Adventures in Mooing...er...Modding

[GrimGrim31]

For the last few weeks, I have been learning how to modify FO4 and it has been both fun and frustrating.  I thought it might be useful or just interesting for others to learn what I am learning.  It might also gain me some help with some of the issues that I run into each day.

 

To start with, I am not an experienced modder of any game.  The only programming languages that I have used for coding are either obsolete (Pascal, Basic, machine assembly language) or a simple case of using Python to bring tables of data into other software.  From this starting point, Papyrus is a strange animal.  

 

As a theme, I decided to start a new playthrough of FO4 with Sanctuary as a Vault-Tec Human Cow (AKA HuCow) farm.  Why?  We all know how crazy Vault-Tec's experiments can get.  I may also have been thinking about Invictusblade's Wasteland Dairy Framework or maybe the HuCow stories on Literotica or the comic by Erenisch.  Or maybe it was the mod Milk That Brahmin when I wondered if I could milk an NPC.  Alas, I can't remember exactly how it started but I kept trying new things to learn how to do them and to see what else was possible.  The most important thing is that I wake up each day wanting to learn a little more and it gets easier as I fill in the blanks of my knowledge of CK and scripting.

 

Here are some pics with a bit of explanation so you can see where I am at so far.

 

 

[\spoiler]

 

The pictures show Sanctuary, a Vault-Tec HuCow farm which currently has seven cows and a bull plus one uninvited and very annoying Brahmin.  There are three human male herders and my player who is a Vault-Tec researcher and occasional HuCow, when I am experimenting with player items and perks.  The items that I have toyed with so far are constructible refrigerators, HuCow milk as an aid item that reduces a little hunger and thirst as well as 20 rads.  I used the Better Brahmin Troughs mod but learned how to modify them so that the player and NPC HuCows can get food and purified water from the food and water troughs.  The downside is that the NPCs eat frequently and quickly empty the food troughs.  I didn't think that they would camp at the troughs as much as they do, especially since they are still assigned as farmers.

 

I made constructible HuCow ear tags which are wearable/visible on the left ear of each female HuCow.  This was a modification of one of the earrings from HN666's mod using Outfit Studio to make the changes to the mesh.  His mod doesn't work on males so no visible ear tag on the HuCow bull.  Another problem to solve later.  I also made HuCow implant chips as this seems to be a consistent part of the HuCow stories/comics that I have read.  The NPC chip has two versions: one that allows hair and the other that makes the NPC bald.  The player chip versions affect the hair but also have a script that plays text when the chip is equipped and unequipped.   The player also adopts a kneeling idle and moos at the end of the chip equipped sequence.  I was learning a few things about scripting sound FX, wait time, and idles.  The script also adds and removes perks and keywords that affect the player's dialogue and ability to milk and be milked.

 

I read through the milk bottle crate scripts that Invictusblade uses and recommend that anyone who wants to learn scripting take a peek.  The three scripts and five(?) items work very well together.  I used them for my HuCow milk so that every bottle obtained on the farm ends up in a crate in one of the refrigerators.  Eventually, I will work on quests to sell the milk and get the materials needed to run the farm.

 

The immediate problems to solve are how to overwrite the activation text on the Brahmin food troughs to change the text from "Enter" to "Feed" and how to set up packages for the HuCows so that they don't camp on the troughs all day and night.  I am also working on invisible sleeping bags so the HuCows sleep in the great outdoors.  They don't sleep on sleeping bags that use invisible markers so the puzzle remains unsolved.  I also am thinking about packages for the herders so that they add food/water to the troughs and milk the HuCows.  Sorry, there is no animation for that.  So far, I have figured out sound, text notification, and adding/removing the items involved.  Idle animations are several levels of difficulty and probably weeks or months away in my journey.  I am thinking about Nifskope though and learning what stock idles are available.

 

[Olmech]

Good luck with this. Look forward to seeing where this goes.

