Is there a sure fast way of having animations work in conversations set on " OWNER " under the Animation TAB?
I find that some animations may work, while others do not - and then some on some NPCs and then not on others. I am only trying to set standard races animations (like elves), but even trying to run the “Scratch Head” does not appear to work.
Is it because some animations that do initially work, thereafter prevent others from working?
And do “Facial Animations” ever work? Or are they just too subtle for me to notice anything?
Any “expert knowledge” in this field of “conversation animations” via the conversation editor is appreciated.
Not an expert, but all of them seem to work for me. If the facial ones are not working . . . could you be using an override face? Not sure if they work with animations as well as the “stock” ones. Just a thought.
I’ve never seen the “Facial Animations” work, but ok, I use mostly override faces so it could be because of that. In my experience NWN2 doesn’t seem to like animations that much.
I don’t have an answer (yet), but I’ve been looking for a reason why this happens for the last three days. Even worse : some animations worked as expected, then I changed the starting point in the module, and now they don’t. And they are not started with a trigger.
I also note that my NWN2 Animation Viewer no longer supplies me with the ability to “check” animations. I may be using it wrong I suppose, but I thought I used to be able to load a creature and run an animation on it to check what it did. Now, after “loading” a creature, there is nothing present.
As I say, I’m not sure how to use it fully, but I am sure I used to get a bit further than it does now. I wonder if that has any connection to “missing/failed” animations in the conversations too?
EDIT: OK, I just shut down the toolset and re-opened it and the animation viewer plugin appears to “work” again now - I will check the conversation again and report back. NB: There is no obvious reason why it was not working the first time as I had only just turned on the computer! EDIT 3: The animation plugin seems to stop working if I run a module at the same time as the toolset is loaded (to check it). After returning to the animation plugin, it fails to work for me again until I reload the toolset afresh.
EDIT 2: The conversation “animations” (Scratch Head in this case) still not working for me though.
EDIT 4: OK, I added the Scratch Head animation earlier in the same conversation and it worked. So, for some reason it stops working later in the conversation, possibly after another animation has played? - testing.
EDIT 5: No, currently I can find no reason why these animations are so temperamental. Therefore, I await your findings @4760 and hope you have more success than I do. Of course, if I do discover anything, I will let you know.
I don’t know if this makes a difference but you can do it two ways either with the ga play custom animation or putting in tags and clicking animations in the animations tab. But I tend to use them not as often as I’d like because they don’t work a lot of the time. Some seem to be gender specific like the dance ones, I think men only have one disco move !
You’re right about that. For example, I wanted the male salute for a female character in my third module. Not that easy to do. Luckily, 4760 was able to fix that for me.
Yet there remains something a bit strange as the same animation can work on one node but not another.
i.e. In my own testing, the “Scratch Head” animation works towards the beginning of the conversation, but fails in the same conversation at a later node. I even removed all my scripts, renamed the conversation and tested on another PC. Same thing - the earlier animation works and fails at the latter point.
I am beginning to wonder if the node “depth” makes any difference?
Still, I patiently await any other feedback …
EDIT: And now after testing again the earlier animation fails to work at all again - and yet tests fine from the PLAYER. Driving me crazy.
EDIT: I just made a very simple two node animation test and the first animation (scratch head) worked once and the second (use item) not at all. They all failed when trying to speak to exact same NPC again.
EDIT: I think there is something flawed with SCRATCH HEAD that breaks (a) - and possibly breaks other animations. I also have suspicions about ACTIVATE (b) and USEITEM (b) animations. (a) Appears to work once ever only. (b) Never seen work.
BODY ANIMATIONS TESTED ON MALE ELF:
NB: By “WORKS”, I mean it provided an animation of some sort, but may not be of much use. Some marked “FAILED” occasionally worked, but maybe only once and then not again. Most did nothing at all, BUT may work with other creature models.
ACTIVATE - FAILED ANNOYED - FAILED
ATTENTION - Appeared to keep raising shoulders. (WORKS) BARDSONG - FAILED BORED - FAILED
BOW - WORKS
CHUCKLE - WORKS
CLAPPING - WORKS
CONVERSATION_ANIMTYPE_TALK_FORCE03 - WORKS
COOK01 - WORKS
COOK02 - WORKS
CRAFT01 - WORKS CURTSEY - FAILED (May work on a female NPC.)
