Summary

Published: May 09 2023 by @manavortex Last documented update: December 17 2024 by @manavortex

This guide will walk you through adding poses to Cyberpunk 2077's photo mode with ArchiveXL.

Difficulty: You know how to read ;)

Wait, this is not what I want!

• To make poses from scratch, check Poses/Animations: make your own

• To scale poses/animations, check Scaling Poses/Animations

Prerequisites:

We will hook up an existing .anims file to photo mode. If you don't have one, you can find a dummy file in the AMM pose guide.

Tool versions:

• Cyberpunk 2077 2.2

• WolvenKit >= 8.15.0

• Notepad++ (you can use any text editor, but N++ is recommended)

Getting the files

Download either of these files:

• full Wolvenkit project (Nexus)

• Wolvenkit source folder (Nexus)

Setting up the files

At any point during this guide, you can press the green Install button on Wolvenkit's toolbar to check the mod in Wolvenkit.

Step 1: Rename the folders

TL;DR

1. Use Wolvenkit's Rename feature with the Update in project files box checked

2. Use Notepad++ to edit photomode_poses_tutorial.xl. Search&replace the original path (tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses) with your new folder path.

3. Test. The. Mod.

4. Proceed to #step-2-hook-up-your-poses

Step by step

We usually do this at the very end and I'm leaving you alone with it. However, this time we start by renaming the folders.

Here's how your project should look when you're done.

1. Select the highlighted tutorial folder and press f2. This will open the rename dialogue.

2. Change its name, and check the Update in project files? box

3. Do the same for the netrunner_making_poses folder (you want your file structure to be as tidy as it can be - future you will thank you for it)

4. Switch your project browser to the resources tab and open photomode_poses_tutorial.xl in notepad++:

1. Use Edit -> Replace (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+H) to open the search and replace menu. Replace the old path with your new path: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses -> your_beautiful_name\animations\your_cool_new_pose_pack

1. Hit "Replace All"

2. Save your file (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+S)

3. Now, rename the files under resources as well:

   1. photomode_poses_tutorial.xl -> your_cool_new_pose_pack.xl

   2. r6\tweaks\tutorial\photomode_poses_tutorial.yaml -> r6\tweaks\tutorial\your_cool_new_pose_pack.yaml

4. Rename r6\tweaks\tutorial to r6\tweaks\your_beautiful_name

That's it for the renaming. Time to test!

1. Install the mod, and make sure that you still have photo mode poses.

Step 2: hook up your poses

The .xl file

This file tells Cyberpunk to load your custom poses and will be in the same folder as the .archive file for your mod. It looks like this:

# ##############################################################################
# your .json file with the pose names
# ##############################################################################
localization:
  onscreens:
    en-us: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\localization.json

# ##############################################################################
# link up the .anims file with anything in the photo mode
# ##############################################################################
animations:
  # ##############################################################################
  # female body gender - scope includes player + all NPCs + NPV with patched .ents
  # ##############################################################################
  - entity: photomode_wa.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pwa.anims  
    
  # ##############################################################################
  # male body gender - scope includes player + all NPCs + NPV with patched .ents
  # ##############################################################################
  - entity: photomode_ma.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pma.anims
    
  # ##############################################################################
  # male big - includes all male big bodied NPCs 
  # ############################################################################
  - entity: photomode_mb.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pma.anims

animations:
  - entity: base\characters\entities\player\photo_mode\player_wa_photomode.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pwa.anims
  - entity: ep1\characters\entities\player\photo_mode\player_wa_photomode_ep1.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pwa.anims
  - entity: base\characters\entities\player\photo_mode\player_ma_photomode.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pma.anims
  - entity: ep1\characters\entities\player\photo_mode\player_ma_photomode_ep1.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pma.anims
  - entity: base\characters\entities\player\photo_mode\johnny_photomode.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pma.anims    
  - entity: base\characters\entities\photomode_replacer\photomode_npc_woman_average.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pwa.anims
  - entity: base\characters\entities\photomode_replacer\photomode_npc_man_average.ent
    set: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pwa.anims
localization:
  onscreens:
    en-us: tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\localization.json

You have to adjust the paths under set and en-us to your new changed folder structure.

Here's what those things do:

animations: A list of entities and animation files that you want to add to them animations/entity: The relative path to the photomode .ent file. There are just three of them. animations/set: The relative path to the .anims file in your Wolvenkit project. localization/onscreens/en-us: A file with translation strings. Holds the name of your photo mode pose set.

localization.json

• Change the yellow box UI-Photomode-tutorial-netrunner-making-poses to something unique to your mod.

• To do future you a favour, use names that will make sense even after a year or two - e.g. UI-Photomode-your_beautiful_name-my_cool_poses instead of UI-Photomode-ghuawstsedr-hsarht223445

• The green text is the name that will show up in photo mode. femaleVariant is the default key - if you don't need different pose names for the male body gender, leave it empty.

The .anim file(s)

If you have created your own animations (as a replacer or for AMM), then you are already familiar with this kind of file. If not, it is time to appropriate one from the game files - pick any, since the process is just like with a replacer.

Just as a reminder, here's how they look:

You will need the green text in your .yaml file.

The .yaml file

Without this file (r6/tweaks/your_beautiful_name/your_cool_new_pose_pack.yaml), the animations will be in the entity, but the photo mode won't know about them.

The yaml file has three sections:

Adding the category

The first block will introduce your new category to the photo mode.

• PhotoModePoseCategories.netrunner_making_poses: This is the name of the category, used to assign individual pose entries to your category.

