My initial reaction is that there's an attach point that the engine uses for relics, meaning that for a model that lacks them it'll fall back onto the model origin or whatever it feels like doing.

Ugh.

And of course key for me was to have the head as an attach point for separate reasons and of course... the dwarf heroes that can deal with resources AND relics no problem, don't have a head attach point.

Classic.

Do you know off hand, has anyone ever been successful at having a unit carry any other, non-relic, object using the resource carry animations? I've scoured through old mods and nothing stands out in this area.

I have units able to wear armor with attachpoints

Is possible to fix dwarfs in 3Ds max, if you need it I can fix the attachpoint of dwarfs for you

I appreciate that offer, but no it's not necessary at all, but thanks.

The dwarfs actually already have the "righthand" attachment point for carrying, but Loggy says the relics are hardcoded and wont pay attention to that.

But I will ask you, do you know of any mods, using default anims, where units can pick up and carry (visibly) other objects besides resources and relics?

I should clarify I don't KNOW how relics attach, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the engine just decides to look for a specific attachpoint.

yes, the the main code that make that if the unit have the RELIC flag active

I see no reason why that isn't the exact, unfortunate, case.

Therefore I switched my approach on the "seemingly" simple task of getting a unit to pick up and carry an object around. I've had some success by using the existing 'righthand' attachpoints and re-working the resource subtypes (like say turning fish into a crate) - so in essence I can now get the dwarf to carry around anything, in its hands, under the right circumstances (e.g. dwarf collected 1 "fish" show him carrying visual attachment 'crate'). So he can pick-up from ground and drop-off in a building. However he can not drop the object back on the ground.

IOW I think the RELIC is the only thing you can pick-up off ground, visually carry around, drop off on the ground, and/or deposit in a building. And I just initially thought it would be fairly easier to apply that functionality to any object.

Was also confident I'd find some old mini-game mod that featured units grabbing/dropping different objects all over the map that I could deconstruct, but I'm coming up short and flying blind.