[GrimGrim31]

Today was fully focused on looking at the ESP and scripts of ignotum_virum's mod Just Business.  I really like how he writes his scripts and uses the core scripts of the game, especially the WorkshopParentScript.  That took up my morning and then I watched tutorial videos by Kinggath, one of the main guys that makes the Sim Settlement mods.   Kingath does a good job of explaining how he set up CK, Photoshop, NifSkope and some other programs to improve his modding.  He briefly covered GIMP as well but he doesn't use it so he didn't have much to offer about it.   I learned how to use the Archive2 tool that comes with the base game to unpack BA2 files (which most of us do with BAE Extractor).  The Archive2 tool is actually a bit easier to use for me so I made it my default application for unpacking BA2 files.

 

After watching two of Kinggath's tutorial videos on YouTube (and subscribing to his channel), I downloaded NifSkope  2.0 Dev 7 (still not changed since 2017) and GIMP stable release 2.10.22.  I also downloaded the DDS plugin for GIMP but learned that it is no longer necessary.  GIMP comes with a DDS plugin now.  I used these programs to look at the NIF and DDS files for the refrigerator and its door that I made into constructible items.  I decided to switch custom materials on the refrigerator and refrigerator door to the new blue version so they look almost brand new except for the broken glass window on the door.  This journey led me to also download Material Editor so that I can examine the BGSM files.

 

Now I want to fix that broken glass in the refrigerator door NIF file.  I may also try to remove the shelves in the refrigerator because they don't actually hold objects well.  Someone once told me that the problem was that small objects like the bottle crates are loaded by the game first and then the bigger furniture objects come a little bit later so the smaller objects sometimes fall through the larger furniture objects.  I don't know if it is true but the bottom metal shelf seems to work fine while the top one is worthless.  I feel like a chimp with a pointy stick about to start some trouble so any advice is welcome before I start poking things.

 

I also wonder about adding a Vault-Tec symbol on the top front of each refrigerator door.  Hmm...I just need to figure out where to place it on the DDS.

 

 

Links in spoiler for those that are interested.

 

NifSkope for editing meshes/Bethesda Art Files/NIFs  Releases · niftools/nifskope · GitHub

 

GIMP for editing textures/DDS/DirectDraw Surface files  GIMP - Downloads

 

Material Editor for editing BGSM/BGEM files  Material Editor at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community

 

Kinggath Tutorials (just the two that I watched today):  Bethesda Mod School: Creation Kit 101 - YouTube and Bethesda Mod School: Tools 101 - Custom Textures, Nifskope Setup, and Other Work Environment Tips - YouTube

 

The Archive2 tool is located in your Fallout 4 folder in Tools/Archive2.   Kinggath explains how to use it in his Tools 101 video.  

 

A wiki with more info about Archive2:  Guide:Archive2 - Step Modifications Wiki

 

[GrimGrim31]

Today's adventures in modding were not terribly productive, being interrupted by a thunderstorm, long walks, and the very important baking of chocolate chip cookies because you can't survive in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world on Cram alone.

 

I did spend a lot of time looking at the scripts and ESP for Quick Harvest.  I also downloaded a program called Champollion and an add-on Graphical User Interface (GUI) which allowed me to easily decompile finished script files (.PEX) back into script source files (.SRC) that I can read in Notepad ++.  Most authors, including Bethesda, provide their SRC files so that we can all learn from them and make modifications.  However, a few authors either forget to include their SRC files or intentionally do not include their SRC files so decompilers like Champollion come in handy.  Just keep in mind that the output SRC files are not exactly like the ones the mod author compiled to make the finished PEX files.  For example, a script may show a function instead of an event in the decompiled script so you may have to use some analysis if you plan to use all or part of that script for something new.

 

I worked on a perk and script to allow my character to eat fruits, vegetables, and other flora without having to "Harvest" or "Take" them first or using them in the inventory.  This was partially successful but when I eat things straight off of the plants, the plant never runs out of more ingredients for me to eat.  I have to figure out how to set the plant to a harvested state after the first ingredient is harvested/eaten.  

 

I had fun playtesting this perk.  Hilarity ensued when my character had her HuCow implant chip active and ate an ear of corn from a corn stalk in Sanctuary.  The four male settlers reacted to the "theft" of the corn and the once freakishly loyal robot, Codsworth, chased HuCow Nora out of Sanctuary with blade and fire.  He ultimately killed her near the Red Rocket.  I may figure out how to change this "theft" condition so that the settlers react, capture, and punish the character.  Death is too harsh for one damn ear of corn, no matter how tasty it was.