• displayName: This must match the secondaryKey in your .json

Define the pose entries

Now comes a long list of entries. They'll look like this:

PhotoModePoses.sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__make_amm_addon: This is the unique key to assign your pose to your pose set. You'll need it in the third block. animationName: This must match the animation name in your .anim file (the green box). category: This must match the category in the first block. displayName: What'll show up in photo mode

Telling photo mode about the poses

You register your poses for photo mode by creating the following entry categories. You can use yaml anchors to minimize copy-pasting:

# ##############################################################
# Player
# ##############################################################
photo_mode.character.malePoses: &AddPosesM
  - !append PhotomodePoses.sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard_01__thinking
  - !append PhotomodePoses.sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__make_amm_addon
photo_mode.character.femalePoses: &AddPosesF
  - !append PhotomodePoses.sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard_01__thinking
  - !append PhotomodePoses.sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__make_amm_addon

photo_mode.character.malePoses
photo_mode.character.johnnyPoses
photo_mode.character.femalePoses
photo_mode.character.quadrupedPoses

Characters with *AddPoses will use the poses defined under &AddPoses. If you don't want a character to use certain poses, don't put *AddPoses next to their photomode.character entry.

An entry without YAML anchors, where poses are manually appended to each character, looks like this:

Finishing up

Before you can share your pose pack, you need to change the paths. If you don't and the next modder also doesn't, then only one of your mods will work.

You can find a full guide on changing the paths here.

If you rename files or folders under resources, remember to delete the old control files from your game directory.

The result

Optional: Further fine-tuning poses

Spawning props with the pose

It is possible to have certain props spawned automatically. However, this feature works only for Player V.

In your .yaml file (r6/tweaks/your_beautiful_name/your_cool_new_pose_pack.yaml), add the acceptedWeaponConfig attribute.

In the case of weapons, V spawn with whatever weapon you were holding when entering PhotoMode, or the default weapon if none was defined.

The position of the prop is defined by WeaponRight/ WeaponLeft bone.

Pose conditions [Optional]

You can limit the availability of poses by setting a poseStateConfig. For example, the following entry in your yaml will cause the pose to be unavailable unless V is swimming forwards:

  poseStateConfig: POSE_STATE_SWIMMING_MOVING

Once installed, it will be in the same folder as the .archive file for your mod — so you should name it your_mod_name.archive.xl

Your file should look like this:

1. From the animations section, delete the blocks that you don't want

2. Replace tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\pXa.anims with the relative path to your .anim file(s) as copied from Wolvenkit's project browser

3. Replace tutorial\animations\netrunner_making_poses\localization.json with the relative path to your .json file as copied from Wolvenkit's project browser

4. Optional: For compatibility with older game versions, copy the code under animations: (not the label itself) from the <= 2.1 page in the code box above and add it to your file.

5. Optional, but recommended: Run your .xl file through yamllint to check for syntax errors.

6. Save your file.

Before finishing up, make sure to run your file through yamlLint and get rid of any errors.

Finishing up

Summary

This page and its subpages contain links to guides about making animations and poses (static animations) for Cyberpunk 2077 and importing them into the game. For theoretical information, please refer to the Animations part of the knowledge base.

For individual guides, please check the sub-pages in the navigation tree or use the "Next" button at the bottom of this page to browse through.

Poses/Animations: make your own

This guide will teach you how to make your own static poses in Blender and import them into an existing .anim file.

You can use the same process to make photo mode replacers or create animations with multiple keyframes.

AMM: Collab anims/poses

This walks you through the process of hooking an existing .anims file up with AppearanceMenuMod.

ArchiveXL: adding Photo Mode Poses

How to add standalone poses to photo mode (rather than making replacers)

AMM/Photomode: Other Facial Expressions

How to replace the default set of expressions with those from an NPC

Summary

Published: January 3 by @nutboy Last documented update: January 4 2025 by

This page is for both modders AND mod users who made or installed pose packs before patch 2.2 released, and want pose packs to be compatible with:

• new vanilla Photomode NPC

• modded Photomode NPV added with ArchiveXL

Luckily you only need to edit the .yaml and the .xl file!

You can use python scripts to update all pose packs in your mod folders, or update each pose pack by hand.

By python script

1. Download these two Python Scripts from GitHub using the download button ⬇ on the far right. Save them somewhere in your computer. (I have a dedicated folder for Python scripts now)

   1. Convert Photomode XL files

   2. Convert Photomode YAML files

2. If it's your first time, follow the wiki guide for running Python scripts. Setup is fast and easy.

Processing the .xl files

1. Open the folder containing your Python scripts in Windows Explorer

2. Type cmd into the address bar, and press enter. This will open a command window.

3. Type the following and press enter (you can autocomplete with the Tab key) :

python convert_xl_for_photomodeNPV.py

1. The script will now ask you for the path to your mods folder

   • Open The Cyberpunk 2077 Game Directory in a Windows Explorer window

   • Browse to archive/pc/mods

   • Copy the folder path. If you need help, check #copying-the-folder-path

2. Right-click into the command window to paste the path (or press Ctrl+V)

3. Hit Enter

The script will now process all of your .xl files, adding the necessary scopes. That was it!

Processing the .yaml files

Next, we'll process the .yaml files.

1. Go back to the command window from the previous section's step 1

2. Type or paste pip install pyyaml into command prompt and press enter. It will confirm the install.

3. Type the following and press enter (you can autocomplete with the Tab key):

python convert_yaml_for_photomodeNPV.py

1. The script will now ask you for the path to your mods folder

   1. Open The Cyberpunk 2077 Game Directory in a Windows Explorer window

   2. Browse to r6/tweaks

   3. Copy the folder path. If you need help, check #copying-the-folder-path

2. Right-click into the command window to paste the path (or press Ctrl+V)

3. Hit Enter

Checking the results

Open your game and look for any broken pose packs.

