A plea for help.

[Tranquils]

I've recently reset my pc to factory settings and for some reason installing and modding skyrim has then become a real pain, I've been trying to work out what the problem is, googling all sorts of things and coming up empty handed, I've tried basically everything and I just can't figure out where I'm going wrong. So I'm going to through a fresh install step by step and see if maybe some of you more tech savvy people can see where the fuck I'm going wrong cause I don't see it. Any help here would be greatly appreciated  

 

So I'm trying a fresh install with this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31126?tab=files&file_id=122493&nmm=1, after installing this mod and its various requirements, this is what my MO2 looks like: 

Spoiler

So far so good right? Right now only textures are installed and no meshes, so it looks like this ingame: 

Spoiler

 

Ok, so now on to the next step, actually building a body in bodyslide with a preset.

 

Build body: 

Spoiler

 

Ok, so all the same presets, and matching hands feet and body. Should look fine in-game now right? 

Spoiler

 

Hmm, ok, strange... A seam appears when wearing vanilla clothing, no idea how or why that got there but ok. 

At least it looks ok without clothes:

Spoiler

 

Ok so whatever, I can live with the seam on vanilla clothing, you can just get clothing replacers anyways that should do away with the seams? Well, for some reason this happens when I equip and unequip an outfit: 

Spoiler

 

 

What the hell is going on here? Equipping this outfit, and sometimes vanilla clothing too suddenly just forced a seam to appear or something O_O? 

I cannot figure this shit out and it's driving me nuts, never encountered anything like this before. Anyone have any clue at all?

 

[Vyxenne]

35 minutes ago, Tranquils said:

Equipping [an] outfit, and sometimes vanilla clothing too suddenly just forced a seam to appear or something O_O? 

I cannot figure this shit out and it's driving me nuts, never encountered anything like this before. Anyone have any clue at all?

 

Every* chest-covering (Biped Slot 32 [Body]) apparel item contains its own body within its mesh. When you remove your clothing/armor chest piece, your visible body instantaneously switches from whatever body is contained within your armor item mesh to your default installed body (UUNP, CBBE, etc.) That's why you see seams when dressed but it all looks wonderful when you are naked.

 

You are seeing wrist (and possibly ankle and neck) seams because your head, hands and feet textures and/or meshes do not match whatever body is in your armor meshes. Either go all vanilla or:

• install a full matching set of body, hands and feet textures; AND
• install armor that matches your default body type; OR
• convert your armor chest pieces to use your default body replacer as the Reference Body (using Outfit Studio)

 

Yes, I did read where you said you had installed matching hands, feet and body, so that eliminates the first bullet point above. I included it for the sake of completeness. Also, I question whether or not it is even possible (yet) to get truly-matching appendages for the new BHUNP 19BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB body.

 

*There are very few exceptions to this convention- for example, one mod maker published a chest-covering bra that does not go into Biped Slot 32 or incorporate its own inherent body, enabling it to be worn with a revealing Biped Slot 32 dress, top or jacket. But that is one in a million and by far not the norm. When in doubt, examine the item's nif file with NifSkope (BSDismemberSkinInstance >> Partition >> Partition) to determine its Biped Slot assignment, or look at the Armor item in the Plugin using SSEEdit.

[Tranquils]

29 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

Every chest-covering (Biped Slot 32 [Body]) item or apparel contains its own body within its mesh. When you remove your clothing/armor chest piece, your visible body instantaneously switches from whatever body is contained within your armor item mesh to your default installed body. That's why you see seams when dressed but it all looks wonderful when you are naked.

 

You are seeing wrist (and possibly ankle and neck) seams because your head, hands and feet textures and/or meshes do not match the body in your armor. Simple as that. Either go all vanilla or convert your armor chest pieces to use your default body replacer as its Reference Body and install a full set of body, hands and feet textures.

See that's the strange part, I've already converted it to my bodytype in bodyslide: 

Spoiler

 

Body, hand and feet textures are all included in the mod I linked aswell, so I don't think that should be a problem?

