Problems with making standalone follower

[drunken_strumpet]

Not sure this is the right place to post this in, but it seemed the most fitting. Feel free to move it if it's in the wrong forum.

 

So, I've been spending most of my day working on my first standalone follower (using this tutorial) but I've run into some problems. She is 100% complete and works as intended, but if you look at the first picture you'll see that some things aren't quite right.

 

1. Her ears are broken and the "loose" part is kind of floating around, not following her head movements properly. Any idea where things went wrong and how to fix it?

 

2. (SOLVED) Her body texture changes when wearing armor. She is using a fair skin/real girls mix, but when she equips any clothing or armor her body texture changes to what the rest of my vanilla races are using. Added a second screenshot to show what it looks like when I wear the same armor, using her preset (but as a custom race). The follower uses a vanilla race, but I still can't figure out why this happens. It only occurs when she equips something in the body slot.

 

I've been using nifskope, nifmerge and the CK. Any help is appreciated! 

[GOodTimes]

Not sure this is the right place to post this in, but it seemed the most fitting. Feel free to move it if it's in the wrong forum.

 

So, I've been spending most of my day working on my first standalone follower (using this tutorial) but I've run into some problems. She is 100% complete and works as intended, but if you look at the first picture you'll see that some things aren't quite right.

 

1. Her ears are broken and the "loose" part is kind of floating around, not following her head movements properly. Any idea where things went wrong and how to fix it?

 

2. Her body texture changes when wearing armor. She is using a fair skin/real girls mix, but when she equips any clothing or armor her body texture changes to what the rest of my vanilla races are using. Added a second screenshot to show what it looks like when I wear the same armor, using her preset (but as a custom race). The follower uses a vanilla race, but I still can't figure out why this happens. It only occurs when she equips something in the body slot.

 

I've been using nifskope, nifmerge and the CK. Any help is appreciated! 

Replying to #2

Clothes often include the body.

Check using Outfit Studio if a body is attached to the clothes.

 

- Femalebody.nif not attached to clothing:

If so you can in outfit studio, delete the body and replace it with one of your own or change the clothing in TESEDIT under the [bOD2] Biped Body Template to use  U - underarmor  (unnamed) in the 44-48, 50-60 range on both the Armor Addon and Armor. This would allow the character to wear the items and use the default body you assigned it.

 

Hint: You can drag the outfit and the femalebody.nif you like onto the Outfit Studio preview window, then delete the body that came with the outfit. Your body should then replace the one that came with the outfit. Export with reference, name it the same as the and place in the clothing directory for your outfit. Wa la clothes with your body.

 

- Femalebody.nif attached to clothing:

If the [bOD2] template uses any of the 30-43 range, those would include body parts aka the femalebody.nif would be attached to the clothing.

Body Part IDs

[Lodakai]

Cool looking follower though =)

The facepaint really goes well with the eyes and makes it stand out.

 

Hope you figure it out and release some of those.  It's well done!

[RW311]

If you only edit the texture path of the nif then you will not keep your custom texture path when equipping slot 32 or any other body part that uses body  texture path mesh. You will need to add in the armor addon of your npc a texture set with the path to the textures you use and you will always have correct textures no matter if the armor mesh has body parts in the model.

 

This mod seems very similar to what you are working on, maybe d/l it and use it as an example. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35665/?

[drunken_strumpet]

Thanks for the compliments, it means a lot! 

 

 

Blah blah

Replying to #2

Clothes often include the body.

Check using Outfit Studio if a body is attached to the clothes.

 

- Femalebody.nif not attached to clothing:

If so you can in outfit studio, delete the body and replace it with one of your own or change the clothing in TESEDIT under the [bOD2] Biped Body Template to use  U - underarmor  (unnamed) in the 44-48, 50-60 range on both the Armor Addon and Armor. This would allow the character to wear the items and use the default body you assigned it.

 

Hint: You can drag the outfit and the femalebody.nif you like onto the Outfit Studio preview window, then delete the body that came with the outfit. Your body should then replace the one that came with the outfit. Export with reference, name it the same as the and place in the clothing directory for your outfit. Wa la clothes with your body.

 

- Femalebody.nif attached to clothing:

If the [bOD2] template uses any of the 30-43 range, those would include body parts aka the femalebody.nif would be attached to the clothing.

Body Part IDs

 

 

Thank you for the detailed answer. I just woke up and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, so bear with me if I sound dumb! Will this fix the texture problem just for a certain piece of armor or clothing, or for all of them? And would that just be fixed for me, or for everyone if I upload the follower somewhere? I haven't used outfit studio before. The meshes themselves seem to be fine (with the exception of the floating ears) but the texture keeps changing whenever she equips things.

If you only edit the texture path of the nif then you will not keep your custom texture path when equipping slot 32 or any other body part that uses body  texture path mesh. You will need to add in the armor addon of your npc a texture set with the path to the textures you use and you will always have correct textures no matter if the armor mesh has body parts in the model.

 

This mod seems very similar to what you are working on, maybe d/l it and use it as an example. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/35665/?

 

 

That would make sense. Where do I do that, is it in the CK?

[RW311]

this is how I do it, for head custom textures there are some added issues and that's why i suggest using a working mod as an example.