If they don't work correctly in new Photomode even after using the scripts, it's likely there was an issue in the formatting of the original mod file.

You can check over the pose pack's yaml/xl for errors yourself (if you feel comfortable doing this), or ask the modder to revise it.

By hand

Update the .xl file

1. If your file already has entries for the new photo mode poses, delete them

2. Now, go to ArchiveXL: adding Photo Mode Poses -> #the-.xl-file, and follow the steps there.

Update the .yaml

If you don't have any of those sections (because your poses are only for one body gender), you can skip that part of the process.

1. Create a yaml anchor

Find the line photo_mode.character.femalePoses: and change it:

#before
photo_mode.character.femalePoses:
#after
photo_mode.character.femalePoses: &AddPosesF

Find the line photo_mode.character.malePoses: and change it:

#before
photo_mode.character.malePoses:
#after
photo_mode.character.malePoses: &AddPosesM

2. Update NPC poses

1. If your file already has entries for the new photo mode poses, delete them

2. Now, add the photo mode poses for NPCs:

Credits

First of all, let's give credits to people out there:

• Cyberscript and Smoke Everywhere authors donk7413 and Eli, who originally found out how to play animation through workspots. All credits to them in that regard.

• psiberx for his numerous hints and advices, as always.

How to ?

It started from a talk with @Eli and @donk7413 the authors of Cyberscript and Smoke Everywhere mods.

When asked details about how they managed to have V smokes a cigarette anywhere in-game, they mentioned having merged all .workspot files in a gigantic file for convenience (namely Cyberscript Core Animation Archive), so that Cyberscript can play any animation in-game on V or any NPC.

At first it didn't ring a bell, but then @psiberx mentioned about modders "abusing" .workspot by spawning an invisible .ent to have the target being animated.

...

The trick is actually to spawn an invisible device (.ent) right onto your entity, which then allows to trigger animation(s).

WolvenKit

So it happens that we need a .ent file whose components contains a workWorkspotResourceComponent which references a .workspot by name and DepotPath.

In turn, .workspot file contains a list of worksSequences containing workAnimClip which are the animations to play with idleName and animName.

Of course the .ent must be made invisible and contain a set of specific properties, and this is where all hard work was already made by Cyberscript people.

💡 Generally speaking if you need to play a ton of animations I would recommend you to use Cyberscript directly, since it already does everything for you and also comes up with a ton of useful more features to build a mod with ease.

On the other hand, if like me you only want to play 1 or 2 animations at most, then it's probably a lot of overhead and you can keep reading.

What I personally did was to reuse Cyberscript archive .ent stripped of components that I don't need, and .workspot with only the animations that I'm interested into.

To do the same, you will need to download the Cyberscript Core Animation Archive, install it in your mod folder so that Wolvenkit can find it, and locate the workspot_anim.ent file in the following directory structure:

cyberscript.archive/
├─ base/
│  ├─ cyberscript/
│  │  ├─ entity/
│  │  │  ├─ workspot_anim.ent

You can then use wolvenkit and your file explorer to move the workspot_anim.ent in the location of your choice inside your mod. Then you can strip it of every components that isn't aworkWorkspotResourceComponent using wolvenkit.

Then you will need to locate an interesting .workspot file inside the base/workspot of the game and place it in the location of your choice inside the archive folder of the mod you are creating.

Redscript

Once the previous files are ready, we need something able to spawn an entity in Redscript (once again if your preference goes to Lua, I'd recommend you to use Cyberscript directly).

This is exactly what Codeware offers with DynamicEntitySystem: see "Entities" in its wiki!

Here's a short example which will get us going:

(You will need to replace the paths to the .ent and .workspot files with the paths to your files )

// minimal example
// use in CET console like: Game.GetPlayer():Smoke();

@addMethod(PlayerPuppet)
public func Smoke() -> Void {

    // first listen for entity spawning events
    // this is because spawning happens asynchronously
    GameInstance
        .GetDynamicEntitySystem()
        .RegisterListener(n"MyMod", this, n"OnEntityUpdate");

    let spec = new DynamicEntitySpec();

    // then designate entity to spawn
    spec.templatePath = r"base\\mymod\\entity\\smoke.ent";
    
    // position it on the player
    spec.position = this.GetWorldPosition();
    spec.orientation = EulerAngles.ToQuat(Vector4.ToRotation(this.GetWorldPosition()));

    // add a tag to differentiate it once spawned
    // this is because DynamicEntitySystem listen to all the entities spawned
    // not just the ones it creates
    spec.tags = [n"MyMod"];

    // process with entity spawning ...
    GameInstance
        .GetDynamicEntitySystem()
        .CreateEntity(spec);
}

// and this is the method that will be called by DynamicEntitySystem
// with entity spawning events
@addMethod(PlayerPuppet)
private cb func OnEntityUpdate(event: ref<DynamicEntityEvent>) {

    // make sure this is our .ent and it has spawned succesfully
    if Equals(event.GetEventType(),DynamicEntityEventType.Spawned){

        // retrieve our invisible device
        let device = GameInstance
            .GetDynamicEntitySystem()
            .GetEntity(event.GetEntityID()) as GameObject;

        // make our player enter workspot
        GameInstance
            .GetWorkspotSystem(this.GetGame())
            .PlayInDevice(device, this);

