improving.

Unfortunately, with no way to add animations (I assume) to Oblivion (only being able to edit current ones, right? Maybe add Idles, but nothing meaningful, no?), the CS is limiting in this regard. Lots that can be done, but man oh man, I want some changes to the CS (defining new skills/animations for the actions of that skill would be huge), but I don't think we'll be seeing that.

Someone should totally like, re-engineer Oblivion and the CS to allow stuff like that (I know, probably illegal, certainly near impossible)...


Well said, but I haven't seen much anti-Morrowind-ism from the ObModders. I can think of one, whose impression of Morrowind modding was that it was little better than a pixelated dress up (/undress) doll, but I haven't seen her around in quite some time. Everyone else seems to not really mention Morrowind modding much at all, except for those who experienced it, and in these cases, the comparisons generally seem fair (Oh man, that's cool, we never could have done that in Morrowind! or, unfortunately, as you note, often, "Man, wtf, we could do that in Morrowind! Why not here?!")

Are you talking about CuteUnit? What happened to her?

No loss.

So, who has been sparked by this and what is your next project?

Personally, I would like to see new animations for: running, walking, swimming, and jumping. I could also see new attack animations, such as Combo moves and the like. I guess the possiblities are endless now so I will sit back and patiently......

~Gorgo~

Chairman Wow!

I can imagine mocap animations being used in some sort of dual-wielding kind of mod.

In a cruel twist of fate, I'm going to wake up in about 2 minutes...

I...I...cant...believe it! Crap, I can't figure out which jaw on the floor is mine...

You are the of custom animations my friend.

I keep watching it over and over again.... it reminds me of that GuildWars vs WOW MC Hammer Music Video on YouTube... they all have custom animations.... sigh... At least we have progress..

addikt

crazy i seriously got excited about this game again

Holy motion captured animations Batman! That's awesome!

wow thats the coolest animation ever cat wair for download

Actually that animation was added as a completely new idle (it was placed in the "IdleAnims" folder and set up in the CS)- I think that this means that you can have as many new animations as you like, there's no limit because you're not replacing existing animations in the characters folder. The problem with this is starting the animations- the NPCs know that they're supposed to be using them (you can even check using "PickIdle" with the console) but they won't actually start using the animation until they're knocked down & get back up again...


If this is true about CU then it's just pathetic & she's really showing stupidity/ignorance/unbelievable disrespect... I'd be very curious to know how my mod on PES fits into her "dress up doll" modding theory...

Anyway- my question still hasn't been answered or ever mentioned in any of the replies!!!

Does anyone know why the animations only plays when the NPC is knocked down or is there a better fix for it?!

What settings/conditions did you use for the Idle Anim in the corresponding menu in the CS? Maybe this could give some clues

X.

Incredible work. But will it be applied to a mod, or will it be the beginning of an animation-replacer project?

In the Idle Animations section from the Gameplay menu of the CS I added a new child (a special idle) to Characters\_male\IdleAnims, gave it an ID, assigned it my kf file and gave it a GetIsID condition so that the animation only applies to my test NPC.

I experimented extensively with other conditions & the AI wander settings (trying to activate the animation when the NPC is waiting after wandering etc.) but it's always the same result- the NPC DOES pick the correct animation and it knows that it should be using it (I've checked using "PickIdle" from the console) but the NPC just stands there- they don't start moving through the animation’s actions until they get knocked down... to put it another way- they seem to need a kick up the [censored] to get them to start using the animation.

I've duplicated the animation set up from Oblivion quest animations in the CS so this makes me think that it must relate back to the kf file itself... most likely there are a few incorrect bytes in the file or a flag that just has to be set from 0 to 1 or something ridiculously stupid like that... this is one of those times when a quick ONE LINE comment from a Bethesda dev could advance the community tremendously but I don’t think anyone’s going to hold their breaths for that...


That's up to the community- I'm only interested in cracking how its done & making a tutorial so that modders can go their seperate ways and do what they like with animations.

this looks better than all animations in the game...
*drops his jaw next to Addiktive's*

think we can finally make a REAL dancing mod...

This is a big step in Oblivion modding.

indeed, realistic walking could be possible now...
just that last forceav fatigue-1 thingy

Could you send me* one of the mocap animations? It doesn't matter which one. I'll check it and maybe I'll find some clue. If more 'heads' will be involved in this, the better ;-] I'm very interested in such ninja-moves b'coz my mod (Actors In Charge) is always very thirsty of new animations ;-]

* trollf at gmail dot com

Fair enough, Greek Storm PMd me with a similar request- I'll put the kf file (there's only one at the mo) on PES later on today so that anyone can check it out for themselves in every sense of the word

That's fine with me. But how about TESSource, b'coz mods on PES sometimes wait quite long for approval ;-]

That is amazing. I am so exited.

I haven't got a clue how to mod, but can't you make a spell or ring that drains all fatigue or something, so the animation thus starts?

Only problem is that everytime you're out of fatigue you start kung-fuing all over the place
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, and I'm throwing my jaw on the pile as well. incredible animation!

Makes Oblivion look so more lifelike... makes you wonder, why didn't Beth make the fullest use of their engine, surely they could've done a few mocap anims.

I demand a mocap walk animation

can you put a condition on the cell loading so that everyone falls down?

A new walk/run animation is needed indeed!

That is amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Got in himmel*

!!

*runs of the window*

*climbs back in*

Mo-cap in Ob?? Awesome!

Respect!

WOW !! Really SMOOTH animation there .

This looks nice ! ! !

