Animation mods have really taken off lately. What used to be it's own subsection of the Immersion guide, Skyrim's animation mods have long since earned themselves their own section! Most animation mods either require Nemesis or OAR (DAR but newer and works with more versions). Some require OSex but those aren't really covered here. Animation mods in the past were very messy and could overlap or break one another but those issues have mostly been fixed. Just keep in mind what each animation you have is for. There's also ways to set custom animations for certain bosses and enemy types but I am too small brained for that. If someone has any clue how to accomplish such a feat I'd love to have them teach me it sounds super cool! Also Pandora Behavior Engine exists and is making things easier for dog fuckers so if you fuck dogs you may want to check that mod out. Okay let's move on to the mods!
These mods cover fixes for the vanilla animations and add some smaller new conditions to help making the animations feel more alive.
| Assorted Animation Fixes | Fixes a lot of the janky vanilla animation issues. |
| Pristine Vanilla Movement | Good baseline animation mod to touch up movement. |
| Super Fast Get Up Animation | Makes you get up faster |
| Expressive Facegen Morphs | Adds new morphs to make the faces look better. |
| Expressive Facial Animation -Female Edition- | Touches up female facial expressions. Grab the male version too! |
| Conditional Expressions - Subtle Face Animations | Makes character faces a lot more expressive! |
| Dynamic Sprint | Changes sprint animations depending on the weapon drawn. |
| Dynamic Swimming | Adds new swimming animations. |
| Modern Female Sitting Animations Overhaul | New female sitting animations. |
| UNDERDOG - Animations | Very high quality but very twitching animation pack. Not for everyone but it adds a bunch of new variables for animations in the game including a lot that are skill linked. |
| Self-targeting Staff Animation Fix | Fixes a bug if your staff casts the magic on the player. |
| NPC Stuck in Bleedout fix | Fixes the infinite bleedout glitch. |
| Tools not weapons (pickaxe and woodcutter axe) | Changes the animations for pickaxes and woodcutter axes so you don't hold them like you're planning to kill somebody. |
| Dynamic Female Wall Leaning | New wall leaning animations. |
| Jarl Sitting Animation Replacer | Uses OAR to make the Jarl Sit animation mod cycle so you don't have to choose just one anymore! |
| Telekinesis wood chopping | Mages can now summon their own axes to chop wood! |
| Improved Table Sit Transition Animations | Fixes up table sitting animations. |
| More powerful mining animations | Fixes the awful looking vanilla mining animations. |
| Drunk Sinking Head Idle Fix | Fixes a minor bug with drunks at bars. |
| Random Male Wall Leaning Animations | New wall leaning animations for men! |
| Paired Animation Improvements | A SKSE plugin that lets annotated events in paired animations work like in normal animations. Also causes the game to create synchronized animation bindings on demand, freeing up a few hundred animation slots for use by animation replacers. |
I've seen some people asking for recommended idle animations. Thanks to OAR/DAR the Idle animation scene is very mix and match and can have a ton of conditions depending on what you want. They can even apply to specific NPCs!
| EVG Conditional Idles | Condition specific idle animations. Looks really good in the cold and rain! |
| EVG Animation Variance | Animations to help distinguish NPCs personalities! |
| CHIMgarden | This guy just keeps pumping out great idle animation mods for the player and NPCs. You can use all of them together or just pick what you want but I really recommend you check out his stuff! |
| GiraPomba | Another great idle animator focused more on item interaction idles like alchemy and fishing! |
| Blind people DAR animations | Gives a specific animation set to blind people! |
| TheCyclist | Another great idle animator more focused on animators that telegraph what the NPC or player are doing at any given time. |
| Seamless Varied Feminine Idles | Great female idle animations |
| Dynamic Female Weather Idles | More female idles focused on the weather! |
These mods introduce new gameplay mechanics taking advantage of animation frameworks! Really cool stuff here that can completely change how you play Skyrim!
Note: Section on hold until the Gameplay section is complete!
| name | Description |
Animation sets for Combat. This section won't be completed until the Gameplay section is finished!
Note: Section on hold until the Gameplay section is complete!
| name | Description |
Changes the animations for various creatures in Skyrim. Some even add new attacks!
Note: Section on hold until the Gameplay section is complete!
| name | Description |
This section is devoted to all the screen archers of the community with a list of various tools and poser packs! Definitely optional for those just looking to play the game!
| Poser Hotkeys Plus | Allows you to quicky and easily manage your pose mods without special spells or rings or whatever! |
| No Numpad Hotkeys | Unbinds the hotkeys from the numpad allowing you to use the numbpad for other things! |
| Loverlab Poser List | There's so many pose mods and everyone has their favorites and least favorites. Some need to be converted too. Rather than list everything here's a pretty comprehensive list of the ones that people like the best! |