Exporting Animations
This page covers how to export animations from Maya into game.
- Install Maya Tools
We use a custom suite of Maya tools to export animations. You can download them here by clicking the Code button and selecting Download Zip. Follow the installation instructions to get the tools working in Maya.
2. Set Your Project
Our animations are organized into Maya projects. These projects will allow references and textures to automatically link, but importantly for exporting they will store instruction our tool uses to export animations. An existing project will be provided to you, all you need to do is set it with Skyrim > Open Project and selecting the project folder (the one with the workspace.mel file).
3. Add Your Data Directory
If this is your first time exporting this creature, you will want to add your local build directory to your project settings. This way exported animations can be automatically integrated.
First open the Project Window under Skyrim > Project Window.
Scroll down to the Export section and find the Export Package Dirs field.
Hit the pencil button to open the Edit Directories Dialog
In the dialog, select the plus button and choose your local Skywind Data folder (for example C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Skyrim Special Edition/Data)
Hit OK and close the Project Window
4. Export Animation
Open an animation to export and open the Animation Exporter with Skyrim > Export Animation. The table in the center list all the animations in the scene for export, however by default it should automatically fill out with your animations filename and timeline start and end. Make sure these fields are correct and hit Export.
5. Test In Game
After you export some animations, you'll want to ensure they are playing in game as expected. Here's how to test a creatures animation:
Open the game
From the main menu, load the test level by opening the console with ~ and entering coc test
You'll next need to find your creatures ID. You can do so by typing help {creature} 0 into the console. For example for the Kagouti you would type help kagouti 0
Find the NPC ID for your creature, you may have to scroll up by pressing page up. The number your looking for will be in parenthesis (see screen shot).
You can spawn your creature by typing player.placeatme {ID} into the console. For example for player.placeatme 0708F440
Testing animations can be a little tricky, but here are some tips:
To keep yourself from dieing, enable god mode with the tgm command.
To keep the creature from attacking you, you can toggle its AI detection with the tai command.
To test out of combat animations for aggressive creatures, you can toggle its combat AI with the tcai command.
6. Deliver Animations
To submit your animations to be merged into the build you will need to ZIP them. The zipped files should be in folders relative to your Data folder so they can be easily extracted into the build. To make this process easier we copy exported animations to a folder in your creatures project, typically named data. You should be able to just zip this folder.