HKX Edit — Skyrim animation editor

Preview, pose and author Skyrim animations — no Blender, no Havok SDK.

Hi everyone! HKX Edit is ready to share.

It is a standalone Windows tool for Skyrim's Havok (.hkx) animations. Open any animation and it plays on the right skeleton right away. Switch to the Edit screen to pose it, key it and export a game-ready HKX, all in one program.

1.1.0 Update notes (2026. 10. 18)

• Added controllers and parts features

• Fixed an HKX output file size issue

• Added an auto-positioning feature for twist bones

• Added an auto-positioning feature for skirt bones

• Added weapon parts

• Removed the FK/IK distinction and replaced it with automatic switching

• Added a bone attachment feature

• Added a ragdoll feature

• Added a balance positioning feature

• Added convenience controllers

• Added a video playback feature

• Reworked gizmo handling and added a local gizmo

• Reworked the dopesheet

• And more

1.1.1 Update notes (2026. 10. 21)

• Added a marker on arm parts to indicate which side is the outside

• Newly created or modified animations now use the same compression logic as vanilla when exporting to HKX

1.1.2 Update notes (2026. 10. 22)

• Changed it so that each item, such as Export and Import, remembers the last location used.

• When saving a project, what used to be two files is now saved as a single .json file.

• Fixed an issue where, during animation work, removing a keyframe on a parent bone of a locked bone caused the locked bone’s position to shift.

1.2.3 Update notes (2026. 10. 28)

• I’ve added a World/Local toggle to the bone position and rotation value panels. When a bone is locked, it automatically switches to world values, just like with IK.

1.2.4 Update notes (2026. 10. 29)

• Works on every frame: Locked hands and feet stay in place even on in-between frames. Legs and arms are fitted with IK on every frame.

• Removed uncompressed (interleaved) export. Export now uses spline compression only.

1.2.5 Update notes (2026. 11. 06)

• Fixed an issue where float tracks were lost and transformOffsets were incorrect in spline compression on export.

• Added a “Display” tab. It lets you hide or show weapon, shield, magic, and object nodes, and on export they are saved as floats, the same as in vanilla. (Not supported in pair animations.)

• Added a camera view for creating first-person animations.

1.2.6 Update notes (2026. 11. 07)

• Fixed timeline playback staying slow after a reference video was added: the video now stops completely when its window is closed and only does work for frames that are actually shown.

Main features

• Every vanilla animation, built in — 5,300+ Skyrim SE clips (base game, patches, all three DLCs) and 50 skeletons, matched automatically. Creatures, paired killmoves, 1st person and root motion all play as in the game.

• Blender-style posing — G / R and a gizmo. Move a hand and the arm follows (IK); rotate a bone and only that bone turns (FK). Copy a pose from any vanilla frame into your own work.

• Balance and controller points — drag a foot and the body shifts its weight to stay balanced. Handles on the body turn the pelvis, aim the chest, turn the head and curl the fingers.

• Timeline and dope sheet — auto-key, onion skin, key copy / paste between tabs and between the two actors of a pair, undo, project files.

• Weapons — wear vanilla weapons from a menu, drag a weapon to move the arm holding it, or attach one hand to the other for a two-handed grip.

• Animation ragdoll — from any frame the body falls by physics with its momentum, then bake the result to keys.

• Events and export — edit animation events on their frames and export SE (64-bit) or LE (32-bit).

• UI in English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Download and install

Download HKX_Edit.zip extract it as a whole folder and run HKX_Edit.exe. Nothing to install. The full guide is included (README.txt).

Your antivirus may scan the exe on first launch (a common false positive for PyInstaller apps). If it is blocked, add an exception.

Thank you for your support — it is what keeps this tool growing. Bug reports and ideas are always welcome in the comments. When you report a problem, please attach the HKX_Viewer.log file next to the exe.

License

HKX Edit is free software under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3); the full text is in the LICENSE file in the download. Its spline-compression decoder is a port of HavokLib (GPLv3), so the whole program is GPLv3. The source code is available on request, as the GPL requires.

Third-party components (full notices in THIRD_PARTY.md and tools\LICENSES.toml):

• serde-hkx by SARDONYX — MIT / Apache-2.0 — the bundled hkxc.exe (HKX ↔ XML, 32 / 64-bit conversion)

• HavokLib by PredatorCZ — GPLv3 — spline-compression decoding

• Tabler Icons — MIT — interface icons

• PySide6 (Qt) — LGPLv3 · pyqtgraph — MIT · PyOpenGL — BSD · NumPy — BSD

The animation library, skeletons, stock weapon meshes and ragdoll values come from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, © Bethesda Softworks LLC. The GPLv3 covers the tool's own code only, not these files; you need a legitimate copy of Skyrim to use them. HKX Edit contains no Havok SDK code.





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