        // when player smokes,
        // it probably need to own a cigarette and a lighter in the first place :)
        GameInstance
            .GetTransactionSystem(this.GetGame())
            .GiveItem(this, ItemID.FromTDBID(t"Items.crowd_cigarette_i_stick"), 1);
        GameInstance
            .GetTransactionSystem(this.GetGame())
            .GiveItem(this, ItemID.FromTDBID(t"Items.apparel_lighter_a"), 1);

        // and these objects better be in his/her hands too :)
        GameInstance
            .GetTransactionSystem(this.GetGame())
            .AddItemToSlot(this, t"AttachmentSlots.WeaponLeft", ItemID.FromTDBID(t"Items.crowd_cigarette_i_stick"));
        GameInstance
            .GetTransactionSystem(this.GetGame())
            .AddItemToSlot(this, t"AttachmentSlots.WeaponRight", ItemID.FromTDBID(t"Items.apparel_lighter_a"));
        let left = new AIEquipCommand();
        left.slotId = t"AttachmentSlots.WeaponLeft";
        left.itemId = t"Items.crowd_cigarette_i_stick";
        let right = new AIEquipCommand();
        right.slotId = t"AttachmentSlots.WeaponRight";
        right.itemId = t"Items.apparel_lighter_a";
        let controller = this.GetAIControllerComponent();
        controller.SendCommand(left);
        controller.SendCommand(right);
        
        // more steps eluded for simplicity:
        // you probably wanna play SFX and VFX too... 

        // finally start anim on player!
        GameInstance
            .GetWorkspotSystem(this.GetGame())
            .SendJumpToAnimEnt(this, n"stand_car_lean180__rh_cigarette__01__smoke__01", true);
            
        // from there on, you probably want to use Callback
        // and coordinate each step of the anim :)
    }
}

Adding the script to your mod

to add this script to your mod, you will need to create the following structure in the ressources folder of your mod:

r6/
├─ scripts/
│  ├─ your_script.reds

Clearing misconceptions

• .ent can be anything, not just a "living entity". it can be a cigarette, the act of smoking.. it can really be "whatever".

  • it contains components with e.g. workspotMapper, entSlot, etc

  • it also contains obviously a workWorkspotResourceComponent with points out to the .workspot.

• .workspot gets triggered throughout .ent: you don't spawn a workspot and play it on a target, you spawn an entity which references the workspot and plays the workspot through the entity (which in turn play the animation(s), and you can "jump" from one animation to another in the same workspot).

Introduction: Foot Snap IK

Foot Snap IK (inverse kinematics) is a feature in the game that procedurally (at runtime) modifies poses to position feet on the floor. This can be good (e.g., making sure that both feet are on the ground when the character is standing on a slope or stairs), but can also be bad (makes it difficult/impossible to adjust the vertical positioning of your character in photomode, and glues feet to the floor when this is not intended for the pose). This tutorial covers how to disable this feature for individual poses in a .anims file in WolvenKit.

Initial Setup

In this tutorial, I assume that you have a .anims file with some of your (photomode) poses in WolvenKit. This would probably contain some of your own new photomode poses that you have created/edited/imported in Blender, and then exported from Blender into WolvenKit, using a mix of the other tutorials.

What if I don't want any Foot Snap IK at all?

If you know that you don't want any Foot Snap IK for any of your poses at all, the solution is simple: just start out by using the Edited Photomode containers by Zwei that Importing Animations also links to. However, sometimes we might have a single Photomode container with a mix of poses, of which we want some to use Foot Snap IK, and we want others not to. For this case, I'm assuming we start with a container that does include Foot Snap IK for all poses, and we'll try to remove it from some individual poses.

Removing Foot Snap IK from a Pose

The following screenshot shows how you can see in WolvenKit whether or not your pose currently has Foot Snap IK enabled:

If you see this, and you want to get rid of Foot Snap IK for this pose, simply right-click the box with the red outline in the screenshot above, and select "Reset Object". See the screenshot below:

IMPORTANT: after doing this, the pose would in my case sometimes completely break, causing the character to explode into a huge graphical glitch of floating triangles in-game. The solution that worked for me was to, after going through the process above, simply re-import the .glb file from Blender into WolvenKit again (exactly the same file that you have already imported once), as per the other tutorials such as Poses/Animations: make your own.

I noticed Photo Mode V is huge, and sometimes, specific pose packs have different character scaling. For example, the MascV in MrsFlower’s MascV idle pose pack is smaller than the MascV in my MascV Joytoys and MascV Yorinobu pose packs. With the enabling of Holopointz, I was able to figure out why this occurs and how to “adjust” the scaling.

This guide is mainly a supplement to xBaebsae’s tutorials and resources. This guide allows you to scale armatures as desired for your VP, personal, etc., needs when you make pose packs and/or animations. This is TPP only.

NOTE: Retargeting poses and/or animations will adjust the scale. So a retargeted Fem V pose will make the Masc V pose a bit smaller and vice versa.

If anyone figures out a more efficient way to do this, please do not hesitate to contact me and improve on this knowledge.

STEP ONE

Open up your template of choice. There is also a multiple armature template if you want to make shippy or choomy poses, and I will use it for this tutorial.

STEP TWO

Select your desired armature and go into Object Mode. The armature bones should turn orange.

IF YOU NEED TO RESET THE SCALE, HIT ALT + S!

STEP THREE

Go to the right-hand side of the screen while your armature of choice is selected, and go into the Items tab. It should look like this.

STEP FOUR

There are several ways to do this. Please remember that X moves side-to-side and will make the armature wide or narrow, Y moves front-to-back, and Z moves up or down, making the armature taller or shorter. You can do this via the Dimensions tab, but you can also adjust as needed in the Scale tab. I think the Scale tab gives better results.

Let’s say we want to make FemV taller than MascV at around the same “height” as Man Big. I put in some values below.