 

EDIT: Also, the hand seems to be unaffected by the weight slider in the racemenu when wearing vanilla clothes, isn't that kind of strange?

EDIT 2: Going into "Showracemenu" will fix the seam that appears on the wrist sometimes, but only on my model, not on other npcs

EDIT 3: It might be that bhunp isn't perfectly matching, but I run into other, strange problems when using CBBE and converting armors, I get huge gaps in the body around the calves and wrist when I try to conform sliders to my new body, and then the feet and hands only seem to match up with the vanilla meshes, not the CBBE bodyslide built ones O_o

[Tranquils]

I just think the strange part is that I've done this before on a different computer, just about literally the same steps, without trouble. But for some reason now it decides to give me all these curveballs with seams, unconvertable armor and more! 

[Vyxenne]

1 hour ago, Tranquils said:

See that's the strange part, I've already converted it to my bodytype in bodyslide: ||  Body, hand and feet textures are all included in the mod I linked aswell, so I don't think that should be a problem?

Well, I have never encountered a case of the body magically looking different when naked than it does when clothed that was NOT caused by a mismatch between the naked body ("Default Body") and the body in the armor nifs.

 

So with the greatest of respect, I would have to say that you failed to cross a "t" or dot an "i" somewhere in the conversion/batch-building/installation process. A couple of quick and easy things to double-check might be

• Does your OS Project reflect the armor's correct Output File Name?
• Does your OS Project reflect the armor's correct Output Data Path and not, for example, your Oldrim path structure?
• Do the Date/Time stamps on your Armor nifs confirm the above, i.e. correspond with the date and time when you batch-built them in Bodyslide?
• Is the "Low/High Weight Output" button ticked?
• Is the "Copy reference shape into output" box ticked?

• Is your BHUNP body using the default Data\Meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalebody_[n].nif mesh files?
• Is your BHUNP body set up to use the default Data\Textures\actors\character\female\femalebody_1.dds (etc.) texture files?
• Are you absolutely certain that you built your default (naked) body and your Armor's Reference Body (shape) to the same preset?

 

There are also the long shots to check- is it possible that BHUNP is so new that the textures available for it may still need a bit of tweaking?

All I know is that there is apparently a body mismatch between dressed and naked in your game. Maybe someone else can think of something new on the "wrist seams magically disappear when I'm naked" scene.

[Tranquils]

14 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

Well, I have never encountered a case of the body magically looking different when naked than it does when clothed that was NOT caused by a mismatch between the naked body ("Default Body") and the body in the armor nifs.

 

So with the greatest of respect, I would have to say that you failed to cross a "t" or dot an "i" somewhere in the conversion/batch-building/installation process. A couple of quick and easy things to double-check might be

• Does your OS Project reflect the armor's correct Output File Name?
• Does your OS Project reflect the armor's correct Output Data Path?
• Do the Date/Time stamps on your Armor nifs confirm the above, i.e. correspond with the date and time when you batch-built them in Bodyslide?
• Is the "Low/High Weight Output" button set?
• Is the "Copy reference shape into output" box ticked?

• Is your BHUNP body using the default Data\Meshes\actors\character\character assets\femalebody_[n].nif mesh files?
• Is your BHUNP body set up to use the default Data\Textures\actors\character\female\femalebody_1.dds (etc.) texture files?

 

There are also the long shots to check- is it possible that BHUNP is so new that the textures available for it may still need a bit of tweaking?

All I know is that there is apparently a body mismatch between dressed and naked in your game. Maybe someone else can think of something new on the "wrist seams magically disappear when I'm naked" scene.

Spoiler

 

Everything matches and the time stamp is correct for both armor, and femalebody. 

When you say using the default, do you mean the vanilla meshes and textures? 

And I agree, there does seem to be a mismatch I've just got no idea where it comes from, there are no mod conflicts and I have a very hard to mess up basic install  

 

EDIT: Yes, BHUNP is set up to use meshes and textures from the default path and the body does change whenever I chose a different slider

[Vyxenne]

37 minutes ago, Tranquils said:

I just think the strange part is that I've done this before on a different computer, just about literally the same steps, without trouble. But for some reason now it decides to give me all these curveballs with seams, unconvertable armor and more! 

