Sounds in keyframes

[Randomdays]

Something I noticed when dealing with some imports from Civ 4 is that it looks like they embedded sound calls within the key frames itself.

Not an expert on such things, but would that be useful/helpful for any non looping animation? Having a bear growl as it attacks, or a 'whack' with a punch, for instance?

RD

[Panther_Gunn]

Someone even more knowledgeable may chime in, but in my opinion I don't think it would be helpful for us.  One of the biggest draws about the game is just how customizable it is.  Tying a sound to a specific character animation means you can't use that same animation with a different sound (as an example, I ended up using the same animation for my Superman build for both heat vision & super-breath (both knock-back and freeze varieties) because it was the only one that started at the Head node).  The next question is at what point would the sound file be linked to the animation, what would someone need to access that entry & change it as desired?  I don't think it would be accessible in FFEdit, which is what most people have access to & use.  I don't think most of us use or know anything about Blender.

I think the existing method of tying the sounds to the FX works best for us.  Can the links to the sound files be taken out of the keyframes safely, and would that in turn make the file size smaller and/or easier to deal with?

[Randomdays]

Good input. Thank you. I see what you mean.But...

I don't think Blender would be needed - from what I see the sound is linked and set up to the kfs in nifskope. I actually saw the info mentioned in FFvt3R character tool when running an animation. So I think it would mean you would need more knowledge of nifskope.

I don't see the size of the keyframes really changing, as it looks more like a link to a sound file in a separate location.

Also, would this work.... If you took the Superman kfs in nifskope, and copied and pasted the head node attack and renamed it to head 2 or whatever, then you could have 2 separate attacks.

As for where you put it in the animation, I think you would have to pick a frame and link it there.

I'm not sure how the sounds for fx works, but if you have that ithis could be limited to animations that don't have an fx.

Thanks for the input... not sure if this could even be done in FF, but as you said, this game is so customizable, and there's something for everyone.

RD

[detourne_me]

Off the top of my head, I only recall the sound of footsteps being tied to keyframes. And even then the sound triggered is reliant upon the type of material being stepped on.  if you open up a terrain nif file, you can see different sections have different materials, like dirt, stone, etc. and there are different footstep sounds depending on the material.
The only 'customization' would be altering the 'lf' and 'rf' nodes in the keyframes for 'run','walk', etc. as those are the triggers for the sounds to play.

[Randomdays]

Here's a pic of what I saw;



You can see in the key info panel that the attack animation calls for 2 sounds to be played; strike and swipe, during the animation.

This is a converted kf from Civ 4, fully working in FFvt3R. The creator of the original civ 4 mod said he put the links in, but had not actually created the sound for this mod.

RD

[detourne_me]

Thats super interesting! I wonder where the sound files would have to be located for them to play correctly.
Does Civ4 have a similar file structure to FF? Like is there a big sounds folder, or are the sounds files bundled with texture files?

[Randomdays]

Sounds have their own directory with a sub directory for each type - it looks like these would be in the one for "units"

Since these have converted to FFvt3R, I don't know if that would still hold, or you could edit where to look for them in the kf.

I see very few nifs and no textures, but the game comes with a kind of pak file with the ".fpk" extension, so I'll assume they're stored there.

Most of the files I've been dealing with are not main game files though, but from the large library of custom content (Like the Kraken!)

RD