 

 

More pics and links in spoiler below:

 

 

 

Champollion mod:  Champollion PEX to Papyrus Decompiler at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community

 

GUI for Champollion:  Champollion Graphical User Interface at Skyrim Nexus - Mods and Community

 

Quick Harvest Mod:  Quick Harvest - QH at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community

 
 

[GrimGrim31]

 

Hello LL Community, I have not fallen into a hole or been lured away from Fallout 4 modding by some shiny new game.  For the last three days, I have worked on the perk to allow the character to eat fruits, vegetables, and other flora ingredients directly instead of having to take them or harvest them before using them in the Pipboy menu.  Thanks to two very nice people at Nexus Mods Forums - Fallout 4 Creation Kit and Modders, I was able to script a workable solution.  Now my character can eat from plants, eat off of the ground, and eat from troughs (thanks to another script).  Drinking is even easier from any water source including a water trough.  This all satisfies hunger and thirst conditions from the Survive the Wasteland mod.

 

She also has a cum addiction which was just an experiment to see if it was possible.  It works with Survive the Wasteland, Sex Attributes, and AAF.  AAF tags can cause some odd situations however, since Sex Attributes triggers anal, vaginal, and oral conditions for any untagged sex.  This means that my character reduces her cum addiction value for sexual acts that often have nothing to do with oral sex with a male.  I suppose that I will need to figure out a more accurate system but it works pretty well as it is and I don't feel like retagging a hundred sex positions for AAF.

 

Today was mostly spent going through my new install that followed Saya_Scarlett's [AAF] Up-To-Date Adult oriented setup guide (12/Feb/2021).  I decided to follow it since I was reinstalling everything anyway as part of my mod manager transition from NMM Community to Vortex.  I noticed during earlier playtesting that many animations and their organization were very different using the Ultimate AAF Patch (UAP) than they were using Indarello's 9.2 patch.  Stages, position tweaks, and sounds changed.  Some animations are gone and others added with UAP's position tree system.  So I spent the day going through the list of non-furniture single female and female-male animations to see what needed to be corrected. 

 

I decided to hide seven animations that were annoying: Vader's table anim for female-male and six test animations for solo female that are part of Bad Ends.  All it takes to hide them from showing up in AAF when you use the Home key, is going into their respective AAF position data XML file and adding the text isHidden="true".  

 

 

Just be very careful when editing the AAF XML files because any simple error on them like the wrong punctuation, an extra space, or putting something in the wrong place will prevent AAF from loading all the way.  My practice is to keep an original of the XML in a special folder while I edit the copy in the AAF folder in the Data section of the game files.  I only edit a few things at a time and always from the same XML file.  You'll regret doing too much and with too many files at the same time when you make a mistake somewhere and AAF doesn't work.  It is much easier to make small changes and check them in game before moving on to more changes.  Trust me.

 

Most of the animations work great with very few position errors.  There is some noticeable clipping on some animations  because my character has a body that has much more voluptuous curves than the vanilla bodies that the animations were made for.  I can't fix this without 3DS Max so I either accept it or hide the animations that have the biggest problems.  I was able to fix a half dozen animations where the penis was too low (Leito's blowjob and standing doggy anims as well as Savage Cabbage's standing doggy anims).  This type of fix is easy by changing the male actor's penis morph values in the respective AAF animation data XML file.  Usually the only morph to change is

<morph ID="Erection Down" to="x.x"/> or <morph ID="Erection Up" to="x.x"/>.  Every once in a while I find an animation where the male needs his penis lengthened or shortened and I adjust <morph ID="Erection" to="x.x"/>.

 

 

I found two big errors that I will work on tomorrow.  During Farelle's footjob animation the male's penis is about three feet over his head with an attached pole of flesh going from the the base of the penis back to his crotch.  I have seen this before when my male skeleton had problems but this is only happening on a single animation.  Odd!

 

 

 

 

The second problem is one of UAP's versions of BP70's Missionary animation.  In this animation, the male can levitate about two feet above the female which must leave both actors feeling pretty damn well unsatisfied.

