I'm wondering, what does the flamethrower.nif do? I've never seen anyone include a nif with the animations before.
My experience, and the reason for the current organizational structure, is that for graphics to work correctly even with Animations turned off, the animation files need to be in the same folder as the nif
The answer to these two questions is the same, so I'll answer both at once.
As mentioned, I have a fair bit of experience with this. Mostly through trial and error (AKA: Experience), I have discoverered that, for animations to work, the following must be true
1. The folder containing the kfm must also contain a nif, to which the skeleton defined in the animation matches.
2. The folder containing the kfm must also contain a nif which has the same base name as the kfm (ie, flamethrower.kfm must be in the same folder as flamethrower.nif)
3. There must be an appropriately named and skeletoned (is that even a verb?) nif for every .kf which is referenced in the kfm.
The above reasoning is why the existing flamethrower unit is named "paratrooper.nif" and includes the paratrooper animations within it's kfm. I found this solution unsatisfactory, messy, and inefficient, and so I challenged it. Thi post contains a birief summary of my findings, part of which were determined via discussion and observation with other members of this wonderful forum, and part of which were simple trial and error on my part. It would be arrogant and probably untrue to call myself a pioneer, but I at least tried to find a better way, and suceeeded. Perhaps others who came before me merely didn;t document their findings too well. Another belief I have is that if you think you're the first or best person to do anything, you are completely wrong, and I try my best to avoid such claims.
The flamethrower folder I have provided, satisfies all of the above requirements in one, by providing flamethrower.kfm, flamethrower.nif, and renaming all the animations to use flamethrower as the prefix.
Every single file within that folder is needed. Do NOT delete or move anything out of the folder, though the folder itself (assuming all contents are intact) can be moved anywhere you like. For the nif, again through practical experience, I have discovered that the skeleton is all the system really cares about. Therefore the flamethrower.nif in the provided folder contains only a skeleton, and no mesh or texture data, purely for resource saving reasons. Thusly it is only 5Kb and not much to be concerned about, but it IS necessary.
DO NOT DELETE IT
The system firaxis have in place for this is rather arcane and confusing, at best. Putting the animations in every unit's folder is certainly the cleanest solution, in that it can be guaranteed to work with minimum fuss. But it is also a horribly inefficient solution. And is an oxymoron for any mod which has chosen to use a shared textures folder. like a step backwards in tech.
The technique I have provided here, is a step forwards, as far as I'm aware. It allows foolproof remote acessibility to a kfm, with the guarantee that it will work, and without the necessity to include anything beyond nif and texture(s) in the art's folder. Or to put it another way, you've been doing it wrong all along! And every unit in planetfall which includes animations from an existing animset is inefficient and wasteful.
As a side note, including th boundshape.nif anywhere, ever, is completely pointless and unecessary. In fact, I'd strongly advise doing a text search and removing all instances of boundshape.nif before your next fpk release. Also, nifskope was here. nifviewer sux.
I would personally advise putting the folder structure as follows:
Flamethrower folder goes under art/animations
Hyperian Folder goes under art/units
But that is entirely my personal preference for organisation. and may not fit yours. In any case, you can point the hyperian artdefine at the flamethrower.kfm,
wherever you put it, and be certain that it will work. As a side note, you need to actually make a hyperian artdefine, since you don't currently have one.
Protip. Pointing one unit at another unit's artdefine is BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. Don't do it. Duplicate the data if necessary, but don't put multiple units on the same artdefine where possible unless you're really sure you want them to look identical no matter what. For placeholder art like this case, just duplicate the data in advance please. Would have saved me a little work in testing.
See, I'm not just a cute face ^__^
I have my areas of expertise, and Lord Tirian has his. I'm sure we both have something to learn from each other. And nobody is ever,
ever perfect. The day you stop learning is the day you die.
Also, despite the naming, the included animations are only for the Hyperian, correct?
Right now, yes.
In the long term, no.
therefore, wherever you put them in the file structure, it is strongly advised to not make them a subfolder of any existing unit.
The point of seperating the animations from the unit, is to allow them to be stored and acessed in a central location. Eventually, I hope to make the flamethrower and plasmathrower units use them too. Which will require nothing additional in those units' directories, and will in fact allow deletion of the paratrooper anims which are currently there.
