Hi all New modder with particular problem!

[OscarRetro]

Hey guys I just found the site after a quick search,

I've already exhausted virtually every resource I could find and my problem doesn't seem to be covered anywhere.

So naturally I'm making a mod, I've self taught so much already and basically it's all working and good to go if I just continue as planned now, however, I have one animation issue that is just becoming a time killer for me.

I made an animated hourglass, it can be equipped as a weapon and it runs perfectly in game in the world and in the players hand, in third person and first person, however my original animation which runs a perfect 60s then the timer turns itself over, would only ever loop continuously from the point it first spawned in, thus making it little use for syncing with events I have it planned for.

Now I did some serious digging recently and discovered in nifskope the NiControllerManager blocks etc and successfully turned my Cycled animation into a triggerable animation item using the typical 'Forward' Animation group name.

This was perfect and I can now script call it to play on demand in game, but the hourglass animation, now being 'Clamped' and not ''Cycle' no longer plays when equipped and cannot be seen moving by the player, I have not been able to find a method to trigger it in the equipped state at all.

Weirdly after some time I noticed the animation IS actually playing when unequipped in my inventory and freezes in time when equipped and pulled out so if I hotkey it and equip/unequip repeatedly you can actually see the animation progressing bit by bit.

My question is probably clear enough, but HOW do I get this animation to call on demand when equipped and why is it playing when in the inventory? It still plays fine when dropped back into the world too, usually reset awaiting a start command then it is now set to cycle continuously until stopped/called on again.

Any directions to answers or direct help is MUCH appreciated! Also feel free to ask about the mod I'm sort of a loner so I haven't been really publicising this much but it should be a great mod and I've worked hard to follow the modders do's and don'ts and have some fun stuff planned ^_^

Cheers,
Oscar