STEP FIVE

Now that you have your scale to your preference, you need to apply it. Hit Ctrl + A and select scale, or your changes will not be applied! Your armature will remain the default size when you import!

After you hit Ctrl + A and apply the scale, the armature will change appropriately. Ta-da! Import your pose, and this is what you will see in-game.

If you look closely, the armature has changed proportions from when the scale was applied.

If you did not get your desired result or created a curse, hit CTRL + Z and keep adjusting the values, and apply as needed. This may need to take some trial and error. :)

Please remember, you NEED to CTRL + S + Scale!

STEP SIX

Have fun! I hope this inspires a lot of awesome poses, especially shippy ones. You also have the power to create some hysterical curses, as seen below.

CREDITS

xBae for pose templates.

Holopointz, for enabling me to screw around.

Manavortex, for being patient with my skill issues adding to the wiki.

Summary

This guide will show you how to make use the IK template for making poses.

It has been originally published by xbaebsae and ported to the wiki with permission.

Wait, this is not what I want!

• If you want to learn how to make poses, check Poses/Animations: make your own

• If you want to familiarize yourself with Blender, check Blender: Getting Started

• To learn about Inverse Kinematics, check Animations: IK and FK

Requirements

xbaebsae's new simple IK Template (includes FemaleAverage/V, MaleAverage/V, MaleBig skeletons)

Differences to regular posing templates

Select the yellow boxes (they're IK related bones) to move around bone chains. Use the grab in blender (shortcut g) to grab a bone and move it where you want it. This works on hands and feet which will move the respective arm and leg accordingly.

There are boxes in front of knees and behind elbows that are called TARGET_xyz. Grab and move these to adjust the angle of the joints.

The rig overall has constraints set as usual so elbows and knees will not bend unnaturally, saving you from broken LookAt features and generally just not realistic movement. No you cannot bend your elbow sidewards, sorry.

You can also use snapping to place for example hands, quickly. Place the 2Dcursor (the lil target thingy) by clicking for example on the hip of your character. Then select IK_HandRight and press shift+s>Selected to Cursor. The IK bone will snap to the cursor you placed!

!You cannot do this with regular bones!

Use IK_Hips to move the upper area of your character around as a whole, IK_ROOT to move the entire character and IK_SPINE to pose the first, lowest spine bone. The regular bone counterparts of these are not working correctly while IK is active. All other bones function as usual.

There's the bone IK_Pelvis which allows for easy hip shifting! No more fiddling around with the Hips bone for this! :)

Last but not least, the fingers also have IK chains for easy bending. You can still pose them normally as well and/or paste poses.

Differences in the pose creation process

1. Instead of making a new action per pose immediately, create all your poses within a single Action. This simply means you do a pose, Insert the keyframe for it at frame 0, then move the timeline to frame 1 and do your next pose there, insert it, move to frame 2, pose, insert, repeat.

2. Instead of hitting the arrow to save the Action strip, Head to Pose>Animation>Bake Action.

In the window that pops up, use these settings. The green ones being particularly important!

This removes the IK from the rig, so do this only when you are done with all your poses! It converts the IK posed ...poses into regular keyframes ready for use ingame.

3. Now we just need to make seperate tracks for each of our poses. To do this, move the timeline cursor to Frame 0 where your first pose is and simply insert a new keyframe for the whole character again. Do a second one with the same pose (it shouldnt change anymore after you set the first one) to make sure everything will be okay ingame.

Green: The long Action we baked, has all poses on different frames. Blue: The new action for pose 1 only.

Click the little arrow as usual to make the current pose its own Action. Disable it and move to the next frame of your long Action. Repeat the same process for the second pose. Insert a keyframe where the pose is, then also insert one at frame 0.

Example:

Pose 2 starts at frame 1, inserted a second frame for frame 0 and moved it down as usual.

Pose 3 starts at frame 2 and i inserted a second frame at 0, then moved the action down.

4. Before exporting, clean up the rig by deleting all IK related bones (they are now useless anyway). Head over to pose mode, select only the yellow bones by simply clicking this here:

Switch to edit mode and delete the selected bones.

Now you are done, your skeleton is cleaned to the old familiar one you used before.

Getting the poses back into Cyberpunk

The import process is the same as in Poses/Animations: make your own -> #exporting

Hope you found this useful! Happy modding~

Summary

Published: September 2023 by Last Documented Update: June 19 2024 by LadyLea

This guide will teach you how to create a custom pose in Blender and import it into the game via Wolvenkit.

Since this guide is about creating and imported custom poses, we will make a photo mode replacer. To convert it to a standalone pose pack, follow the guide for either Photo Mode or Appearance Menu Mod.

Wait, this is not what I want!

• For an overview of all poses in photo mode, check Cheat Sheet: Photo Mode

• For more general knowledge, check the Animationssection.

Skipping and skimming

This guide will include the minimum amount of fluff and will link background information rather than giving it.

For that reason, you shouldn't skip or skim unless the section tells you that it's optional.

Any links in the text will either

• provide additional information which you do not need to complete this guide

• lead to step-by-step instructions for any given process

Follow them if you want to learn more, or if you are unclear on how to complete the current step, then come back here.

Prerequisites

You will need the following software (install at least this version or higher):

Step 0: Preparations

Your Wolvenkit project

To import your pose into Cyberpunk, you need a Wolvenkit project.

Download the template files

Download the animation template(s) for your rig(s):

• for single characters: from Angy's Google Drive or check Easy IK based Posing

• for multiple characters: Zwei's edit of Angy's templates

Move/copy them somewhere, then open the one you want in Blender.