[Tranquils]

9 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

I guess that pretty much sums it up huh  maybe I should just give up skyrim modding for while, either I'm missing something obvious or something is borked. Either way it's driving me nuts so better to just leave it I guess.

[Vyxenne]

20 minutes ago, Tranquils said:

  Reveal hidden contents

When you say using the default, do you mean the vanilla meshes and textures?

Well, I thought I typed it out- I mean the path and filename mask I typed. If you are using the vanilla body, you will not even have a "Data\Meshes\actors\character\character assets" folder- it, and the files it contains, are completely hidden in one of the game's BSAs. When you install a body replacer, it creates that path and those files because that is the only way (unless the mod author makes her own BSA lol) for the replacement body to override those vanilla files. So no, "default" and "vanilla" do not mean the same thing at all.

 

The reason I even brought it up (grasping at straws) is that you are describing a cognitively dissonant situation- you have the classic symptoms of armor/naked body mismatches yet insist that it can't be that because you did it before and it was fine and also you did it all perfectly this time too. Nonetheless, it is possible (albeit vanishingly unlikely) for a different path and/or file name to be specified in the body mesh (BSLightingShaderProperty >> BSShaderTextureSet) or similarly redirected in a patch plugin Texture Swap. That's why I suggested that you verify it, not only in the OS Armor Project but by armor nif dates and times as well.

[Vyxenne]

I just thought of something else: Are you absolutely certain that you built your default (naked) body and your Armor's Reference Body (shape) to the same preset?

[vsuamier]

Seeing the extreme flexibility of Bodyslide and the in-game morphing with CBBE I would completely scratch this default body.

Instead rebuild this body in Bodyslide or even better in racemenu directly (as a base preset) for CBBE. In the end you see the shape not the body type.

Also there are already a huge number of presets that can be used as base.

 

I recently tried an armor mod based on UUNP (coming with Bodyslide). So I just adjusted sliders to my own body (which Bodyslide does nicely in an automatic way).

But in-game everything is completely borked up. So actually I would have to first convert it with outfirstudio before beeing able to use it...

(I did not because the texture quality was too low).

[Tranquils]

18 minutes ago, Vyxenne said:

Well, I thought I typed it out- I mean the path and filename mask I typed. If you are using the vanilla body, you will not even have a " Data\Meshes\actors\character\character assets " folder- it, and the files it contains, are completely hidden in one of the game's BSAs. When you install a body replacer, it creates that path and those files because that is the only way (unless the mod author makes her own BSA lol) for the replacement body to override those vanilla files. So no, "default" and "vanilla" do not mean the same thing at all.

 

The reason I even brought it up (grasping at straws) is that you are describing a cognitively dissonant situation- you have the classic symptoms of armor/naked body mismatches yet insist that it can't be that because you did it before and it was fine and also you did it all perfectly this time too. Nonetheless, it is possible (albeit vanishingly unlikely) for a different path and/or file name to be specified in the body mesh (BSLightingShaderProperty >> BSShaderTextureSet) or similarly redirected in a patch plugin Texture Swap. That's why I suggested that you verify it, not only in the OS Armor Project but by armor nif dates and times as well.

I'm not ruling out the possibility that I went wrong somewhere that's definitely possible but I can't see it.

For example, I've done the same thing with a CBBE body, I install the mod, build the body, hands and feet through bodyslide, and this time the seam is gone, and doesn't appear/disappear when taking on/off vanilla, or other clothing. That's why I thought I should change to CBBE. But then I ran into another problem when converting armor which means I'm stuck with very few armor mods that I could use . 

I checked in the .nif and it seems to be taking textures from the right place, I can't find anything wrong anyways: 

Spoiler

 

About the default/vanilla thing, I thought that was what you mean yeah. The body does output and use meshes from the default path, yeah.

