Adding Daughters of Ares support to outfits

[Lithobraker]

Thanks to Edd_Shaftler in this thread, I've been using the Daughters of Ares mod and enjoying it immensely because the little things like dynamic glow colors on the spine make me happy inside.  However, as I expected from the mod's disappearance, pretty much no mods support the DoA body, instead using the default body colored a rather sickly pale.  Thankfully, I found one mod that does have DoA support: brokencrash's Ghost Variants by way of Dingenskirchen's patch.  After poking around in the two files with NVEdit to see how the patch worked, it looks like it adds a new set of meshes that combines the DoA body meshes with the armor, creates new armor objects that use those meshes, then uses a script that runs at game load (or whatever GetGameRestarted indicates) if the player character is of the Ares race to add the non-DoA versions of the armors to AArmorListVan and the new DoA version armors to AArmorListNor (whatever those are).

 

I think I've filled my quota of "overconfidence in my own abilities" for the week (and got myself zapped with 120V AC for it), so I don't see myself figuring this out on my own in any reasonable timeframe.  As such, I want to ask: if I wanted to add DoA compatibility to, say, Xazomn's Ravishing Sin outfit, what's the preferred method for performing this kind of swap?  Bearing in mind, of course, I have...shall we say minimal background in 3D modelling, especially for games (but I'm always willing to learn).  Any insight, tips, or step-by-step guides on how to pull this off with minimal long-term hassle would be very much appreciated by this engineer who feels more than a little out of their depth.

 

An explanation on the difference between AArmorListVan and AArmorListNor for my own edification would be appreciated as well.  Because learning is good and I like learning.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Lithobraker said:

what's the preferred method for performing this kind of swap?

There is only one way to do it, and this way is a fully re-modelling all stuff, in for example blender (for make it a bit easier and just make a swap of some parts w/o losing the rigging/skinnig for the entire mesh). Glow health bar is require a lot of attention too, because it's just a mesh with a texture (only texture do this trick work), but for script it requires a node that will be named exactly the same as in the original body or have the same number of id (in scripts says that it's a name of the node, so it's way more easier, and you don't even need to code all this stuff)

 

4 hours ago, Lithobraker said:

minimal background in 3D modelling, especially for games

It's the same as regular 3d modelling, just with more low poly related stuff, because it's for games

 

4 hours ago, Lithobraker said:

An explanation on the difference between AArmorListVan and AArmorListNor for my own edification would be appreciated as well.

Any stuff in scripts will be the last part of your adventure. The meshes is the first, after setting them up in Nifskope, the third step is adding them into the geck, and as the last part making a script to inject your stuff into DOA lists. easy?.

 

'AArmorListVan' and 'AArmorListNor' it's just a form lists that original DOA uses for it's scripts and stuff, and as you already noticed 'AArmorListVan' it's a normal outfits and 'AArmorListNor' - DOA outfits, like if you don't have outfit in 'AArmorListNor', but have into 'AArmorListVan' it'll swap you back to the vanilla outfit. (at least it's all as i can see from the scripts)

I think it won't cares much if you only will be have a DOA outfits and just make a copy into the both lists

 

4 hours ago, Lithobraker said:

GetGameRestarted

Do once and only when the game is fully restarted (like alt+f4 and launch it again)

[Lithobraker]

3 hours ago, Neutron_rus said:

There is only one way to do it, and this way is a fully re-modelling all stuff, in for example blender (for make it a bit easier and just make a swap of some parts w/o losing the rigging/skinnig for the entire mesh). Glow health bar is require a lot of attention too, because it's just a mesh with a texture (only texture do this trick work), but for script it requires a node that will be named exactly the same as in the original body or have the same number of id (in scripts says that it's a name of the node, so it's way more easier, and you don't even need to code all this stuff)

That's the impression I was getting, but thanks you for confirming my suspicions.  I was thinking -- hoping in my naïveté, really -- I could Frankenstein the bits together and just make sure I kept the same names on everything with liberal use of copy and paste, requiring only minor proper model design on my part.  I got Blender and the NifScripts set up and am in the process of working out which .bsas I need to unpack to get the textures referenced by the models.  This may take a while...

Honestly, if this was just an issue of scripting or GECK stuff, it wouldn't be so bad.  I've got enough of a programming background and familiarity with the relevant quirks of this damnable engine to do that.  Complex modelling, though, is just so far out of my wheelhouse I'm flying mostly blind.

 

As an aside, it never ceases to amaze me how much time I spend not actually playing these games.

[Guest]

57 minutes ago, Lithobraker said:

I could Frankenstein the bits together and just make sure I kept the same names

It's could work, but only as i said in bleder (if you want to also save the vertex weight skinning), in 3ds max you will be need to re-rig/re-skin the whole model all over again(or go to the blender after and just copy-paste the vertex weights from another mesh that will be looks the same). In any cases you need to understand how to work with many meshes at the same time, which skeleton(armature) roots this meshes uses and just do your stuff. If you will be need to move aroud or remove at all some vertecses, you'll not lose the original UV-map texture coordinates, but at the same time adding new vertecses will require to set them on the uv-map.

 

Also if you don't care much about the poly optimization, you can save the original topology and mostly do only what you need to make it at least looks fine for yourself. But if you do and have experience with normal mapping, you can optimize the whole model and return the shape back via mormal map (normal map only do the visual trick and also copying the light reflrections as it was on the original mesh)

 

1 hour ago, Lithobraker said:

I need to unpack to get the textures referenced by the models

Only if you want to see them in Blender, Nifskope can grab them right from the archives (check the settings). Mostly I don't care about textures at all and can work with fully shaded in one color model or with the wireframe mode (fully transparent model with only visible mesh)

 

 

If you'll be need a help with anything like modelling, texturing, scripting, or any related questions, you can ask me via pm