We can have a disco mod... With more than just some disco lights and original animations cut into pieces

Then I hope the community responds accordingly to this great idea

This is great, sure you must do ForceAV Fatigue -1 when doing new animations, but replacing the original animations with better ones for jumping/walking/fighting would work like a charm! Absolutely great done all, just some month ago, we thought there wouldn't be a possibility for new animations in Oblivion without a patch for the CS, but now, boy there's much to do!

fantastic work as always (although we won't mention...the other mod.)
perhaps Oblivion Script Extender would be a more efficient way to get animinations to work.
Getanimation or something like that???

You know what this meens, right?


RETURN OF THE CLIFFRACERS!!!

You know what the ironic thing about that is? Once someone decides to make a cliff racers mod (less annoying than how they were in Morrowind however) it'll likely be one of the hottest and most downloaded mods ever.

Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.

I'd download the cliffracer mod just so I'd have the ability to make a mod that removes all cliffracers from game


Sounds like fatigue is simply forcing a getup animation, have you tried starting the animation by forcing a different type of animation?


I wish the devs would stop milking the 360'ers and comment on something in regards to animation. :|

impressive stuff.

Great!

Now, everybody, quickly fire up your mocap systems and go through the Oblivion character motions, and then we'll vote on them!



Seriously, excellent demo!

Regards.

Love to see the example here as a dodge animation. How freaking cool would that be? A mage tosses a fireball off at a rogue only to have him flip out of the way and vanish into the shadows.

This is pure BS. Theo and I cracked it. I started the thread, got Theo fired up, told him the errors I was getting with the KF files being out of date, etc. Then the Zen guy shows up a day later or two writing a tutorial, and then acts like he wasn't aware of me and Theo's breakthrough? COME ON. No animations EVER... then at the same time two people figure it out? Not that I care about it, I was just tired of everyone crying about how they couldn't do it, when I figured if the civ 4 plugin was capable of making models then it's anims would probably work too.

If anyone should get credit it's Theo. However, I was the one who stirred the community and got the right heads together and cracked it first, right HERE:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=540148

And with all the buzz that day with tons of threads getting started/deleted over our discovery, I find it impossible that anyone happened to miss that thread or the fact that we had cracked it. Ok I'm done ranting, but I feel credit is due, and other people are running around trying to take credit for something I did, and noobs are buying it.

Also, I noticed how the video cuts off the integration. How well does the transition work? You cropped it out because I can assume it snaps. What I want to know is what are the blend settings to make animations transition better? That anim is just one of the stock anims that comes with character studio, I'm not seeing the point of this other than to try and steal credit from other peoples hard work.

that bit after she finsihed cartwheeling where she is walking back into position looks rly real and natural

that can't be normal oblivion walking animation

Bethesda will sell you a new animation for $ 2.99

I wonder how many key frames were in that animation? got to be quite a few and i bet if you fire balled her she would just keep on flipping the the end of the overly long loop

still adding new interesting animations would be nice, like a short flip forward with the sword as a forward power attack.

and one other thing, apart from me who else even has access to a mocap suite?

Motion capture and regular animations aren't rhe same thing.

Very true Regular animation requires a preson to carfully peice together a group of key frames to form a smooth animation...

Mocap Requires someone to piss around with a load of cameras for an hour to get a 2 second loop and then carfully cut OUT keyframes to get a viablely small file size for an animation...


plus mocap is only any good for copying what normal people do, so no cool triple kick flips and the like (unless you find someone who can do it while wearing a mocap suit which dislikes rapid motion )

On the other hand, though, Mocap tends to look alot more real during regular movement. Such as walking, jumping, running, stumbling, so on and so forth. It's a better choice overall for mundane movement.

I was more impressed with the movement near the end after she does the flips. Imagine if all npc's had a random gesture like that with visable tasks that they do, it would make them feel much more alive.

Opens mouth.

Drools.

Closes mouth.

Ouch, that's good..

Oh yes i totally agree with you there, in my experience though it takes so much farting around to get anything you would have been better off hand animating yourself

Lol, yes thats one use for it! Another amazing breakthrough for the modding community, if new animations can be added then a whole new era of modding is upon us. Coupled with OBSE the new possibilities for mods are extensive to say the least.

this makes me exited, think about the possebilities WOOTH YEEEES I bow to thee and all those who cracked it *worship*

you guys rule 8D

that is very, very cool. at this pace, this game might actually be fixed one day.

Cool, new hand-to-hand animations.

Free motion captures: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=...Motion+captures there are a ton of em out there. No need to mess with your own cameras and green screens and illuminated ping pong balls --- unless you want to of course. While I did not look too hard into the results, I would be willing to bet that there are some free wire-work mocaps. Ah now if trees only had some sort of collision and physics some bright young thing here could do Crouching Tiger Hidden Septim.

its a shame that after the animation breakthrough there wasn't a flood of crappy half-finished mods

at least that would satisfy us for a few days while the bigger projects evolved

I'm surprised that there hasn't been a "middle finger" mod or something

bump

You're a true genius. I hope that one day I too will have the ability to start a thread basically stating "hey, to anyone with actual animation skill, I bet you could pull this off if you keep trying!!" and later declare myself a modding pioneer. Theo was probably the first to make any real progress, but my guess is he couldn't care less who gets credit. The modding community now has more freedom and much more room for creativity, reward enough I think.

Mister Cellophane: Nice breakthrough, the animation looked very natural and life-like.

I would really like to see a cool running animation and a better roll animation i hope somebody will make them!

LOL! Run up to a guard and give him the bird - then watch as he gets angry and slays you down! I WANT!

I wanna do that wearing boxing gloves! He'd never know...