how would you add more animations, in theory?

Question

Hello! Thank you for taking your time to read this! I have written a lot here. If you are just skimming through this with no real intention of giving any answers, this may not be worth your time. Before I begin, I'll stress first that I am not a modder. I know very little about source, tf2's code, and game coding in general. Anything I say here could be incorrect, and the knowledge I do have of the game comes from a slight obsession with trying making this game work with 50+ mods and troubleshooting that bullshit, and random tidbits from sources like Shounic (a youtuber) and people kind enough to help me troubleshoot.Tldr: I am just a random idiot who may have the wrong info. Plz don't kill me.Alright. First off, I love the panic attack. It was love at first sight. The color, the stalk, the cool little holes on the top, and the drum mag. Oh god  the drum mag. I also like modding my game. A while ago I noticed (I'm not the first) that despite having a drum mag, the gun still has a loading port and ejection port, and functions as if it didn't have a mag at all. This kind of weird weapon discrepancies are also the case for a handful of other weapons, such as the Baby face's blaster,  the syringe gun, the backscatter.. the classic.... all the sticky bomb launchers........ the minigun if you stop and think about it.... the.... - wait the sniper rifles make no goddamn sense either! After I came to these realizations (I'm not the first) It got me thinking about the ways these things could be fixed or changed through mods. What if someone made a mod that fixed these problems by adding new models and animations that changed the weapons to function correctly? Have the mercs replace the mag of the panic attack! Have the medic replace the syringe mag! Maybe even have pyro and heavy play an animation of changing the propane canister/ bullet barrel when they pick up ammo after the weapons run out! Heck, what if each different weapon had a different animation? Demo could hold the zatoichi with one hand! Spy would actually have the big earner flip open! Scout could hold the 3 rune blade like a real sword! Heavy would struggle to lift the brass beast! Engie would punch with the southern hospitality! Sniper would load a new round into the rifle! Soldier could reload each launcher differently to match the type! The possibilities!  Med would stab with the vita saw! Pyro would actually slam the axtinguisher into the enemies head! The possibilities! This was a while back, and since then I have come to understand how tf2 works alot better... well, not alot better, but enough to understand that you can't just add new files on top of the already existing ones and expect it to work correctly. While a few of these issues have have had mods come out that do fix some of these, the ones I have seen are the weaponry improvement pack for demo, the revolver improvement pack, the pistol improvement pack, and 2 scout reanimation WIPs, one made by blu.indigo, and the other made by redmond, both fix the scatter gun and make the reload/ejection work correctly. However all of these simply change the animations while making them conform to the game function at least, and add a few new models and model animations at most. And, while these examples prove some of these fixes may be theoretically possible, the biggest remaining roadblock from these mods being possible (as far as I can tell) is the inability to add new arm animations specific to a gun that uses animations not unique to itself.If you are still reading at this point, hopefully you have an answer for the question I'm FINALLY about to ask- Is it theoretically possible to add custom animations for an individual weapon, even if it uses animations that apply to more than one, such as shotguns or melees? As far as I understand, it wouldn't be easy and would require a server plugin in order to work properly, but that's just what I assume, and I don't know beyond that. If someone well versed in source and source spagheti has some explanation and answers, I would be very thankful.

Heliamo · Answer

the point of animation mods are replacing existing animations with their animation, so anything else will work if has been rigged and has a seperate model for the drum (but t hen it will replay the animation to adding drum mag, disappears, then add new drum mag and applied to others) but since tf2 isnt coded to have specific animations for getting a new ammo crate so you cannot replace it, for theother questions ill be answering them here:"What if someone made a mod that fixed these problems by adding new models and animations that changed the weapons to function correctly?">Mentioned above"Maybe even have pyro and heavy play an animation of changing the propane canister/ bullet barrel when they pick up ammo after the weapons run out!">Mentioned above"Demo could hold the zatoichi with one hand! Spy would actually have the big earner flip open! Scout could hold the 3 rune blade like a real sword! Heavy would struggle to lift the brass beast! Engie would punch with the southern hospitality!">Yes, demoman holding the katana is possible because there is an idle and draw animation that you could reanimate to him holding it only 1 handedThe spy big earner is possible, but the draw animation is also used with other knives except the default stock knife, so it will actually look good on the big earner (if youre theoretically going to rig the model and make animate the flip like irl)The engineer one is yes because of in tf2 there is melee attack animation, but then you will also going to make the other wrenches punch (kinda dope ngl)"Is it theoretically possible to add custom animations for an individual weapon, even if it uses animations that apply to more than one, such as shotguns or melees?">mentioned above

[N-Cognito] · Answer

Giving weapons unique animations per weapon was possible until the v_model/w_model system was replaced with the c_model systems. It’s still possible, though now it requires hacky workarounds and knowledge of how to abuse the source 1 system.I don’t think it’s been done before simply because there is no good reason to go through the extra work to do so. The closest mods to what I’m about to explain are the Bioshock Drill fist mod and the HWM Hands Glove Fix for the Hunstman modThe changes would have to be the following:For every unique weapon animation set, if there are multiple weapons of that type, you’d need a duplicate pair of bones that match the base armature. This is so you can animate a separate set of arms. For example, if I want to animate the BackScatter differently, I need a total of 3 arm skeletons built into one: one for all the normal weapons, one for all the unaffected scatterguns and one for the BackScatter specifically. This is a workaround so we can display the appropriate arms/animations using the bonemerge and bodygroup systems.For every weapon using this new animset, you’d need to add that armature and the class’s arm mesh to the weapon itself as a bodygroup, and for the non-base weapon you need a duplicate version bound to an unused weapon bone instead of the bone it usually uses. This is also for the above reason, but also so it doesn’t break for thirdperson.You’d then need to create the animations as usual, and for each sequence you need to enable the arms bodygroup and the alternate weapon bodygroup. This way, we only see the additional arms and alternative weapon rigging in FP, while retaining thirdperson compatibility.So in the end, you’d end up with 3 arm sets animating at once for the RL: The base arms would be hidden from view so we don’t see them, the 2 other arms would only be animations that the arms bodygroups we added onto the weapons would bonemerge onto, and each would use an exclusive set of weapon bones to prevent clashing. The majority/unchanged weapons would use the default weapon bones, and the alternative weapon would use whatever leftover bones there are that normally go unused.There is obviously far more specific details and knowledge needed to pull this off, if you are interested in doing this I would invest time into simpler mods first or into investigating the individual components or methods that go into it.