 

 

I am not sure that I can fix that with X,Y,Z repositioning, but I will give it a try tomorrow.  I did something similar on one of BP70's footjob animations during my previous playthrough.  I just have to remember how I did it.

 

A few more screenshots of the stuff that I was fixing is in the spoiler below.  

 

[GrimGrim31]

So if anyone wanted to know how to solve the X,Y,Z repositioning problem.  I fixed the issue with [UAP] BP70 - Missionary by changing the Z value for the male to -42.

 

The X,Y,Z positions are part of the respective animationData,xml file, in this case it is UAP_BP70_FM-animationData.xml.  On the first line of the animation is offset="x,y,z, rotation (first actor):x,y,z, rotation (second actor)".  In this anim, the male is the second actor and giving him a negative z value lowered him.

 

 

 

Now I notice that his penis is entering the female a bit too high so I will add a line for <morph ID="Erection Down" to="0.4"/>.  Then save the xml and start the game to see if the change is enough.

 

 

[GrimGrim31]

     I worked a bit more on fine tuning the Female-Male (FM) non-furniture sex animations.  I gave up on the Farelle FeetJob animation that caused the male actor's penis to hover on a flesh spike three feet over his head.  People told me that the problem is not correctable.  Farelle's anims are older and were not purpose built for Zaz's Extended Skeleton.  I am still using his two blowjob anims after I added sound and used action morphs to open the poor woman's mouth so the guy isn't ramming his cock through her face and teeth.  See before and after pics below:

 

 

     I still have to figure out what is going on with the cum overlays.  In this playthrough, I am using Cum Overlays Scripted Edition v1.3.4.7 by Nebuchanezzer2 instead of the CumNWealth overlays that were packaged in Indarello's 9.2 patch.  So far, the scripted overlays end up in the wrong place a lot more often.  I don't remember CumNWealth getting any overlays wrong.   I will have to figure this puzzle out but it is not a high priority right now.  Instead I am thinking about what I want to do with this Vault-Tec Human Cow "mod". 

     

     I decided that I want to eventually produce something that can be shared on Lover's Lab and that got me thinking that I need to start bringing all of the odds and ends together in one ESP or ESL.  Right now, they are scattered over four different ESPs.  My thought process led me to project management and a desire to sketch out what I want to include in this "mod" and what will need to be done to achieve the desired end state.  So I am going to relax this weekend and wrap up a few small projects before dedicating next week to repackaging all of the current projects into one ESP and drafting the scope of the future "mod".

 

     Thoughts on what should be included?  I am already thinking of a few quests as well as the components of a working settlement hucow dairy farm.  I am still undecided on the types of human cows.  The genre has a lot of variation.  Some people like happy bipeds with human intelligence, who just happen to have massive milk producing mammaries and are occasionally overwhelmed by strong desires for sex, food, and getting milked.  At the other extreme are people who see hucows as humans that have been forced to become cows in nearly every aspect.  Their cognitive abilities are no better, they walk on all fours (sometimes on surgically modified limbs), and they have no capacity to understand or remember their former lives.  And there are a lot of variants in between the two poles.  I am not wedded to any particular type of hucow since this theme is one that I began by accident (see my first post) since I wanted something to inspire my adventures in modding, but I find that I prefer the lighter or even humorous hucow stories on Literotica to the cruel and dark ones.  Indeed, the most interesting stories are the ones where the protagonist wants to become a hucow for personal reasons, is embarrassed by the transition, is able to understand the huge shift in themselves and their lifestyle, but still goes on with it.   Often what goes on psychologically is far more intriguing than the physical changes.  

 

    Besides the cow question, I wonder what is possible in a FO4 "mod" and how much should I limit the scope to get a finished product this calendar year?   I think the working human cow dairy farm is the core.  Several radiant quests should be enough to start with.  Should I tie it to hunger/thirst/fatigue/get dirty/sex attribute systems?  Those connections add a number of headaches and there are multiple options for hunger/thirst/fatigue so I am inclined to avoid direct connections in the beta version of this "mod".  Someone once told me repeatedly that the golden rule was "Keep it simple, stupid."  While that never was and never will be my golden rule, it is still very sage advice.

