Hunting the Hidden Backward Lean – Dev Log: Smooth Retreat Progress

TL;DR: We finally discovered that the weird “jerk” you see when walking backwards isn’t a broken animation at all—it’s the game secretly tilting the upper body by code. Now that we know the real villain, we can shut it off and give you silky-smooth stops.

1. What Happened

• True First Person (TFP) meets Reman Rampart
  The creator of the popular TFP camera mod asked me to tidy up Oblivion Remastered’s backward-movement animations. The goal: stop the camera from snapping every time you let go of the S-key.

• First Fixes Looked Great… on My PC
  I re-posed all six weapon types (unarmed, 1H, 2H, bow, staff, fist) and sent test files. On my machine the snap was gone; on his, nothing changed.

  This was the first clue that the problem wasn’t in the animation files themselves.

• Diagnostic Shield-Bash Test
  We swapped the backward walk with an obvious shield-bash animation. That let us prove the new files really were loading—even on his side. So why did the snap remain?

• Eureka Moment: “Invisible Leaning”
  We installed the Removed Procedural Slope Leaning mod and replaced the animation with a plain T-pose (arms out like a scarecrow). The T-pose still bent backward!
  Translation: the game engine adds an automatic “lean-back” whenever you step in reverse. That extra tilt cancels out most of my changes and causes the nasty camera jerk.

2. Why This Matters

Think of the animation like a brand-new shirt. I ironed out every wrinkle—yet the mannequin still looks slouched because someone wedged a big cushion behind its back. The cushion is the engine’s procedural lean. Until we pull that cushion out, no amount of ironing will give us a neat display.

3. The Plan from Here

• Locate the Lean Switch
  Staff animations lean the least, so I’ll compare their settings against the others to find the magic knob.

• Edit Blend Spaces
  Oblivion shipped with a few mis-wired blend spaces (the charts that tell the game how to glide from “moving” to “idle”). Fixing those will let us drop in smoother “bridge” motions later.

• Optional Helper Mod
  We’re testing with No Leaning installed. If it proves harmless, I’ll list it as a recommended add-on for anyone who wants instant results.

4. Closing Thoughts

I won’t lie—tracking down that hidden lean buried in the game’s animation settings feels like trying to tag a shadow that keeps slipping away. But every mystery solved makes the final mod that much cleaner.

…and an extra shout-out to one of our awesome Patrons who jumped in to test the builds and share footage.

May Kynareth guide our footsteps—forward, backward, and everywhere in between. 🌿