help [SOLVED] Trouble adding ears and tail to custom race

[livipup]

Hey, I made a custom race, but the final step before it's finished is to add ears and a tail to the race. I don't care if the ears animated, but the tail should for sure. Tbh even if I got the tail attached and not animating I would consider that a win though. I have managed to get the ears and tail to appear in game, but they never render correctly when attached to my custom race. They'll show up totally fine when I make a head part or an armour addon, but then parts of the textures don't render, they end up horribly mangled, or as in one case they just weren't a part of the body at all (simply hovering near the player). I've looked all over and studied different mods similar to the one I'm making, but I just can't figure out how to get it working. I mean, I kind of had an idea to go in Nifskope and just attach the ears to the headmesh and the tail to the torso mesh, but I would prefer to avoid that to allow for more simple user customization. Plus, I don't know how to use Nifskope properly.

 

I did notice that two races use these SKSE scripts, but I have no idea what they actually do or how to use them. I know they have something to do with HDT Physics though. One race uses Race Menu to attach the ears and tail which seems pretty complicated and the other does the same thing I was doing for the ears, but I'm not exactly sure what they do for the tail. I just know that they use an armour addon for the tail. That mod was sloppily-designed though, so it's hard to study.

 

The people on the r/skyrimmods DIscord didn't know how to help me, but someone suggested I come here. If you know how to do this and can explain or can point me in the direction of instructions that somebody has already posted I would really appreciate it. I've been at this for a week with no progress.

[Blaze69]

Have you tried just... copying the vanilla Argonian/Khajiit layout? For the tail, I mean. All you need is a properly rigged tail mesh, and then it's a matter of making a new ArmorAddon for it and adding it to your race's NakedSkin.

 

The ears could be a bit more complicated depending on what the actual meshes look like and how you want to implement them, but should still be doable through head parts.

 

Could you provide more info on the assets you intend to use? Or better yet, the files themselves? Maybe something's wrong about those and that's why they are bugged (as opposed to the error being in the plugin itself).

[livipup]

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Have you tried just... copying the vanilla Argonian/Khajiit layout? For the tail, I mean. All you need is a properly rigged tail mesh, and then it's a matter of making a new ArmorAddon for it and adding it to your race's NakedSkin.

 

The ears could be a bit more complicated depending on what the actual meshes look like and how you want to implement them, but should still be doable through head parts.

 

Could you provide more info on the assets you intend to use? Or better yet, the files themselves? Maybe something's wrong about those and that's why they are bugged (as opposed to the error being in the plugin itself).

How would I do that? I looked at the Khajiit race and couldn't figure it out. I do have the ArmorAddon and NakedSkin set up already and the parts show up properly when I make the Head Part or the Armor Addon, but they get messed up when I attach them to the race. The ears are more of an issue, but the tail does have graphical problems too sometimes.

 

I tried a few different assets, so I'll see if I can link them all below. I might be able to put them in a zipped folder if I can't upload directly, idk.

 

Noticed while uploading that some of the textures are 21.3 MB which seems pretty massive. Idk why they're so huge. There are problems with the textures not loading in game or only parts of them loading though. Wonder if that's part of the reason.

wolfears - Copy.nif wolfears.nif wolftail - Copy.nif wolftail.nif wolfears - Copy.dds wolfears_n - Copy.dds wolfparts - Copy.dds wolfparts_n - Copy.dds wolftail - Copy.dds wolftail_n - Copy.dds

[Blaze69]

5 hours ago, livipup said:

[...]

Haven't been able to check the assets in game, but just opening them in GIMP/NifSkope I can tell you that:

• The "wolfears" meshes use the vanilla Werewolf head UV and texture and don't match your "wolfears" textures; if the ears look weird ingame and/or have bugged lighting, this could be the reason.
• The tail meshes have some leftover data entries outside of the main "0 NiNode" entry that should be deleted to clean up the file (they are the "9 NiTriShapeData and the 10BSDismembermentSkinInstance").
• HDT tails are cool but notoriously buggy, so if your setup isn't particularly stable and/or the XMLs for the tail physics are not well-written, that could cause the tail to go crazy and spazz out from time to time.

I'll get back at you with more info if/when I do try them out ingame.

[livipup]

6 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Haven't been able to check the assets in game, but just opening them in GIMP/NifSkope I can tell you that:

• The "wolfears" meshes use the vanilla Werewolf head UV and texture and don't match your "wolfears" textures; if the ears look weird ingame and/or have bugged lighting, this could be the reason.
• The tail meshes have some leftover data entries outside of the main "0 NiNode" entry that should be deleted to clean up the file (they are the "9 NiTriShapeData and the 10BSDismembermentSkinInstance").
• HDT tails are cool but notoriously buggy, so if your setup isn't particularly stable and/or the XMLs for the tail physics are not well-written, that could cause the tail to go crazy and spazz out from time to time.

I'll get back at you with more info if/when I do try them out ingame.

Thanks. Is there anything I should do about that stuff in the mean time?

[livipup]

On 7/5/2019 at 8:03 AM, Blaze69 said:

Haven't been able to check the assets in game, but just opening them in GIMP/NifSkope I can tell you that:

• The "wolfears" meshes use the vanilla Werewolf head UV and texture and don't match your "wolfears" textures; if the ears look weird ingame and/or have bugged lighting, this could be the reason.
• The tail meshes have some leftover data entries outside of the main "0 NiNode" entry that should be deleted to clean up the file (they are the "9 NiTriShapeData and the 10BSDismembermentSkinInstance").
• HDT tails are cool but notoriously buggy, so if your setup isn't particularly stable and/or the XMLs for the tail physics are not well-written, that could cause the tail to go crazy and spazz out from time to time.

I'll get back at you with more info if/when I do try them out ingame.

Hey, I was rereading your comment and I had a few thoughts about it. The files I sent are for two different sets of models and textures, so were you sure to match up the correct ones to each other? I uploaded all the files from a backup folder I made, so the names might not be matching.

 

If I took the original werewolf texture from the game and replaced the existing textures with them from the set was ripped apart from the werewolf model would that fix the texture problems with the mesh? Or can NifSkope be used to set texture layouts for the image files the way programs like Blender, 3DS Max, and Maya all can? I could probably fix the textures if that is possible. I just don't see how the texture could be wrong because of the fact that they work when used in other mods or when implemented to the creation kit for other purposes.

 

Would it be possible to create the ears as an armor addon instead of as a headpart? Do you think they would work that way?

 

Idk why, but it never occured to me to look up HDT Tails in any of the things I was searching. I was more focused on looking up SKSE scripting stuff. I'm going to try to see if I can get the tail to work.

 

EDIT: You were right about the textures  I haven't added the tail yet, but using the original werewolf textures from the game did make the ears appear correctly. I do like the other textures so, so I'll see about cutting them up and mixing them together.