[GrimGrim31]

I seem to have a fridge fixation.  I spent a happy hour or two trying out GIMP.  I used the clean blue fridge texture from the base game that I had already unpacked from the BA2 file.  I added a Vault-Tec symbol from a dds_d file for a Captive Tattoos overlay and then added another Vault-Tec symbol and text from a dds_d file for a vault crate.  I am not sure if the crate was from the base game or one of its DLCs.  Then I anchored the new layers to the blue fridge texture and recolored the symbol and text from the vault crate.  It all turned out well enough for me.

 

 

I was lucky and guessed the right spots to to place the symbols.  

 

Now for the weird news.  The symbol also shows up inside the fridge door and the inside top of the fridge.  This is probably because portions of the texture are used several times in different spots covering the mesh.  It looks a bit odd but is out of sight inside the fridge most of the time so it doesn't bother me.  See pic below.  It's not even a bleed through.  The inside door appears to have a mirror image of part of the symbol and text from the front of the door.  I guess the (formerly) blank blue space on the front of the door was reused on the inside of the door but also flipped and used again.

 

[GrimGrim31]

Posting twice in the same day seems excessive but I finished a couple more projects that had been hanging around on my list. 

 

Since my "mod" is going to be based on a Vault-Tec experiment, I wanted Vault-Tec restraints as an option.  Kimy has them in her Devious Devices mod but they are three separate armor items and they bind the player's arms and legs when equipped.  I wanted them all as one armor item and did not want the player or NPC to be bound by them.  Using Outfit Studio, I was able to import all three NIFs from Devious Devices and export them as a single outfit NIF.  I had to do this separately for male and female restraints since they are different sizes/positions.  Outfit Studio is part of BodySlide, which everyone uses but somehow Outfit Studio usually gets overlooked.  It is very useful and can import, convert, and export some file types that other freeware cannot.  Once I had the new NIFs done, I created new armor and armor addon items in CK so that I can craft the Vault-Tec restraint sets in game.  This is also a good time to point out that Vioxsis created the Vault-Tec restraints and DixiePig created the slave manacle set that you have seen in my earlier photos.

 

 

After finishing that simple project, I felt my yen for refrigerators growing again so I opened NifSkope and finally fixed the broken glass problem.  I didn't know how to delete vertices so I simply hid them inside the door.  I saved the loose file for the door with a new name so that it would not overwrite the NIF file in the base game BA2.  This prevents accidental changes of existing refrigerator doors throughout the Commonwealth that use that base game NIF file.  Then I pointed the model paths of the constructible refrigerator door, that I created in CK, to my newly edited and renamed NIF.  I am happy with the new door and decided to add a fourth refrigerator to my farm.  All in all, it was a very productive day.

 

 

 

 

 

BodySlide and Outfit Studio at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community

 

Devious Devices - Other - LoversLab

 
 

 

 

 

[izzyknows]

On 3/27/2021 at 9:22 PM, GrimGrim31 said:

I may also try to remove the shelves in the refrigerator because they don't actually hold objects well

In case you haven't figured it out yet.

You can add the script defaultDisableHavokOnLoad... or something like that, just filter havok, to the items you want to stay put. This is also useful for  loot-able items used for decorations. ie; stuff on tables/shelves where the PC or NPC's can normally knock it off... weapons hanging on a wall....hanging dead NPC's...

The Disable Havok at the right side of the Edit window, is only for the CK, but useful if running havok on a bunch of items and accidentally selecting your no havok items..

 

[GrimGrim31]

9 hours ago, izzyknows said:

In case you haven't figured it out yet.

You can add the script defaultDisableHavokOnLoad... or something like that, just filter havok, to the items you want to stay put. This is also useful for  loot-able items used for decorations. ie; stuff on tables/shelves where the PC or NPC's can normally knock it off... weapons hanging on a wall....hanging dead NPC's...

The Disable Havok at the right side of the Edit window, is only for the CK, but useful if running havok on a bunch of items and accidentally selecting your no havok items..

 

Thank you, I will try it on the refrigerator and its door but the milk crates are potions and do not appear to accept scripts in CK.