Step 1: Posing the mannequin

This step will happen in Blender.

1. Open up the file

2. Select the armature by clicking on one of the bones in the viewport (the red circle on the screenshot below). They will be highlighted if you did it right.

1. Switch the viewport to Pose Mode in the dropdown menu at the topleft of the viewport, immediately below the "File" and "Edit" menus. This will turn the armature red.

1. Now, you need to create your pose. Before you do that, check the box below:

1. As of today (September 2023), we can only create poses and animations by adjusting each bone by hand. This is how:

   1. Select a bone by clicking on it (it will appear highlighted)

   2. Rotate the bone by either

      • pressing R to enter rotation mode, then moving the mouse to rotate the bone (read up on axis limitation in the expandable box above) or

      • selecting the Rotate tool from the toolbar on the left, then clicking and dragging along the coloured axes

   3. When you're done with this bone, position the next one.

1. Now, draw the rest of the owl, then proceed to the next section.

Step 2: Creating the animation

You now need to create an animation that Wolvenkit can add into the existing file. For that purpose, we will create a nonlinear animation in Blender.

1. In the panel at the bottom, click on <No Action> to select it.

2. In the Armature -> Animation Data panel, click on the New button.

1. Now, we need to add keyframes, one for the fallback position and one for the pose.

   1. Make sure that the keyframe selected in the animation timeline is 0 (see "Animation Timeline" screenshot below)

   2. Click into the main viewport next to the armature

   3. Open the Keyframe menu (Pose -> Animation -> Insert Keyframe, Hotkey: I)

   4. Select Whole Character (Hotkey: W). The menu will close now.

   5. Press the right arrow to select the next keyframe

   6. Repeat the steps 3 and 4

   7. After you have done that, click on the Push Down Action button

1. Now, rename both your NLA strip and your animation to idle_stand_01. This will overwrite the "Tabula Rasa" animation. (Find a list of animations and their associated names here.) If you aren't planning on replacing the in-game idle poses (i,e., Tabula Rasa), it is still required that your NLA strip and your animation have the same name.

This is important!

1. Go back and read the warning box under step 4.

2. Double-check the names. (Yes, this is that important)

3. Optional: To add another pose, you can go back to Step 1, then rinse and repeat.

4. Now that you're sure that you have the correct names, switch the viewport back to Object Mode (the same way you switched to pose mode). Your armature should still be selected. TODO: This step will be made optional when the Blender plugin update hits. Update guide when it does.

Exporting

Use the Wolvenkit Blender Plugin to export your animation as a .glb file. If the instructions below don't match, check WKit Blender Plugin: Import/Export -> #animations for the up-to-date workflow.

1. This will open a file picker. Do the following things:

   • Check the Animations box on the right

   • Navigate the to the path of the file you exported in the previous step and click on it to overwrite it

2. When you're done, hit "Export for Cyberpunk".

Now it's time to import the file back into Wolvenkit.

Step 3: Importing and testing

2. Click on photomode__female__idle.glb to select it and open the import settings panel.

3. In the panel on the right, change Target File Format to Anims:

1. Hit the Import Selected button.

Troubleshooting

My pose is twitching!

1. Open your .anims file in Wolvenkit

2. expand the animations array at the top of the file

3. For each animAnimSetEntry, change the property animation -> animBuffer -> numTracks to 2

1. If that doesn't work, change the numTracks to 0

2. If that still doesn't work, make sure that your pose has at least two keyframes by going back to #step-2-creating-the-animation and not skimming this time.

Can't import: No extra data

If Wolvenkit's console tells you something like this:

animation `anim_name` has no extra data, can't import!

2. Use the Wolvenkit Blender IO suite 1.5.3 or greater to export as animation. If the error does not go away, update the plugin.

3. Import the .glb file into Wolvenkit again.

My pose doesn't import!

I have no idea how to tell you this, choomba, other than stressing thrice that it's important and putting a big red box, but the NLA strip and the animation must have the same name. Go back to "this is important" and double-check. The animation might have trailing numbers, e.g. be called photomode__female__idle.001, that will already do it.

Very funny, but it wasn't that

If you're really 100% sure, then you might have a broken NLA strip. That happens sometimes — simply recreate it:

1. If your armature isn't selected anymore, click on it to select it

2. Switch into Pose Mode

3. Press A to select all bones

4. Press Ctrl+C to copy their positions

5. Create a new NLA strip by repeating Step 2 — but instead of posing the armature, you can simply press Ctrl+V to paste the bone positions from your previous animation.

6. Export the new NLA strip, then import it via Wolvenkit. This should work now.

Nope, still borked

We're reaching the end of the rope here. Go back and check the animation names. If that wasn't it,

1. create a new copy of the .blend file you downloaded (but keep yours open)

2. In your old Blend file, repeat 1-4 of the previous step

3. In your new Blend file, repeat 5+6 of the previous step

Noesis Layer: Invalid Joint

When trying to import into Wolvenkit, you get an error message like this:

$fst_root.001|Noesis Frames|Noesis Layer: Invalid Joint Transform, joint Armature not present in the associated rig 

That is because there is ancient data in the template, which Wolvenkit doesn't know how to handle. Delete everything called "Noesis" from the list of animations below:

Summary

Created by @manavortex Published April 16 2023

Versions:

This guide will teach you how to add custom animations to AppearanceMenuMod's Pose tab.

Difficulty level: You're able to read ;) You don't even need to know your way around Wolvenkit for this one!

Wait, this is not what I want!

To add poses to photo mode, check ArchiveXL: adding Photo Mode Poses.