And yeah the presets are the same on the armor and body.

[Tranquils]

7 minutes ago, vsuamier said:

Seeing the extreme flexibility of Bodyslide and the in-game morphing with CBBE I would completely scratch this default body.

Instead rebuild this body in Bodyslide or even better in racemenu directly (as a base preset) for CBBE. In the end you see the shape not the body type.

Also there are already a huge number of presets that can be used as base.

 

I recently tried an armor mod based on UUNP (coming with Bodyslide). So I just adjusted sliders to my own body (which Bodyslide does nicely in an automatic way).

But in-game everything is completely borked up. So actually I would have to first convert it with outfirstudio before beeing able to use it...

(I did not because the texture quality was too low).

I have built my body in bodyslide, I've tried both using a default preset and a custom preset and it makes no difference  

[Tranquils]

I think putting on the vanilla clothing messes it up somehow but I don't know just how. This is it how it looks when I load in naked, looks just fine right?

Spoiler

 

Then I put on vanilla clothing and get this, which is kind of strange and I don't think should happen:

Spoiler

 

But even stranger, this is what I get when I take off the vanilla clothing again, the seam STAYS even though in theory it should be gone when I take the clothing off right?

Spoiler

 

Why would putting on vanilla clothing cause a permanent seam on the naked body? That's what I don't get!

[vsuamier]

1 hour ago, Tranquils said:

I have built my body in bodyslide, I've tried both using a default preset and a custom preset and it makes no difference  

It's not enough to just build the body in bodyslide. You need to have installed the whole package and overwrite your changes with it. This includes:

- Body itself

- Textures for exactly that Body Type

- Matching Textures for the Head of exactly that Body Type

- Creating patches when you use a (or your) custom race (some of them use their own body type, their own custom textures etc. so may be completely incompatible)) to adjust it to your changes

- Creating morphs for everything (essentiel if you do changes on your body with RaceMenu)

- Also slider may not work in racemenu in a custom race which may need further changes

- In this parts never mix up Skyrim and Skyrim SE when you don't want to get a modder

- all the details I forgot. Not only check dependencies but description, mod posts and read between the lines if something is not working...

 

I had neck seems, head discolorations, overlays / hair color not loading because of bugs in a different mod (extremely bad luck in this case, because it was loading fine only on the second time onwards, on first time failed...) and because I had overseen a detail like a matching head texture....

[Tranquils]

1 minute ago, vsuamier said:

It's not enough to just build the body in bodyslide. You need to have installed the whole package and overwrite your changes with it. This includes:

- Body itself

- Textures for exactly that Body Type

- Matching Textures for the Head of exactly that Body Type

- Creating patches when you use a (or your) custom race (some of them use their own body type, their own custom textures etc. so may be completely incompatible)) to adjust it to your changes

- Creating morphs for everything (essentiel if you do changes on your body with RaceMenu)

- Also slider may not work in racemenu in a custom race which may need further changes

- all the details I forgot. Not only check dependencies but description, post and read between the lines if something is not working...

 

I had neck seems, head discolorations, overlays / hair color not loading because of bugs in a different mod (extremely bad luck in this case, because it was loading fine only on the second time onwards, on first time failed...) because I had overseen a detail like a matching head texture....

 

If you check my OP I posted a list of installed mods in my MO, I've got all the things needed and all the dependencies too, it's basically just https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31126?tab=description this mod and its dependencies. It comes with all the needed textures for the correct body type, and I'm not using a custom race or anything. 

I don't think it's a basic problem because you can see it's all working in some of the pictures, the problem occurs when I put on/off vanilla clothing for some reason  

[vsuamier]

1 hour ago, Tranquils said:

If you check my OP I posted a list of installed mods in my MO, I've got all the things needed and all the dependencies too, it's basically just https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/31126?tab=description this mod and its dependencies. It comes with all the needed textures for the correct body type, and I'm not using a custom race or anything. 

I don't think it's a basic problem because you can see it's all working in some of the pictures, the problem occurs when I put on/off vanilla clothing for some reason  

So which vanilla clothing replacer are you using ? This must match your bodytype. Skyrim only knows by default of one body type for everything.