 

 

[drunken_strumpet]

this is how I do it, for head custom textures there are some added issues and that's why i suggest using a working mod as an example.

 

I will give that a try, thank you for the explanation and pictures! 

[drunken_strumpet]

this is how I do it, for head custom textures there are some added issues and that's why i suggest using a working mod as an example.

 

That fixed it, thank you!

 

Now just the stupid ears left. I made her into a simple, non-standalone follower a while back and her ears were fine then. Any ideas on what could have gone wrong here? I appreciate any ideas or suggestions, since I'm completely clueless.

[RW311]

Are the ears a separate model or did you build in racemenu\ece and export? If they are separate mesh the problem could just be in the settings for the head part.

 

[drunken_strumpet]

Are the ears a separate model or did you build in racemenu\ece and export? If they are separate mesh the problem could just be in the settings for the head part.

 

They are part of the head mesh exported from racemenu. They look fine (to me anyway) in nifskope. Any ideas what/where the problem could be?

[RW311]

I'm guessing then that the problem has something to do with head morph causing the ears to move around with expressions. This is why it's easier to use a model for custom face parts like ears because of the facial animations.

 

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Working_with_Skyrim_head_TRIs

 

 

But did you change the npc race when you made it standalone? This also could be the cause.

[drunken_strumpet]

I'm guessing then that the problem has something to do with head morph causing the ears to move around with expressions. This is why it's easier to use a model for custom face parts like ears because of the facial animations.

 

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Working_with_Skyrim_head_TRIs

 

 

But did you change the npc race when you made it standalone? This also could be the cause.

 

Could be that, although they seemed to just be floating around her head, following her head movements somewhat but a bit delayed. Will take another look in-game soon to see if they're maybe related to her expressions. 

 

I made and exported the preset using a custom race, but made the follower into a vanilla race in the CK. Do you think that could be the reason? 

[GOodTimes]

Thanks for the compliments, it means a lot! 

 

 

Blah blah

Replying to #2

Clothes often include the body.

Check using Outfit Studio if a body is attached to the clothes.

 

- Femalebody.nif not attached to clothing:

If so you can in outfit studio, delete the body and replace it with one of your own or change the clothing in TESEDIT under the [bOD2] Biped Body Template to use  U - underarmor  (unnamed) in the 44-48, 50-60 range on both the Armor Addon and Armor. This would allow the character to wear the items and use the default body you assigned it.

 

Hint: You can drag the outfit and the femalebody.nif you like onto the Outfit Studio preview window, then delete the body that came with the outfit. Your body should then replace the one that came with the outfit. Export with reference, name it the same as the and place in the clothing directory for your outfit. Wa la clothes with your body.

 

- Femalebody.nif attached to clothing:

If the [bOD2] template uses any of the 30-43 range, those would include body parts aka the femalebody.nif would be attached to the clothing.

Body Part IDs

 

 

Thank you for the detailed answer. I just woke up and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, so bear with me if I sound dumb! Will this fix the texture problem just for a certain piece of armor or clothing, or for all of them? And would that just be fixed for me, or for everyone if I upload the follower somewhere? I haven't used outfit studio before. The meshes themselves seem to be fine (with the exception of the floating ears) but the texture keeps changing whenever she equips things.

 

Outfit Studio (the other part the comes with Bodyslide) is under rated.

When a lot of people think NifSkope, I think Outfit Studio as it does the basics really really well. By basics I mean setting paths to textures and material files -(Fallout4)  for a .nif object while being able to see the results, modify sizes, push clothing closer to a body or further from a body, heck you can even combine multiple .nif files in Outfit Studio to make a more complex .nif file and not just for clothing but for .nif objects like a .nif table and you want to add clutter to the table like a .nif candle, a .nif plate to make one object seen in game that represents multiple .nifs. 

 

Speaking of .nif objects, that is what Outfit studio excels at. You can drag a .obj file created in a 3d program into Outfit Studio, export it as a .nif and save a whole lot of hassle importing for Fallout/Skyrim/Oldrim.

 

"Will this fix the texture problem just for a certain piece of armor or clothing, or for all of them"

If using the BOD2 Armor slots, Each outfit would need to go through the process of adding your specific body. Most armor/clothing use these slots.

 

* Unless those pieces of clothing use underarmor [unnamed] slots as defined in my first response. These slots do not use apply a body, they are just the clothing that can be applied to any body (albeit they won't resize well for some bodies) 

 

I too lack caffeine in my response  

[drunken_strumpet]

That's really good to know, thanks for the info. I haven't used outfit studio at all but I'll give it a go at some point. And coffee really is the elixir of life, isn't it?

 

- 

 

Still having issues with the floating ears, and it's driving me nuts. Unfortunately I don't have the non-standalone version of her anymore, where the ears were fine. Aside from her not being standalone, the only thing that was different then was that she was using a vanilla hairstyle. Could the hair or hairlines have done this? I'm a bit hesitant to change the hair since I don't want to risk messing this up any further. 

It doesn't seem to be related to her expressions either, the tips of her ears are just not attached to the rest of her head.

[RW311]

If you changed hair and re exported with racemenu/ece but did not update head part in data it would cause problems, or if head part used for the different hair is shaped in a way that it is conflicting with the shape edits made to the ear part.