Prerequisites

1. You have an .anims file, either a game file or one that you have made yourself

2. You have a

3. You have a text editor like Notepad++

4. You have one of the following things:

   1. The Easy AMM Poses tool (Nexus | Github)

   2. The template project (Nexus)

   3. Not recommended: A different template project or game files that you want to adjust. If you don't know what you're doing yet, this may lead to frustration

Overview

The screenshots show the example project, but it's absolutely no problem if you set up everything on your own: the guide will tell you which path goes where.

Easy AMM poses

Instead of following the process below, you can use the Easy AMM poses generator, which will walk you through the process.

The pose generator will generate the entire structure out of your .anim file and your user input. You can then follow the steps under #connecting-the-files to move your files around.

Visual learners rejoice: There is a video!

Connecting the files

Start by customizing your file structure. If you leave it as it is and publish the mod and somebody else does the same, only one of the two will work. Create a folder structure that is unique to you.

File structure: The .lua

1. Any lua poses for AMM must be inside Custom Poses, but you can rename your_optional_subfolder to whatever you want (or even delete it).

2. Rename amm_tutorial.lua to something that identifies your pose pack, e.g. netrunner_coding

3. Open the file in your text editor. Let's look at the first half of the entries (we'll check the second half later):

return {
  -- Your beautiful name :)
  modder = "your_name_here",
  
  -- A custom category for your poses that will appear on the list in the tab. 
  -- You could use your name or a description of your pose pack. 
  -- You can also add your stuff to a category that somebody else has already defined.
  category = "Netrunner making AMM mods",
  
  -- relative path to your ent file. You can copy this from Wolvenkit.
  -- Don't forget to add the extra slashes!
  entity_path = "tutorial\\amm_custom_poses\\making_addons\\ops\\amm_tutorial.ent",
  
  -- we'll get to these at "Custom Poses: The .lua"
  anims = { --[[ here be code ]]  }
}

1. Change modder to your name so people know who made this.

2. Change category to the name of your pose pack. This will be used for AMM to sort your poses into categories, which people will use to browse, so don't go overboard.

3. Change entity_path: Right-click on your .ent file in WKit and select Copy relative Path and paste it into the lua.

4. Replace all \ in your entity path with \\. This is critical and your mod will not work if you don't!

File structure: The .ent

Open the components array, find the component with the name of amm_workspot_collab, and set the depotPath of workspotResource to the relative path of your .workspot file.

Do not change anything else — we're done here.

File structure: The .anim

An .anims file is targeting a specific rig and holds a list of animations. These hold the pose data; they're what you overwrite when importing from Blender.

File structure: The .workspot

Scroll to the bottom of the file and find the node named workspotTree. Open it and find the list finalAnimsets.

Each of the workWorkspotAnimsetEntries inside finalAnimset connects animation files and rigs.

For each of the entries you keep, make sure that the following paths point at the right animset:

• animations.cinematics[0].animSet

• loadingHandles[0]

Custom poses

Now that we have the basic structure covered, let's talk about pose names. This time, we start at the end and make our way backwards.

Custom poses: The .anims

Find and open your .anims file. Here's what you're looking at:

Open the animations array to see data for all defined animations (poses). You can make more by duplicating them, delete obsolete entries and change their names; any other changes are coming from Blender.

Custom poses: The .workspot

Open your .workspot file and expand the following nodes:

• workspotTree

  • rootEntry

    • list

First, we're going to look at workSequences.This data type is used for pose transitions and -definitions (e.g. an NPC standing up). For our purpose, we don't need any of the fancy stuff.

While this list in the example file contains two workSequences, you're gonna need one per however many animations/poses you have. Duplicate to your hearts content.

1. Open the workSequence and expand both id and list.

2. Expand the first list entry (workAnimClip) and its proprety id.

3. Point it at the right animation: Change the workAnimClip's property animName to the name of your animation (green on screenshot)

4. Make sure the IDs in the workSequence are unique. (You can skip this for the two entries from the template - if you continue they pattern they establish, all id's will be incremented and unique.)

   1. Find the workSequence's property id and increment its numeric value +1 from the previous id (orange on screenshot)

   2. Find the workAnimClip's property id and increment its numeric value +1 from the previous id (orange on screenshot)

5. To clarify - our first example workSequence had a property id of 2 and its workAnimClip's propery id was 3. Our second example workSequence had a property id of 4 and its workAnimClip had a property id of 5. Therefore, your next workSequence should have a property id of 6 and its workAnimClip's property id should be 7, and so on. But good news! WolvenKit's File Validation can fill in these numbers for you. Visit this page for more information.

6. Optional, but recommended: Set the workSequence's property idleAnim to the name of your appearance (purple on screenshot). This is purely for your convenience, as you can see which is which when scrolling through the list.

Custom poses: The .lua

As of version 2.2, AMM doesn't know anything about the file structure. For that reason, you need to tell it about the poses you added, and the anims array is how you do that.

  anims = {        
      ["Man Average"] = {                       -- male body gender, e.g. spawned masc V, Johnny, Viktor, Takemura…
        "sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__make_amm_addon",
        "sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__01__thinking",
      },                    
      ["Woman Average"] = {                     -- female body gender, e.g. spawned femme V, Panam, Judy, Mamá Welles…
        "sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__make_amm_addon",
        "sit_chair_table_keyboard__2h_on_keyboard__01__thinking",      
      },                   
      ["Big"] = {},                             -- any body gender: big folks, e.g. Jackie, River, Rhino…
      ["Child"] = {},                           -- any body gender: children
      ["Fat"] = {},                             -- any body gender: fat folks, e.g. Dexter
      ["Man Massive"] = {},                     -- Smasher      
      ["Player Man"] = {},                      -- first person: male body gender V
      ["Player Woman"] = {},                    -- first person: female body gender V
  }

The lists tell AMM which poses belong to which rig, allowing to hide them when they aren't supported. As you can see, it's no problem if there are duplicate names, and you can even reuse entries in the workspotTree — the game knows which animation to use because of the file structure above.

