IVCS FAQ for Relala

1 - What is IVCS?

IVCS is short for “Illusio Vitae Custom Skeleton”. It is a mod that replaces the base skeleton for every playable race in FFXIV. The skeleton in FFXIV is used to animate, pose and scale parts of your character. IVCS is mostly identical to vanilla, it just adds a few additional bones. Using IVCS typically requires two or three seperate mods: The mod affecting the skeleton, the mod affecting the mesh (rigged to the skeleton), and - optional - a mod affecting the animation or pose. You can download it here. The main reason to use it on lalafell is the added tail bones.

2 - Does Relala have an IVCS version?

No. The only reason to make an IVCS version of a body (or mod in general) is to rig parts of it to IVCS bones. The parts in question are a third joint for the fingers, toes, and genitalia. Obviously, the only thing that would possibly be rigged on Relala are the fingers, but vanilla fingers and poses are sculpted for two joints, which applies to Relala as well. Therefore, it does not and will not have an IVCS version.

3 - Do I need IVCS Relala to use an IVCS tail?

No. Relala does not have a tail, so there is nothing to rig to IVCS. The tail itself needs to be IVCS compatible, and relala has nothing to do with it.

4 - How do I use an IVCS tail?

You will need an IVCS tail, the “[IVCS] Illusio Vitae Custom Skeletons” mod, and (optional, but highly recommended) an animation mod for the tail. Simply install all three of these mods.
I have included some examples to get you started, but there are obviously more tails/animations.

5 - Why is my tail stiff when using an IVCS tail?

Most vanilla lalafell animations do not have data for the tail bones. The only ones that do are the ones that are shared between races, for example, a lot of the combat animations. If you don’t want your tail to be stiff, you need an animation mod. You can port it from Miqo/Au’ra or make a custom one.

6 - What is IVCS Unique Racial Bodies?

Tl;dr: Relala users don't need it
This is a mod that gets recommended in the IVCS setup guide. Like the name implies, this mod assigns a unique body to every race in FFXIV. Vanilla doesn’t do this. For talls, most of them use the midlander model, and it just gets scaled automatically in engine. As far as I know, we haven’t found a way to modify this scaling, so it cannot scale the IVCS bones, which causes strange warping. So, to avoid scaling and the warping associated with it, each race gets its own model.
Since we are lalafell, this is pretty irrelevant for us and only overwrites Relala. You don’t need to enable it if you don’t play talls.
It also gives female lalafell and male lalafell unique models, so enabling it in any way makes female lalafell smallclothes vanilla. Other gear is unaffected by this and remains Relala.
If you do play talls and want to use IVCS bones on them, the recommended install order is this:

1. Tall body (Bibo, etc.)
2. IVCS Racial Bodies
3. IVCS Compatible body

If you are a tall and don't want to use IVCS bones, you don't need it.

7 - How do I rig a tail to IVCS?

The easiest method is to import a Miqo'te tail, scale it down, and weight transfer. After that, you can delete the Miqo tail mesh and the lalafell armature, point the lala tail to the miqo armature, reparent, and it should work.
In general, you need:

1. An armature with "sippo" bones (japanese for tail), so TexTools doesn't delete your weights
2. Weights for the "sippo" vertex groups on your tail

Also see this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UoekG-WDGJElpbWJIphsMIO5amXF3FF4HSuqiO-e2W4/edit

8 - Why are my ears broken when using a custom animation?

This actually has nothing to do with IVCS, but I'm including it anyways.
Lalafell ears use the same ear bones as Miqo'te ears. If your ears look strange, the mod maker made a small mistake and included posed Miqo'te ear data in their animation (not a big deal, since it's usually irrelevant).
Refer to this guide.

9 - How do I get ear wiggle on animal lalafell?

There are basically two types of ear wiggle.
Actual animations (Miqo'te style) and slight wiggle in the wind (in-engine physics moving the ears, no animation required).
The first one is pretty hard, mostly because it requires custom animations for everything, but the second one is not.
You can weigh the ears to "n_ear_b_r" and "n_ear_b_l" for a subtle wiggle effect that doesn't require EX bones.
You can also use the Tamamo Headband EX bones.

10 - How do I make animation mods?

This question is way too loaded for this document, but I wanted to include some links.
There is an extremely extensive guide document on this topic that is 83 pages long. Here it is.
Since 83 pages can be very overwhelming, I made a quick video guide on how to export and import an animation in FFXIV upon request.
You can use any generic Blender guide for the animation once it's in .fbx format.

11 - How do I make an animation lalafell compatible?

Sometimes, auto scaling is our enemy. Sometimes, it is our friend.
In this case, it is our friend, since you have to do almost nothing to make an animation lalafell compatible.
Guide

Funny little experiments I did :3

None of these were successful bye but maybe it could be useful info

How do I edit skeleton???

I use the XAT blender plugin. It lets you export .sklb files.
When I added EX bones to the base lalafell skeleton, I used the IVCS skeleton as the "Base Skeleton" fbx, and my exported EX item's skeleton as the second one. It then generated a .sklb with all the bones for me.
I imported that .sklb in TexTools via "Raw File Import" and inputting the lalafell file path.

Lalafell Miqo ears

I wanted animal ears on lalafell to use the proper animations from dance mods.
I adjusted the mimi (ear) bones on the lalafell skeleton to have the same orientation and location as miqo'te ears.
The result actually worked, but it was pretty useless, since auto scaling didn't play nice with it.
You could:

• Load Miqo'te poses, and the ears would load correctly
• Retarget the whole animation to lalafell (thus getting rid of the in-engine auto scaling), and then the ear animation would play correctly

If anyone wants to tackle animal ear animations on lalafell, using this skeleton mod would be a good start, and they would simply have to make lalafell-exclusive ear animation mods.

Ex bones on the base skeleton

Tl;dr: You can add EX bones to the base skeleton, and they are poseable! However, it seems like a "flag" in the game has to be enabled to play the appropriate animations. This flag gets set if the item is equipped. Without it, the bones are static, but poseable.

If the EX-bone containing item is equipped, the fake ex-bones move, too. I can't think of a use for this, though <:3