How to crop/trim animation (to make it shorter)

[6Warlord]

I'm having fun creating a custom playable monster, but unfortunately, the animation I made for pick-ups (by combining two different animations) is twice as long as the human one, and the animation cropper isn't working at all. Is there any other way to cut part of the animation, other than speeding it up?

[nargil66]

Two ways that i know of - the fast way and the proper way.

Fast way - use Tamschi's Animation Composer EXE.
1. Before loading animation inside the program, tick this field:

2. Load your longer animation first (the one you want to crop).
3. Load a shorter animation with the amount of frames you want your final animation to have.
4. Untick all bones from the second (shorter) animation, except one (pick some unsignificant one like Bone_L_Toe or something)
5. Save the combined animation. If you did everything right, your longer animation will be cropped to the frame count of your second shorter animation.

The "proper" way is to reduce the frame count of the animation with 3ds max. Let me know if you want a more detailed explanation.

[6Warlord]

I've never used 3ds Max before, so I decided to pick the first option, and now it's much shorter while still looking quite natural, which I'm really grateful for. Here is a demonstration of my animation: https://imgur.com/a/CqGrTDr

And as always, I ran into new problems. This time, for some reason, the dual-wielding passive skills 'crossblade', 'doubleX' and 'AoE360' won't trigger their animations (gameplay wise, they work perfectly fine). For some reason, my Scorpos is still using his default dual-wield attacks instead of those special animations (except for 'DwAttAlpha'), even if I revert them back to the human ones. What could be the issue here? https://imgur.com/a/eGoVTFb. I even removed my added lethal strike for Sting, but nothing happened.

Or maybe I should just let it go? As I mentioned earlier, DW skills still trigger, but with normal attack animations.

[nargil66]

I've never used 3ds Max before, so I decided to pick the first option, and now it's much shorter while still looking quite natural, which I'm really grateful for. Here is a demonstration of my animation: https://imgur.com/a/CqGrTDr

And as always, I ran into new problems. This time, for some reason, the dual-wielding passive skills 'crossblade', 'doubleX' and 'AoE360' won't trigger their animations (gameplay wise, they work perfectly fine). For some reason, my Scorpos is still using his default dual-wield attacks instead of those special animations (except for 'DwAttAlpha'), even if I revert them back to the human ones. What could be the issue here? https://imgur.com/a/eGoVTFb. I even removed my added lethal strike for Sting, but nothing happened.

Or maybe I should just let it go? As I mentioned earlier, DW skills still trigger, but with normal attack animations.

I'd say let it go, had similar problems when combining DW animations for mounted character, and unless i knew how to make new ones from scratch (and i can't), some animations remained impossible to recreate. So i settled up with generic ones. In this case functionality is more important.
Good job on the Pickup animation, you are learning fast
Sorry for the delayed answer.

Edit - maybe i misunderstood, those animations aren't triggering at all, not even showing on the Scorpos (no matter if glitchy or not)? If that is the case, send me your test mod in PM, i'll try to identify the problem.

[nargil66]

Ok, I checked your mod files and found the reason why male DW special animations are not showing on the Scorpos. You used non-existing name references under the DW special animations, while they must be the same as the animation references inside the corresponding skill DBRs. For example in the skill DBR: records\skills\warfare\dualwieldtechnique_jumpslash.dbr in the SkillConfig tab you can see the following animation reference:


You have to use the same name inside the character animation table, for the animation to trigger correctly. So here are fixed references on the image you sent me earlier:


You can import DBR: records\creature\pc\anm\anm_malepc01.dbr to check all the special animation names that are used by the male character. It should make your life easier, without having to check each skill separately.

However, there is no guarantee how good these animations will look on the Scorpos. Most likely they will have to be fixed with the Animation Composer, and some can be almost impossible to fix.

[6Warlord]

Thank you very much for solving my trouble, It really helped me a lot. 

However, there is no guarantee how good these animations will look on the Scorpos. Most likely they will have to be fixed with the Animation Composer, and some can be almost impossible to fix.

I wasn't going to make animations for bow and staff anyway, because weapons are invisible. Spear maybe much later after release. And for the rest... If some attack animation turns out to be too difficult or simply impossible to make (due to uncooperative scorpos skeleton) I'll just use an existing one but with edited callbacks, so it still utilizes both left and right hits. That should be enough, right?

[nargil66]

Yeah, as said, the main goal is to be functional and playable in the end