Question about patching Divine Elegance capes to work with SD collars

[belegost]

Hi everyone, I've been lurking here for some time, but this is my first post on this forum so I would like to say "hello".

 

Hello!

 

Now let me start with a disclaimer: despite being a heavy mod user for a number of years, up until yesterday I have never dabbled in actual mod making and everything I have learned so far, how to use the tools and other things I picked up literally yesterday evening by googling heavily and reading tutorials. So I apologise for any noob questions I might have. I just don't have experience or knowledge.

 

Now to the point.

In my current game I am using Sanguine's Debauchery along with Apachi's Divine Elegance and I would like to make a patch for Divine Elegance to suit my private taste. SD has collars which Sanguine "blesses" PC with and DE has some very nice looking capes which I really like on my character. However both of these use slot 45 so you can't wear  a cape while being collared. Note that DE capes are different from cloaks from say, "Winter is Coming" as these (and all other mods that have similar clothing) use slot 46. In essence in normal game you can wear both a cloak and a cape at the same time, however they clip through each other and cloaks themselves have no problem with SD collars.

So I wanted to make a patch to change capes to use slot 46 so my character can wear them along with collars. To that end I have extraced .nif files from DE .bsa which had a keyword "cape" using Bethesda File Extractor and came up with 4 files in

 

Data\meshes\divineelegance\female\clothing\cape\

 

• capebrooch_ 0.nif
• capebrooch_ 1.nif
• capebrooch_gold_0.nif
• capebrooch_gold_1.nif

 

Using NifScope and following tutorials I changed their Partitions property from slot 45 to 46. Note that each file has two  elements that use this, a "brooch" and "cape" so I set both to 46. In Creation Kit I then loaded Divine Elegance, found all capes in "armor" section and chaged all of them to use slot 46 as well and saved. Upon saving it created an .esp plugin file in Data folder which I named DE_patch.esp.

 

Now this was a part where I'm pretty confident I did everything right, however after this my obivous lack of modding knowlege becomes evident. I placed the .nif files in the appropriate folder, activated .esp file in my mod manager (I'm using Vortex), set it to load after Divine Elegance and started the game. I was now able to equip the cape, however it remained invisible on my character, so there is something I am missing here.
I briefly considered archiving both the .esp and changed .nif files and installing them as a normal mod in Vortex, but came to conclusion this would not really be any different than what I already did.

 

So my questions:
Are those the correct .nif files for that specific piece of clothing? I could not find any other with the appropriate keyword when browsing Divine Elegance BSA file structure.

 

Do I need to repack altered .nif files into the mod BSA files itself for the chages to become visible? This seems like a bad idea, I would not like to change the original mod if I can avoid it. In that case how do I create a patch that actually works? I assume I have to somehow "point" to those files to see the effect but I have no idea how to do it.

 

Am I even on the right track here? Those 4 .nif files seems like an awfully small number for a selection of capes that DE offers. I assume those are some kind of "master" files with just the models and various texture options are added to it by other means. I have no idea how that's achieved, but for now I assume this is not really important. Unless it is. I welcome any tips regarding this matter.

 

Thank you all for any insight into this you might provide.

[Seijin8]

A few recommendations on the nif:

 

Instead of changing body partitions, use nifskope to "convert" the BSDismemberSkinInstance -> Block -> Convert -> NiSkinInstance.  This ditches the body slot issues and has no downside.  Skyrim doesn't do dismemberment and only really handles masking for certain slots (32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 50, 51) this setup is a holdover from Fallout and only wastes time.  Change it to NiSkinInstance and you never need to touch it again.

 

On the invisible bit:

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

found all capes in "armor" section and chaged all of them to use slot 46

and

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

I was now able to equip the cape, however it remained invisible on my character, so there is something I am missing here.

There are two records that need this treatment.  The Armor (ARMO in TESEdit), and the Armor Addon (ARMA in TESEdit).  Both have to match.

 

Finally your questions:

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

Are those the correct .nif files for that specific piece of clothing?

Probably.

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

Do I need to repack altered .nif files into the mod BSA

No, but for sake of resolving any conflicts, I'd just keep the bsa extracted as loose files and delete the bsa.  It is likely you will want to tinker with it more and unpacking/repacking is unnecessary.  The moment you start editing things, BSAs become your enemy.

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

I would not like to change the original mod if I can avoid it.

While I understand that initial hesitation, unless DE is frequently updated (I don't know if it is or isn't), then you may as well just edit it directly.