Every single piece of body equipment must be adjusted with bodyslide. Have not found myself anything specific for that bodytype.

This one should work I guess (according to compatibility notes): https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10980

 

Regarding custom-race I'm not so sure about the mod, maybe it offers both a full-replacer as well as a standalone variant (ygNord).
Ok, according to mod description using Physics seems to require to use this custom race for this UUNP-Alternative. This makes handling more complex if you want to mix vanilla with it. I'd suggest to avoid it or at least try to install it in a way that vanilla bodies are properly replaced as well.

I'd also recommend to use the "custom light" mod for a more neutral less shadowy light environment.

 

My current conclusion on BHUNP: Come back to this mod in a few months when it has more matured....

[Grey Cloud]

The place to seek advice would be either the mod support thread or the SE tech support section.

[Vyxenne]

23 hours ago, Tranquils said:

maybe I should just give up skyrim modding for while

No.

20 hours ago, vsuamier said:

My current conclusion on BHUNP: Come back to this mod in a few months when it has more matured....

Yes.

 

Your issue, no matter what the details of it are, is with the BHUNP body, which is a brand-new body and apparently still has some growing pains.

 

So after you have exhausted all of the logical fixes and troubleshooting steps, uninstall the BHUNP body and go back to the UUNP body along with a high-quality set of UUNP body textures such as Leyenda Skins. I can attest (and prove with a wall of images and videos if you like) that it works stupendously in my SSE game, and the thousands of apparel items in my closet are easily morphable to "fit perfectly" which means my shape doesn't change when I get dressed or change outfits. I don't have any visible seams unless I'm wearing a cloth-physics item I can't convert because idk how to replace the reference body without breaking the mesh and I can't get help figuring out how to do it.

 

TL; DR: Ditch the body, not the game.

[Tranquils]

2 hours ago, Vyxenne said:

No.

Yes.

 

Your issue, no matter what the details of it are, is with the BHUNP body, which is a brand-new body and apparently still has some growing pains.

 

So after you have exhausted all of the logical fixes and troubleshooting steps, uninstall the BHUNP body and go back to the UUNP body along with a high-quality set of UUNP body textures such as Leyenda Skins. I can attest (and prove with a wall of images and videos if you like) that it works stupendously in my SSE game, and the thousands of apparel items in my closet are easily morphable to "fit perfectly" which means my shape doesn't change when I get dressed or change outfits. I don't have any visible seams unless I'm wearing a cloth-physics item I can't convert because idk how to replace the reference body without breaking the mesh and I can't get help figuring out how to do it.

 

TL; DR: Ditch the body, not the game.

I've managed to get a setup going now with CBBE Advanced and finally managed to find the root of the conversion problem . The armors weren't toggled in the ESP to cover forearms and calves in the armor addon biped object category, which was causing huge gaps in the forearms and calves . Thanks for helping and yeah that might be the issue indeed, I'll come back to BHUNP at a later time maybe. One thing is for sure, you're never really done learning how to mod skyrim  .

 

When you say converting without breaking the mesh, what exactly is it that breaks btw? I've been screwing around with converting armors for the past days now and finally feel like I've got the gist of it ? .

[Vyxenne]

22 hours ago, Tranquils said:

When you say converting without breaking the mesh, what exactly is it that breaks btw? I've been screwing around with converting armors for the past days now and finally feel like I've got the gist of it ? .

Well, my problem is not with "converting armors" - I've done hundreds at this point (which is a huge part of the reason I'm using UUNP in SSE) and even written guides on how to get UUNP into SSE Bodyslide and how to convert any armor to any body or shape.

 

My problem is, unless a cloth-physics armor already has a UUNP body (with all the UUNP body's sliders*) as the Reference shape, the mesh explodes when I replace whatever non-UUNP Reference Body the outfit has with a bonafide* UUNP Reference, make a Base Shape and then a Conversion Reference, save the SliderSet and batch-build the outfit into the game. This happens whether or not I copy, or paint, any (or all) bone weights from the Reference body onto the outfit shape(s).