Troubleshooting

AMM doesn't show my poses

The problem is in your .lua, AMM fails to pick up the pose information you provided. You can check AppearanceMenuMod.log, which might tell you what's wrong, but it's probably fastest to just start over from the template .lua file.

I click, but nothing happens (no pose shows up in AMM)

The problem is between your .lua and your .ent file: the poses were registered correctly with AMM, but Cyberpunk can find nothing to spawn.

The NPC briefly T-poses, and then the game crashes

Check your .workspot file for copy-paste mistakes when hooking up your .anim files.

My custom pose changes are ignored

The error is between Blender and your .anims file. Double-check names and make sure that you actually imported.

The wrong pose is triggered

You messed up the indices in the .workspot file. Go back and make sure that they're all unique.

Summary

Created & Published: Summer 2021 by @Pinkydude

What you’ll need :

• AMM (or any other mods that spawn characters)

• WolvenKIT or the game files extracted [basegame_4_animation.archive]

• The 010 hex editing software with the CP77 template as well as the scripts (I recommend joining the CP77 Modding server to grab those!)

• The WolvenKIT console (CP77Tools)

I’ll assume you already know some basic modding (extracting the files with the console or WKit etc)

It’s important to also know that some characters have their own locomotion files (meaning unique pathing etc) Like Panam, Goro etc

I won’t go over every single ones here!

For this tutorial, I’ll make an animation for Mitch, who uses the Man Average Civilian Locomotion (MAC)

The MAC locomotion [man_average_civilian_locomotion.anims] is located here [base\animations\npc\generic_characters\male_average\locomotion]

This will be the path of your mod!

To grab an animation, you’ll have to go into the Animations folder, there you’ll see multiple other folders- the [main_quests] and [side_quests] have unique animations not used by any other characters outside of that that specific quest!

For example, q103 is Ghost Town, the start of Panam’s quest line

I’ll use the animation of Mitch hugging Panam when we meet them at the camp!

Once you find the animation you wish to use, simply copy and paste it in your last folder in your mod project, the [locomotion] folder, and rename the .anims file with the character’s locomotion file’s name, in Mitch’s case its [man_average_civilian_locomotion]

Once pasted and renamed, you can now open the .anims file in 010!

A lot of .anims file actually have multiple animation inside of it to choose from, simply open the [struct DATA] handle to expand the list. Since mine is an unique animation, there’s only one [animAnimation]

I’ll now click on the [CNAMES] handle and use the PASTE script

(I recommend setting a shortkey, you’ll use it a lot for custom poses among other things!)

A window should pop up asking for an input : Here, type [idle_stand]

(this is the name of the idle animation the NPCs use when spawned!)

This will add a new CNAME to the list. Now, go back into [struct DATA] and open up the [animAnimation] you wish to grab!

The new CNAME we added will automatically be the last one in the list, not wasting time by checking what number it has, I simply put a really large number to be sure to grab the last name in the list!

Click on the OG name and simply put 500 with the numpad to change the CNAME to [idle_stand]

Save your file and pack your mod! You’re done!

Load a save file, spawn any character using the MAC locomotion and VOILA 💛

Summary

Published: ??? by Last documented update: Mar 08 2024 by

This tutorial will teach you how to replace facial expressions for Photo Mode or AMM with those of an NPC.

Difficulty: You need to be able to read. If you run into trouble anyway, please hit us up on Discord so that we can improve this guide!

Wait, this is not what I want!

• If you want to look at reference expressions, check here.

• If you want to import your own facial expressions, then currently (Mar 08 2024) you're somewhat out of luck, because the toolchain doesn't fully support you yet and we don't have a guide. Reach out on Discord and help us to get this show on the road!

• If you want to make custom poses for anything that is not the face, check Poses/Animations: make your own

Step 1: Locate the right file

Photo Mode

AMM

Both body genders genders are using the same file:

base\animations\facial\male_average\interactive_scene\generic_average_male_facial_idle.anims

Step 2: Replace the target file with the one you want

NPC animation files have the extension .anims and reside in the folder base\animations\facial. You can find the ones for facial expressions by searching in WolvenKit for

base\animations\facial\ *.anims

Find the file that you want to use and copy it over the original file.

If you aren't sure which file you want to use, check the references.

👉 If you are missing reference screenshots, feel free to create and upload them and update the wiki.

base\animations\facial\main_characters\rogue\rogue_facial_idle_poses.anims

base\animations\ui\photomode\photomode_male_facial.anims

base\animations\facial\male_average\interactive_scene\generic_average_male_facial_idle.anims

Step 3: Pick the expressions you want

You now need to make the expressions from your new file selectable by AMM/Photo mode. This happens via animation names in the target file.

1. Open the target file (which you replaced with the NPC of your choice) in WolvenKit.

2. Find the animation you want to use and change its name:

1. Rinse and repeat the process with all animation names

2. Save the file

Troubleshooting

My expressions don't work at all!

Make sure that you have replaced the correct file, and that your mod has been correctly packed and installed.

Some of my expressions aren't working!

The game will look for the animation by exact name. AMM is using a different list than photo mode — make sure that you are using the right keys.

It's showing expressions, but not the one I picked!

Check your target file: you have used a key twice.

If the game is looking for the neutral expression, it will stop looking as soon as it finds an animation with the name of facial_neutral. If you have multiple of those, it won't care.