Animation Modding Approach
Posted: 31 May 2013, 21:51
There is definitely a dearth of Animation mods for Morrowind, and I feel like it has a lot to do with the unapproachability of the Animation system in the CS. The Morrowind Construction Set was almost completely devoid of menu-driven tools you could use to interact with animation. Nowhere can you actually view the animation in action.
In addition, the NIF animations are glued together, and the alteration of one specific animation was impossible until LizTail created a program to separate specific animation frames from the rest of an animation file and to glue them back together again.
I know a lot of thought will go into "OpenCS", and things will be done differently and better than the Morrowind CS. However, I want to emphasize that if any one system in OpenCS deserves to have "more" than Morrowind's CS had, it would be OpenCS's animation system.
I only personally have one suggestion, and that would be to integrate an ability to view animations in the CS, and to treat the KF animation files in a way that allows them to be broken up into their separate animation frames easily, and put back together, and have the KF files, in pieces and in their whole form, be exportable and importable to disk from the CS. I know that formats other than NIF will be supported, but NIF will be one of majority used formats for the engine and CS, and I think it handle their alteration well.
In addition, the NIF animations are glued together, and the alteration of one specific animation was impossible until LizTail created a program to separate specific animation frames from the rest of an animation file and to glue them back together again.
I know a lot of thought will go into "OpenCS", and things will be done differently and better than the Morrowind CS. However, I want to emphasize that if any one system in OpenCS deserves to have "more" than Morrowind's CS had, it would be OpenCS's animation system.
I only personally have one suggestion, and that would be to integrate an ability to view animations in the CS, and to treat the KF animation files in a way that allows them to be broken up into their separate animation frames easily, and put back together, and have the KF files, in pieces and in their whole form, be exportable and importable to disk from the CS. I know that formats other than NIF will be supported, but NIF will be one of majority used formats for the engine and CS, and I think it handle their alteration well.