 

I asked for help with this a couple of times, and was informed that the only way to do it was to start over from scratch, creating the mesh from nothing with 3DS and/or Blender (!!!) then working my way up the chain of software utilities through MeshRigger to a usable nif. Sadly, the people who actually know how to replace the Reference shape in a cloth-physics mesh without starting over have said that they will not help because they only help players who use another body type - whether they want to use that body type or not.

 

So "what breaks" is cloth-physics nif files after replacing the Reference body and building it into the game. Failure modes range from immediate CTD-on launch, or on item equip, to the outfit displaying as a series of geometric planes projecting outward to infinity in all directions (runaway physics).

 

*I have encountered outfits with Reference bodies labeled "UUNP" or "CBBE" that have no sliders at all or just a few sliders but not all of them, etc. I have also encountered mods labeled "UNP" which turn out not to be UNP but some weird hybrid-morph mashup of UNP-Skinny+7BUNP+UNP-Pushup+UNPB and so forth. In all of these cases, the only way forward is to replace the Reference shape with a genuine UUNP body with all of its sliders, but when I do that on a cloth-physics mesh, it becomes unusable in-game.

[Tranquils]

1 hour ago, Vyxenne said:

Well, my problem is not with "converting armors" - I've done hundreds at this point (which is a huge part of the reason I'm using UUNP in SSE) and even written guides on how to get UUNP into SSE Bodyslide and how to convert any armor to any body or shape.

 

My problem is, unless a cloth-physics armor already has a UUNP body (with all the UUNP body's sliders*) as the Reference shape, the mesh explodes when I replace whatever non-UUNP Reference Body the outfit has with a bonafide* UUNP Reference, make a Base Shape and then a Conversion Reference, save the SliderSet and batch-build the outfit into the game. This happens whether or not I copy, or paint, any (or all) bone weights from the Reference body onto the outfit shape(s).

 

I asked for help with this a couple of times, and was informed that the only way to do it was to start over from scratch, creating the mesh from nothing with 3DS and/or Blender (!!!) then working my way up the chain of software utilities through MeshRigger to a usable nif. Sadly, the people who actually know how to replace the Reference shape in a cloth-physics mesh without starting over have said that they will not help because they only help players who use another body type - whether they want to use that body type or not.

 

So "what breaks" is cloth-physics nif files after replacing the Reference body and building it into the game. Failure modes range from immediate CTD-on launch, or on item equip, to the outfit displaying as a series of geometric planes projecting outward to infinity in all directions (runaway physics).

 

*I have encountered outfits with Reference bodies labeled "UUNP" or "CBBE" that have no sliders at all or just a few sliders but not all of them, etc. I have also encountered mods labeled "UNP" which turn out not to be UNP but some weird hybrid-morph mashup of UNP-Skinny+7BUNP+UNP-Pushup+UNPB and so forth. In all of these cases, the only way forward is to replace the Reference shape with a genuine UUNP body with all of its sliders, but when I do that on a cloth-physics mesh, it becomes unusable in-game.

Yeah I gotta admit that sounds above my level  . I did do one conversion of a cloth phsyics armor to UUNP before I switched to CBBE though, without having to use any other programs than bodyslide, do you have a link to one of these armors? I wouldn't mind trying even though I probably couldn't do it .

[Vyxenne]

5 hours ago, Tranquils said:

I did do one conversion of a cloth phsyics armor to UUNP before I switched to CBBE though, without having to use any other programs than bodyslide, do you have a link to one of these armors? I wouldn't mind trying even though I probably couldn't do it

Well, sure! Here is one of the ones that actually made me cry- LSJ Afternoon Dress. It's a really cute little dress and the SMP movement seems about right- flouncy without being too over-the-top. It's a single-nif outfit atm, but once it gets built in BS with its new UUNP reference body, that'll be taken care of. Thanks for trying this, and be sure to let me know how you did it if you succeed.