[izzyknows]

Yeah, you can add scripts to potions.

[GrimGrim31]

How are you accessing that Reference window?  When I doubleclick on the potion it shows me this window:

 

 

The script dropdown is blank.

 

[GrimGrim31]

I am still consolidating my oddball creations from four ESPs into just one that I am calling Vault-Tec Experiment 134.  I am halfway done.  Most of it is boring stuff that is not useful knowledge for other new modders like myself.  However, I did learn some things today that might be of benefit to someone else. 

 

Lesson Learned #1:  Workshop Build Menu Icons.  When adding my new Vault-Tec refrigerator and refrigerator door to my new ESP, I decided to create build menu icons for them.   

 

 

 

You create the icons as Transform Previews in the Transform section under Miscellaneous in Creation Kit.


 

I created a transform preview for each object:  the refrigerator door and the refrigerator.



 
In the Transform edit window, there is a dropdown menu that has the text "NONE" under Preview Object near the bottom left side of the edit window.  Look for your item's Editor ID name and select it.  Then click the button that says "Get Transform from Preview Object".  The object should appear in the grey window and the Position, Rotation, and Zoom amounts should all be automatically filled in.  Click OK to exit the edit window.  Note that you can also create Art Objects for the icons that you want and select them in the dropdown menu.



 
Go to your object and edit it.  Under the grey window on the right side, there is a Preview Transform drop down menu.  Look for your new transform and select it.  The object image will appear in the grey window.  Click OK to exit the edit window.
 


 
Now your build menu will have the transform preview image showing when you use the workshop to build things.  In case you are wondering where to find your object in the menu, check the Constructible Object that you created for your object to allow it to be built in workshop mode.  The Recipe Filter that you use (see blue highlighted text on the middle left side) is the section of the build menu where your constructible object will be located.  For my refrigerator door, this is in the Furniture Miscellaneous section.


 

 

Lesson Learned #2:  Making a Junk item into a Misc item so that it won't be scrapped or put into a workbench when you Transfer All.

 

For this mod, I want empty milk bottles to stay separate from Junk items and not get scrapped when I need glass for other things that I build.  I also don't want to accidentally put my bottles into a workbench when I drop all of my other junk using Transfer All.

 

To change a Junk item into a Misc item (it will show up in the Misc section on your Pipboy menu), doubleclick on the Junk Item in the MiscItem section of Items in Creation Kit.  That will open a MiscItem edit window like the one shown below.  

 



 

Delete the components in the Component Data section in the bottom right.  Then click OK to exit the MiscItem edit window.

 



 

Now your junk item will show up in the Misc section of your Pipboy menu and no longer be lumped in with all of your junk.  It won't be autoscrapped.  This does not change the object's Editor ID or Form ID so scripts and conditions that reference the object are unaffected. 

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

I finished moving everything that I wanted from my previous creations into on ESP for this "mod", Vault-Tec Experiment 134.  It still has a dependency on another mod, Survive the Wasteland, and has nearly every DLC as a master, which is puzzling since it should not require any of the DLCs.  I tried to clean masters using FO4 Edit but the DLCs are still required.  I will figure that problem out another time because I spent the rest of this week working with meshes, materials, and textures.  It was frustrating and exhilarating!

 

The first mesh project was to clean up the old junky bathtub used as a brahmin trough and make it a more suitable height for hucows to use.  Their bodies clipped a lot with the Brahmin trough.  I used Outfit Studio to mask the portions of the bathtub mesh (NIF file) that I wanted to keep and then deleted the other vertices.  I exported the edited mesh as an OBJ file and imported it into Blender, where I added new edges and faces and made sure the faces were facing the right direction.  I made the edited tub level by rotating it a bit on two different axes.   I also moved the vertices on parts of the water layer shape so that it wasn't clipping out of the bathtub.  Then I exported the OBJ from Blender and imported it into NifSkope.  After getting some help from a nice Norwegian dude on Nexus, I learned how to link my new NIF to its BGSM (materials) file.   EDIT:  I also lowered the height of the walls of the tub in NifSkope by manually setting the Y values of the wall top vertices to a standard lower height.