DANCE01 - WORKS
DANCE02 - WORKS
DANCE03 - WORKS
DEJECTED - WORKS
DRINK - WORKS
DRUNK - WORKS
EQUIP_WEAPON01 - WORKS
FLIRT - WORKS
FORGE01 - WORKS IDLE_MELEE - FAILED IDLE_MELEE_RAGE - FAILED
IDLECOWER - WORKS
IDLEFIDGETDRUM - WORKS
IDLEFIDGETFLUTE - WORKS
IDLEFIDGETGUITAR - WORKS
IDLEFLUTE - WORKS
IDLEGUITAR - WORKS IDLEINJURED - FAILED
INTIMIDATE - Appeared to put back shoulders. (WORKS) KNEELDAMAGE - FAILED KNEELDEATH - FAILED KNEELDOWN - FAILED KNEELFIDGET - FAILED KNEELIDLE - FAILED KNEELTALK - FAILED KNEELUP - FAILED
LISTEN - WORKS
LISTEN_INJURED - WORKS
MEDITATE - WORKS
NOD_NO - WORKS
NOD_YES - WORKS
PLAYDRUM - WORKS
PLAYFLUTE - WORKS
PLAYGUITAR - WORKS
POINT - WORKS
READ - WORKS
SALUTE - WORKS SCRATCH_HEAD - FAILED (INITIAL SOMETIMES) SEARCH - FAILED
SHRUG - WORKS SIGH - FAILED SIT_DOWN - FAILED (SOMETIMES WORKED)
SIT_DRINK - WORKS
SIT_EAT - WORKS SIT_FIDGET - FAILED SIT_IDLE - FAILED
SIT_READ - WORKS
SIT_TALK - WORKS (Looks good for seated talkers.)
SLEIGHT - WORKS STEALTH_IDLE - FAILED
TALK_CHEER - WORKS
TALK_FORCE - WORKS
TALK_FORCE02 - WORKS
TALK_INJURED - WORKS
TALK_LAUGH - WORKS TALK_NERVOUS - FAILED TALK_NORMAL - FAILED (Nothing to show anyway?)
TALK_PLEAD - WORKS
TALK_SAD - WORKS
TALK_SHOUT - WORKS
TAUNT - WORKS
TIRED - WORKS
TOUCH_HEART - WORKS
UNEQUIP_WEAPON01 - WORKS USEITEM - FAILED
VICTORY - WORKS
WAVE - WORKS
WAVE_SHORT - WORKS
WILDSHAPE - WORKS
WORSHIP - WORKS
YAWN - WORKS
So, it just so happened I was trying to use a few that simply failed altogether or would fail randomly.
Not sure. I’ll have to go into my archives to find some old examples . . . which I unfortunately don’t have time right now (Buried under making digital content for the classroom). I’m sure brighter minds than I will jump n and give a hand. Wish I could be more help.
In my case, I know for sure that “yawn” fails whereas “kneeldown” works. What this means is it’s not the animation itself that is failing.
I suspected there could be a timing issue, and replaced all the ga_play_custom_animation with a script using a lot of DelayCommand(object, PlayCustomAnimationVoid ()).
With SendMessageToPC, I got the information that the animations were played after the expected delay, but also that they worked for NPC but not for the PC.
Next step: check if clicking (or not) on the node could “send the message” to clear all pending actions (as in: the PC resumes talking, play the idle animation).
I also believe timing may be the issue … as I have also had some of these other animations work via the script rather than direct from the conversation. However, my main goal was to avoid as much reliance on “scripting” them as possible.
Interesting that you had “yawn” fail and “kneeldown” work though … Were these via direct conversation calls? If so, what was the model being used (human?), and did you allow a large enough conversation line from the responding NPC - too short and the animation will not start if I recall correctly.
That’s strange - I was using a male elf and had issues where you did not and vice-versa.
I mean the actual amount of text in the line as opposed to the node depth. i.e Make sure you have “xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxx” to say and not just “xx”. It affects the time in which the node changes, which, in turn, may affect the timing of any animations attached.
Out of interest, how do you get along with the SCRATCH HEAD animation … ?
I find that it is rather intermittent … That is, I can sometimes get it to work on an initial firing, but if it appears twice for the same NPC within the same conversation it will fail.
So, maybe, some animations have something about them that causes them to fail after an initial usage?
E.g. I have a test conversation where I run through it twice. To be a “PASS”, any animations attached to a node had to work on every time I played the conversation.
Unfortunately, not yet. This looks kinda random (animations that used to work don’t anymore, but animations that failed at the beginning now run flawlessly). I’m quite sure there’s something in the background that prevents them to always work as expected, but I don’t know it it comes from the OS or the game itself.
Still struggling to find a solution.
first of all, player model animations are “skeleton/armature” and gender specific, so each of these specifications require their own animation asset, which .gr2 animation file a specific gender/skeleton combination is being used by a creature depends on the entry the creature is using from appearance.2da, the values are determined there in the “gr2 file naming convention” sense.
so it tends to be the case that elves use human skeletons and as such they’d share all animations but this need not be strictly the case depending on your custom content.
if your model meshes do not map all the bones in their weight then an animation that tries to use that bone will also not function properly. 9 out of 10 custom head models do not have the entire breadth of stock model facial weight data that the stock models use, which the stock animations then use.
you’ll want to make sure your models are compatible with your animations, cross referencing each asset in use at any one time with the data you have in your appearance.2da and the data inside the assets themselves.
It can also be the case, and I think it is in vanilla assets, that elves use the body skeleton that humans use, or they’re largely compatible, but the head ones are different. This might mean that an animation you learn of from a nwscript constant is usable with humans but not elves. Again, investigate your resources.
Of course, if I do discover anything, I will let you know.