39 minutes ago, belegost said:

Those 4 .nif files seems like an awfully small number for a selection of capes that DE offers.

Likely gets the rest using texture sets.  If that is the case, then you will have to change many more entries - basically every one that uses the nif you adjusted.

 

But if you switch the BSDismemberSkinInstance to NiSkinInstance, then the other records don't need to agree with one another on which slot it should use.  So long as the Armor (ARMO) record says Slot 46 and points to an Armor Addon/ARMA record that agrees with this slot assignment, then the nif can be used by anything.  That way you can make the adjustments on a case-by-case basis when you get around to it.

 

EDIT: In other words, once the nifs are freed from the BSDismemberSkinInstance data, the armor/addon records can assign whatever they individually want it to be and the nif will still load.  One record can think it should be 45, another 46, and they can both use the same nif.

 

For sake of understanding: Armor records mainly effect your inventory data (and what items are actually "equipped") while Armor Addon records are what appears in-game (rendering, independent of equipment state).  The two records have to agree on at least a single slot to place the item on, or you end up with invisible stuff.  There is no value in making an armor record use more than one slot (like I've seen many cloaks use both 46 and 40 to "unequip" a tail), because now any tail gear would also be unequipped.  Instead, use the Armor Addon record to add additional slots (the addon can have more slots than the armor record, so long as the addon has the same slot as the armor, they will work) and then use priorities to hide things that should be absent.  For instance, instead of putting Armor record 40 and 46 for a cloak, just use 46 and put 40 and 46 in the addon record with a priority above a tail (which I assume to be 0 or 5), and the tail will disappear when it is equipped without effecting the inventory screen and equipped items.

 

(Very tired and heading to bed, so please forgive if this isn't making sense.)

[belegost]

Quote

Instead of changing body partitions, use nifskope to "convert" the BSDismemberSkinInstance -> Block -> Convert -> NiSkinInstance.  This ditches the body slot issues and has no downside.  Skyrim doesn't do dismemberment and only really handles masking for certain slots (32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 50, 51) this setup is a holdover from Fallout and only wastes time.  Change it to NiSkinInstance and you never need to touch it again.

Thank you, but I have no idea what that means, as I said I'm a complete noob when it comes to modding. I'm going to have to look at NifScope and see if I can make sense of what you say.
 

Quote

There are two records that need this treatment.  The Armor (ARMO in TESEdit), and the Armor Addon (ARMA in TESEdit).  Both have to match.

So what you're saying is I have to use xEdit? CK alone won't be enough? I will have to look if CK has both options somewhere, however all the tutorials involving CK I've seen only mentioned the need to change one record there and two in .nif files, which I did. If not I will dabble into xEdit, although I was hoping to avoid that, I only ever used it for mod cleaning via "Quick Clean" option because LOOT said so, and I don't even know how that works, except that it works.

 

Quote

for sake of resolving any conflicts, I'd just keep the bsa extracted as loose files and delete the bsa.  It is likely you will want to tinker with it more and unpacking/repacking is unnecessary.  The moment you start editing things, BSAs become your enemy.

What I take from this is to unpack ALL of the BSA into loose files and use that instead of regular mod. I don't know how I feel about that to be honest. Modding is a complete terra incognita for me, as I said I have not done anything of the sort up until yesterday, so please understand my hesitation on doing something that might potentially break stuff irreversibly. I just don't know enough to be confident about it. I am not planning on ever doing any more changes bar those to that one specific piece of clothing. Would the method of just extracting the specific files, and then adding them as loose files work? I read somewhere that if you add loose files they take priority over BSA. That was my assumption when I said I just plopped them in Data folder. Is that correct?

 

Thank you for your time..

[belegost]

SOLVED!

 

Quote

The Armor (ARMO in TESEdit), and the Armor Addon (ARMA in TESEdit). Both have to match.

That was it.

There is an ArmorAddon drop-down menu in CK which also contains the data on slots and after changing this value to 46 the capes are now visible and can be worn along with SD collars. Strange that none of the tutorials I read mentioned the need for doing this as well along with other things.

I also found another set of .nifs in Data\meshes\divineelegance\male\clothing\cape\ which I also converted to slot 46 and included in loose files. I'm not sure f that was needed but I guess it doesn't hurt.

 

I am now going to make an archive so I can install this through a mod manager so I know where it is. Also it appears that it already uses Divine Elegance as a master. I would upload it for other people to use if they wanted but I'm not sure about the proper etiquette and would I need an original mod author's permission for this. I am after all using his nifs as loose files in it.

 

Thank you for your assistance.