What level of animation support exists?

[Moromaster]

After checking the OpenMW page on a monthly basis for years, I have a fresh install for 0.47. I'm completely blown away from how good it is in comparison to vanilla or even MGE. The lighting alone makes the game feel like it's two decades newer than it is.

However, after 10 hours into my first play though in years, the animation is really starting to bother me. The combat animations in particular make combat entirely unenjoyable. For character models, the lack of subtle animations, such as facial animations, make the world feel lifeless.

I'm not sure whether this diffencency results from the actual animations or rather the engine. Is there documentation available on what is supported through the animation system. If it's simply a matter of bad animation files, I'd love to have a crack at optimization.

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Unrelated, I don't know if this project would benefit from a product manager (I doubt it!). But if it would, let me know and I'm happy to help.

[AnyOldName3]

The most glaring animation limitations are with the assets. Morrowind's not received as much love from mod authors when it comes to animations as its sequels, and really good animation mods for those are already hard to find.

[Moromaster]

Is there a reason why we cannot convert character animation mods from any of the other TES games?

The one area I assume not supported by the engine (because it's extremely non-vanilla) is multiple "slash" animations per "attack type". I would love to suggest this as an area that would greatly increase adoption of the game, and clearly differentiate it between MGE as the superior platform.

Essentially, you strike from one side, then your following strike is from another angle.

I'm aware some combat games (e.g. Chivalry 2) do have different DPS for different strike types, but these are typically action games in comparison to TES style games which are realistically still a D&D system.

[psi29a]

Wellll... OpenMW is moving towards supporting later TES games, so there should be no reason to 'back-port' one.

[AnyOldName3]

Later animations aren't directly usable because the skeletons are wildly different. We won't be able to do anything about that engine-side even when we support assets from later games. Maybe you'll be able to use the Skyrim body mesh, skeletons and animations while playing Morrowind, though.

[Moromaster]

If you can share a guide (if it exists), I'd love to understand whether these skeletons are unnecessarily limiting? I.e. if modern skeletons were introduced, would this make life easier for modders?

I understand this could create some enormous mod compatibility issues.