Expressions and Anims Guide

Expressions and Anims Guide

A little while ago, I posted a little guide to the imageshare on posing and expressions in FO4, but because the imageshare moves so quickly and images get buried in no time, I figured it would be a little bit more helpful to post it here as it’s own page. This is not a proper “mod”, as it doesn’t change anything in game and cannot be installed through NMM or any other programs. It’s just a text file and some reference images.

Below is a complete copy of the guide:

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Expressions:

Click here to see the full size version of the above image.

Use the console command “caa AnimFaceArchetypexxx” to set an actor’s expression. Just make sure that you save before you do it, because as of right now I don’t know how to reset the expressions and setting an expression on the player character will break the camera!

Replace “xxx” with one of the expression names below:

Afraid
Amused
Angry
Apologetic
Awed
Concerned
Confident
Conspiratorial
Defiant
Depressed
Disbelief
Disgust
FatherDeath
Flirting
Friendly
Grateful
Happy
Impressed
InPain
Irritated
Mayor
Nervous
Neutral
Piper
Player
Pleading
Preston
Puzzled
Question
Relieved
Sad
Sarcastic
SinisterSmile
Somber
Stern
Sturges
Surprised
Suspicious
Thinking
Tired
VaultTecRep
Worried

For example, say you wanted Piper to smile for a portrait – you’d open the console, click on/select Piper and type “caa animfacearchetypehappy”. Instantly happy Piper!

Now, I didn’t include all the expression commands in the image above because a lot of them are either super subtle or very similar, but I tried to list all of them in the list above. For easy access in game just type “Help archetype 0” in the console to bring up the list of all the commands.

Postures:

Full sized image here.

While most of the ‘archetype’ settings are all for expressions there are a couple that can be used to change the way your character stands… It doesn’t sound incredibly useful, but it also changes the idle animations your character performs when they’ve been standing still for a while. For example, the ‘irritated’ posture has the character crossing their arms, face palming and resting their hands on their hips, while the ‘confident’ posture has characters cracking their neck, flexing their fingers and looking around. Good for screenshots if you’ve got the patience to wait for the right idles.
Use the command “caa AnimArchetypexxx” to change the posture of your character, where “xxx” is replaced with one of the commands listed below.
Again, I recommend saving before trying any of these out. Unlike expressions, the postures can be reset by simply entering “caa” into the console, but it’s still better to be safe than sorry!

Confident
Depressed
Elderly
FastWalk
Friendly
Irritated
Nervous
Player
Scared
Shocked

Again, not all the postures are included in the image, mainly because FastWalk and Player are super subtle, and Elderly is almost the exact same as Depressed. For reference in game type ‘help animarchetype 0’.

Flavors:

Click here for full sized image.

Last in the new commands are the ‘animflavors’. There’s only a handful of flavors, but they aren’t all that different from the usual idles in NV/FO3. Instead of using the ‘caa’ command for them, it’s now “caf AnimFlavorxxx” where xxx is replaced by one of the following:

BombReaction
BombReactionBaby
Clipboard
ClipboardSalesman
Fahrenheit
HandsBound
HandsUp
HoldingBaby
MedX
Military
Smoking

So, to get your character do the smoking idle, you would bring up the console and select them, then type “caf AnimFlavorSmoking”. Flavors are a lot easier to start and end – to stop a flavor animation, just type “caf”. But even then, I’d still recommend saving before you start posing for an image, and reloading your save when you’re finished. There’s no telling what will break the game, so it’s best to be careful!

Not all the flavors are shown, of course. Mostly because the images of MedX and HoldingBaby didn’t save for some reason and I was too lazy to go back and retake them.. And Fahrenheit and ClipboardSalesman are either broken or just very, very subtle. For the full list in game, type ‘help flavoranim 0’ in the console.

For right now, that’s all I’ve got on posing and expressions – I won’t pretend to be an expert on these, but if there are any good commands I missed feel free to yell at me and I’ll edit them in. The ‘playidle’ command is still very much intact, but there’s so many idles, without the GECK it’d take forever to get an image reference of them [not to mention that a lot of them seem to be broken or just very picky]. Still, might make another quick chart with some of the better poses. Will update this if I do. ^^