[WIP] Tentacle Parasite

[eightballyuri]

it did not work, it did not work. is there anything else i could be missing, its not the skeleton

[Geist]

The design is really cool, I'd love to see it used in a non-adult mod for a corrupted armor or similar.

[JackCloudie]

You know, If you have the time is there anyway you could follow up on this? You already have one piece of it done.
http://www.loverslab.com/topic/36090-request-sexual-non-sexual-parasitism-in-skyrim/

[DixiePig]

Update: Figured out scaling.

The problem was that scaling doesn't work with the .nifs that are exported from blender. I don't know why, I couldn't find anything in nifskope that would indicate as much, but it seems to be the case. My workaround was to graft the nitrishape branches onto a nif that works properly in game already and then delete it's original nitrishapes, in this case I used the original manga body.

 

So now I have all the knowledge I need to finish and release this. The only problem will be finding time. I will need to remake the body parts as somewhere down the line I deleted or merged some vertices in the ones I've been using for screenshots.

[eightballyuri]

never mind, after some tinkering i think i know whats wrong. it has something to do with my hdt setup. i put the armor on my laptop that has no hdt. and i have no problems on my laptop. and 1 piece of armor is not worth messing up the setup i have on my desktop,  so as cool as it is forget it

[DixiePig]

Update: Progress...?

 

The armor parts are scaling perfectly! The body could use some work.

So, we've established that this kind of problem can occur from having inconsistent vertex order between light and heavy meshes. The image here is of my modified body. I was VERY meticulous in making sure the vertex count never changed.

Here's what I did:

• imported the light and heavy Manga body meshes into blender 2.49
• appended into blender 2.72
• modified their shapes using only the proportional rotate and grab tools, and the shrinkwrap modifier
• append back to blender 2.49
• exported out to .nif

So if it is a vertex order issue, then one of the above stages would have to reorder the vertices, which to me seems very unlikely.

Curiously, the Manga body meshes do not have the same vertex count; I think the heavy mesh has 1 extra vertex.

 

I think that it may not be a vertex order issue. Best case scenario would be that it can be fixed in nifskope, without necessitating a third attempt at reshaping the body. Help or advice on this matter would be very much appreciated.

 

A couple of people have commented on the speed at which I work. I find it very frustrating that I can complete a high quality asset so quickly, and yet the project drags on for so long because of all this nonsense getting it to work with the creation engine. If I wanted to spend all my time bug hunting, I would have done a scripting project instead.

 

If anyone is interested in helping by taking a look at the .nifs, here's the latest version: tentacleArmor.002

 

Thanks so much for your help guys. Hopefully once this project is complete I'll have mastered the process down to the point that I can churn out new works at a satisfying rate.

[darkconsole]

it still sounds like you are trying the super hard way to do this. i'll be "that guy" that suggests the lame not-cool-people-way.

 

work on making _0 as skinny as you want her to be.

open up _0 in bodyslide outfit studio, dick around with the shape either with brushes or with sliders to make her thicker.

save it as _1.

 

no explosions because objects been moved, vert count different, or object names different.

 

will it take 2 seconds? no. will it take less than 2 weeks? yes ;p

[blabba]

Yea I don't suggest using OS for stuff like this especially if you want to maintain quality.

 

Your probably going to fuck up over UV seam lines.

 

The better thing to do is use Blender's equivalent to morphs:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDZcmAWL2jA

 

 

 

Failing that though, you can pm me and I'll fix the vertex orders for you in 3dsmax.

[jacques00]

So if it is a vertex order issue, then one of the above stages would have to reorder the vertices, which to me seems very unlikely.

Curiously, the Manga body meshes do not have the same vertex count; I think the heavy mesh has 1 extra vertex.

 

I think that it may not be a vertex order issue. Best case scenario would be that it can be fixed in nifskope, without necessitating a third attempt at reshaping the body. Help or advice on this matter would be very much appreciated.

Maybe a vertex issue in general, but maybe not out-rightly the order or count (order is definitely more important than count, though both should be treated with care when it comes to morphing between shapes)--one huge issue with the Manga body and most custom bodies is the BSDismember modifier (a Bethesda-property) is sometimes lost in translation between transfers. Whoever the original authors of the meshes are really fudged it up when they select different portions of the mesh quite erratically in patches and then proceed to label them in to the same Biped slot--like a patch of chest, a patch of arms, and a patch of calf will be labelled to 'Skyrim, Main Body'--when that is a very sloppy way of doing it. If done improperly, it usually leads to some mesh protruding at minimum (sometimes unnoticeable), and mesh explosions at worse, between mesh weight extremes. The reason why vertex count and order can similarly cause mesh explosions is when they are both using the same BSDismemberSkinInstance (which in Nifskope, contains both the skin weight info and the BSDismemeber modifier data), whichever mesh doesn't match that information, will have vertices shooting out in random positions.

