The animation and behavior side of modding can be quite complex. Many mods require external tools or prerequisites, and although it may be overwhelming it’s actually quite simple.
Nemesis is a modern replacement for Fore's New Idles in Skyrim, or FNIS, a tool that allows for custom animation and behavior generation. You may see some mods requiring FNIS: FNIS is no longer needed. All FNIS mods work with Nemesis and it will even generate an empty FNIS.esp for compatibility. The only thing Nemesis currently doesn’t support is creature animations. If you look for support with FNIS, you will most likely be redirected to Nemesis. Here is a more in-depth comparison between the two.
If you are starting out, we would recommend Pandora below instead.
Nemesis is fairly simple to use and takes just a few clicks. Launch the program through your mod manager, check ONLY the mods you have installed, click "update", and then "launch". Please refer to the video.
Pandora is the faster and modern replacement for Nemesis. Major differences include:
It's faster. It takes around a few seconds wherein nemesis may take at least a few minutes.
It only shows the mods you have, so no generating extra mod animations and running into errors*
It supports both Nemesis and FNIS animations. Every animation mod is compatible!
Obviously, it also generates the dummy files needed for said back-port compatibility.
Open Animation Replacer, or OAR, essentially allows for condition-based animations and is utilized by many mods. It is compatible with Nemesis, and many mods use both of these frameworks. A few mods that are good for showcasing OAR’s features are EVG Animation Variance, NPC Animation Remix, Organic Player Animations and Gesture Animation Remix. It is an incredibly versatile framework, and there are many mods that use it.
Open Animation Replacer is an open source and modern replacement for DAR, as such all DAR mods are compatible with OAR with a few exceptions such as animated armoury. However it is compatible with OAR with this patch.
Installation for OAR is just plug-and-play. Download OAR and then download the mod that requires it.
If you are experiencing an annoying T-pose whenever you start up your game, due to a high animation count, you might try this fix, which is a soft requirement for OAR too.
Some animation mods don't need any of these frameworks, as they act as simple animation replacers. Verolevi's animations are good examples (although some do require OAR).