Animations

General

Intro

Each character in the game, be it a main character, guest, npc, or a monster comes with a predefined set of animations. This includes weapon types, interactions like nodding or riding a Chocobo. However, each character only comes with animations that they actually use in some part of the game. So if Vossler for example were to hold a gun instead of a great sword, which he never does in the vanilla game, he wouldn't be able to use it as he has no animation for it. He would just T-pose. To workaround this issue, this mod gives characters that lack an animation, the animation of another character. However, since these animations weren't meant for other models, it can cause a number of issues.

Finding the perfect fit

Some models are very unique, which means that it cannot just use the animations of any other model. Depending on how different the model is, the character can look stretched out and very weird. This usually happens with characters that are different in size or just have a completely different skeleton. For example using the animation of an Urutan-Yensa obviously won't look good on a character like Vossler.

To workaround this issue, this mod either tries to find a very similar model with compatible animations, or uses the existing weapon type animation of the model for its other weapon types. For example, Larsa's model is very unique and only supports swords. Since there isn't another model with compatible animations, Larsa will instead use his sword animation for all other weapon types (e.g. gun, mace, ...).

Sheathed weapons

The most common issue with using the animations of one model for another is that the weapon of a character won't properly be sheathed out of battle. Instead, it swings around the character or is placed at very weird positions. This can be very annoying which is why I have created the Hide Equipment Out Of Battle option which basically works around this issue.

Conclusion

There is only so much there can be done about this without having to create entirely new animations which isn't possible as of right now. However, I have minimized the impact of the issues above as most as I can and most of the time it works just fine and is definitely better than the alternative of not being able to play as these characters at all, or be forced to only use a specific weapon with them.

Special Action Animations

A few actions like Lunge have a special character animation on execution, in this case a headbutt for example. If the model (and other values) of the caster and the one listed in section 9 of a .ard file (character info per location) do not match up, then they will either T-Pose or miss their animation when using their special action.

This is merely a leftover limitation from the PS2 version of the game.

So usually you would have to unlock the special action animation of every foe in every single location.

Now since each file in the ps2data directory of the .vbf file has an index, and there is no way to add new files, there is only so many special action animations you can even use. This mod takes advantage of that and makes all of these animations available in every location so a modder no longer needs to worry about maintaining it by themselves for each location.

Notes

This mod only adds animations to models that are missing them. It never replaces existing animations of a character.

For a detailed list of which model uses the animation of which other model as a replacement, you can view this spreadsheet.