 

The BSDismemberment modifier basically controls what is visible and what isn't on the mesh depending on which Biped Slot is occupied in-game, primarily to fix clipping issues and help the game run faster with less geometry to render. So like if your character wears some gauntlets that take up part of the forearm and you need that part of the forearm to hide to prevent clipping, you just select those faces and assign them to a the 'Skyrim, Forearms L/R' body part in the BSDismember modifier. So in game, any time your character wears gauntlets, the faces on the body mesh assigned to them will disappear (because they do not belong to the object that is tagged as a forearm object, because it's a body object, of course). This may end up presenting problems when your character wears an item assigned to the gauntlets/forearm slot but the mesh doesn't cover that part up--you'll find that those faces disappear, leaving a hole between the elbow and hands.

 

Because custom bodies are preferred nude, the creators ended up assigning those parts all to the 'Main Body' body part slot so that no faces disappear when equipping different pieces of armor/clothes that don't completely cover those specific areas. The thing is, they did a sloppy job at it, which results in some of these unexplained vertex explosions if you don't know what you are doing when converting over a body.

 

So basically, after explaining all that, all you need to do to "fix" it, is to clear out the existing BSDismember information and rebuild your own for your mesh edits. And because all of the pieces go to the 'Skyrim, Main Body', you only need one ID and place it there. So just select all the faces and put it in 'Skyrim, Main Body'. The only caveat is if you have a mesh that contains many extra bones, each different partition can only hold up to 68 bones per skin partition, so if all the verts/faces selected have a skin influence of over 68 bones total, you'll have to start dividing portions of the BSDismemberment and assign them to different parts of the body, or vertices will disappear in-game. Luckily, this shouldn't be an issue with naked human bodies, but more for full-models with rigged-and-skinned fingers and toes. Aside from that, the important thing to note is if you use the BSDismember modifier, you have to make sure all faces are assigned to an ID and body part. If any faces are left unassigned, the exporter may crash or throw an error on exporting.

 

 

A couple of people have commented on the speed at which I work. I find it very frustrating that I can complete a high quality asset so quickly, and yet the project drags on for so long because of all this nonsense getting it to work with the creation engine. If I wanted to spend all my time bug hunting, I would have done a scripting project instead.

Technical hangups are always the worst--it happens to me all the time! Which means, I never get things done...

 

 

Anyway,  here is the  fix I did to your mesh (mesh only!)--the weights should work now and the file size for the mesh is lower since I did some vertex welding in between to make sure no rogue vertices were going to cause morph issues...

tentacle_armor_fix00.zip

 

Hope it helps!

[BringtheNoise]

And I was just going to say use Garra6's toolset to build a high and low, but that's just me...

 

 

(pulls pin)

So when do we get a CBBE or UNP version???

(ducks behind corner waiting for the grenade to go off).

 

Joking aside, this is looking better and better, keep at it....

[Earen]

del

[Headerman]

Love it.

 

Would love to see some tentacles take the place of some DD bondage items...

- Tentacles restraining the arms

- Tentacles around the head/eyes as a blindfold

- Tentacles in the mouth as a gag

- little tentacles on the clit/nipples

- anal/vaginal tentacles as a stimulation

- More tentacles around vaginal area as a chastity belt

- tentacles around the legs to slow down the PC

 

Could that be workable at all with the DD framework? I imagine the original Tentacle Parasite would need to be constructed to do those things... then DD could provide the triggers to make it happen?

[Damoriva]

 

- Tentacles around the head/eyes as a blindfold

- Tentacles in the mouth as a gag

 

THIS. ALL OF MY WANT. Seriously, I love seeing "organic" blindfolds and gags, as well as....whatever those things are that hold a mouth open like at a dentist.

[DixiePig]

 

Anyway,  here is the  fix I did to your mesh

 

Yep, that works. Excellent work, thank you!

 

I'm going to go ahead and upload that, because it's well past time for this project to be over and done with.

However, if I'm going to make more things I need to know exactly what you did to fix it. I know that you've put all faces into the same body part partitions and that you've modified the vertex structure by merging overlapping vertices. Did you do all this in nifskope?

[DixiePig]

UPDATE: uploaded.

 

Get it while it's hot:

http://www.loverslab.com/files/file/1552-tentacle-armor/

 

I declare this project finished. Thanks very much everyone, and let me encourage all of you with your excellent suggestions to take a look at the provided resource files.

As for body conversions, I may make them in future but for now I'll be pleased to have my hands free of this. Anyone is free to convert it however they wish.

[Guest]

take a nice long break dixiepig you deserved it.

 

here have a sip of my orange juice mixed with doctor pepper.

don't be shy come on.

[jacques00]

Yep, that works. Excellent work, thank you!

No problem, glad I could help!

 

 

Did you do all this in nifskope?

It might be doable in NifSkope if you are some kind of spreadsheet magician! But nah, I just use 3ds Max for most of the editing, then I use NifSkope primarily as a preview tool, and for transferring the assets and tweaking export anomalies. I can't say I've used any updated versions of Blender to help you out much with that side of your work flow, unfortunately.

 

But basically, if you can edit the BSDismember Skin Modifier and know how to use morph targets in Blender, you should be set. The merging vertices thing was more of a cleanup process which requires creating alternate mesh copies and skin wrapping the new clean mesh to the old one and morphing the old one to get the two high and low weight shapes onto the cleaned mesh (I'm sorry if this sound confusing--it's better to explain visually than with words... bleh). But in general, the most important thing you need to know is keep the vertex count and order as same as possible and double-check the BSDismember and make sure it's not taking up multiple IDs for the same body partition.

 

Hope this helps!

[myuhinny]

@Bluttat

 

To have both in game at the same time do what I just did. Unzip the tentacleArmorAlternate rename the folders named DixiePig to DixiePig2 this will make it so that this one will not overwrite the other one. Load the monster_0 nif up and click the a tentacle and look for BSShaderTextureSet below the highlighted line and change the DixiePig to DixiePig2 in the texture file path for both texture paths and then repeat for monster_1 make sure to save as to overwrite the nif. 

 

Now rar/zip it back up and drop it into your mod folder then install it into game. After that load up TES5EDIT and go to the tentacleArmorAlternate .esp and click the + for the drop down and click on + for armor addon and click the line and look for female world model and female first person in the right hand area and change DixiePig to DixiePig2. 

 

You will get a warning when you first right click a line and select edit just wait till it allows you to hit yes. Once done close TES5EDIT and make sure to let it save the new .esp now both should appear in game.

[Sorinade]

Looks great, glad you managed to attain your original target    Taps foot... has another modder not created a UNP version yet? I've waited an entire 8 hours!

 

Seriously though, when you brought where you were at into the light of the community it already looked great. Really happy you didn't get distracted. It was too good a project to get derailed

[jkllkj]

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Headerman]

Guy i have been thinking of how to script the parasite armour's expansion over the PC involving DD + cursed loot....

 

If the parasite armour is enabled (worn), then all cursed loot is altered... arm binders, boots, plugs, chastity  belts, gags, harnesses and blindfolds (etc) are stopped from spawning.

 

What spawns in their place?

 

Could be a script that enables the growth of the parasite onto the PC, using the same cursed loot chance % (or its own).

 

The growth would have to be pretty linear of course... so going further around the body to start with on the first DD CL drop, then a) allow arm cuffs allow leg cuffs c) allow chastity of anus/vagina or d) allow chastity of breasts. One those 4 are triggered the script checks to see all slots equipped, then moves to another script that encompasses boots, and plugs (and possibly gag?). Once that is done, the script can chance CL to equip a blindfold and arm binder.

 

After that the scripting could be almost complete, but adds in a few extra bits n pieces here and there (parasite playing with the PC etc).

 

That way the growth of the parasite over the PC could seem linear and progressive, rather than everything at once or tentacles appearing in places its not connected to..

 

Anyway, just me 2c

[kyubi3002]

is someone planning on a mode using this ressource to begin with? id sure like to have one

[Ecchiluvr]

And I was just going to say use Garra6's toolset to build a high and low, but that's just me...

 

 

(pulls pin)

So when do we get a CBBE or UNP version???

(ducks behind corner waiting for the grenade to go off).

 

Joking aside, this is looking better and better, keep at it....

My guess would be when we get our hands on it and do it ourselves in Outfit Studio.

[DixiePig]

 

And I was just going to say use Garra6's toolset to build a high and low, but that's just me...

 

 

(pulls pin)

So when do we get a CBBE or UNP version???

(ducks behind corner waiting for the grenade to go off).

 

Joking aside, this is looking better and better, keep at it....

My guess would be when we get our hands on it and do it ourselves in Outfit Studio.

 

Yah, I came into this not knowing what I was doing: I thought that starting with the biggest body would be best for compatibility, as converting from a small body to a large one can create ugly artifacts as the texel density is distorted.

 

I would like to convert to CBBE, but in order to replace the body parts successfully I would need to resolve that scaling issue. Jacques00 fixed it for the manga body (don't know how to do that with blender), but until I can find a solution it's going to be a difficult proposition that I don't currently have time for.

 

A lot of people have suggested using additional applications like outfit studio, which can edit meshes using some basic sculpting tools. I think this would work for most armors but the way that the tentacle armor squeezes and distorts the base body requires a more technical approach (see my post about boob sculpting).

 

My current idea is to take the lightweight CBBE body, create a shapekey and get it to match the heavyweight version vertex to vertex (this will be INCREDIBLY tedious) and then modify that.

[fizzybutt]

 

 

A lot of people have suggested using additional applications like outfit studio, which can edit meshes using some basic sculpting tools. I think this would work for most armors but the way that the tentacle armor squeezes and distorts the base body requires a more technical approach (see my post about boob sculpting).

 

I can attest to that. The size difference is so great between the manga body and the unpcm shape that I use that there is just too much distortion trying to even get the tentacles down small enough with just my knowledge in outfit studio. I am able to adjust quite a few armors and things, but this hit my limited abilities lol. I'm sure someone is working on conversion kits as we speak. It's too cool not to be done.