 

Unfortunately, the water layer shape in my new NIF was causing my game to crash so I examined the source NIF and compared it with my edited NIF in NifSkope.  I realized that the node hierarchy was different, probably because of the conversions back and forth from a NIF to OBJ format.  Once I changed the node hierarchy so that the water layer trishape was a child of the NiNode, the new NIF worked fine and no more CTDs.

 

 

Emboldened or maybe just encouraged by that success, I created a feed trough version for my hucows using my new NIF plus the corn, tatos, and base food layer from the Better Brahmin Troughs mod.  This was very easy using Outfit Studio.  I just imported my trough NIF and the brahmin feed trough NIF.  Then I deleted the broken tub shape and repositioned the other shapes so that they all fit neatly together with no ugly clipping.  OutFit Studio allows x,y, z movement and x, y, z axis rotation of entire shapes very quickly.  Then I just had to highlight all of the shapes and export them as a new NIF to my data folder meshes subfolder with the filename that I wanted.  I checked in NifSkope to make sure my meshes were still linked to the right material (BGSM) files and checked the hierarchy.  Everything looked good so I went into Creation Kit and pointed my hucow feed trough at the new NIF.  It worked but I had to recreate my three interaction points for the trough.  

 

 

 

 

 

I also spent some time retexturing a sleeping bag to look like a straw pallet for my hucows to sleep in the open.  I tried using an invisible sleeping bag by making one a marker.  That is a good way to make it invisible but I had a tough time placing the invisible furniture in workshop mode because...they were invisible.  I could just uncheck the Is Marker box in CK and then place the visible sleeping bags and then make them invisible again using CK to make them markers again, but that method won't work in a mod because most users won't go into CK and do that kind of manipulation.  So I tried using another visible sleeping bag form with a script pointed to the invisible bag.  This method is often used by mods that place invisible furniture, especially mats/rugs for animations.  It worked great but the invisible sleeping bags placed by the script are not added to workshop and the bed resource count for the workshop is not increased when an invisible sleeping bag was placed by the script.  A script solution isn't really feasible with my limited knowledge because it looks like calling a workhopparentscript function isn't possible from a script that is not a child of the workshopparentscript.

 

TLDR:  My hucows now have better troughs for feeding and drinking that do not clip like the brahmin troughs.  They also have straw pallets to sleep on.  Outfit Studio rocks.  NifSkope and Blender get honorable mentions.  Norwegian dude in Nexus FO4 modding forums is a hero.

 

 

 

Screenshot at top shows old tub with clipping between hucow and the tub.  Lower screenshot shows the new tub which does not cause clipping.

 
 

[GrimGrim31]

 

Today I finally cleaned up some bothersome details since I have learned how to UV map and I am getting more proficient with Blender, Outfit Studio, and NifSkope.

 

The odd logo and text on my Vault-Tec refrigerators are cleaned up.  All I had to do was UV map where the faces got their textures from on the DDS.  Now I want to try a few color variations of the refrigerators because that should not be very difficult at all.

 

I also removed the two water pipe holes from the back of my new tubs.  It took a while to figure out how to retexture the new faces inside and outside the tub so that the rust patterns matched up with the adjacent faces but I finally learned about cube projection and then it was easy going.

 

 

 

 

Just a shot of the back of the bathtub where the holes used to be.  It was a challenge to get the triangular faces textured so that the rust patterns matched up.  Cube projection using Blender made this easy, once I learned how to do it.

 
 

 

Blender, Outfit Studio, and NifSkope all have UV mapping editors.  Blender's editor is very good for groups of faces when scale and position matter.  Outfit Studio is easy and fast, good for looking at a UV map in a hurry and making simple changes.  It doesn't allow selection of faces though, so you are either selecting by vertices or grabbing a rectangular area of mesh.  I haven't been able to get NifSkope's UV mapping editor to change anything yet so maybe we can revisit that one another day.

 

 

Any day that I learn something good is a nice day.  If anyone is reading this, thanks for humoring me and enjoy your squirrel on a stick.

 

[GrimGrim31]

Just a quick update today.  I spent the early morning setting conditions on my settler dialogues so that they will no longer comment or complain when they are well into a transition to becoming a full hucow.  There are nine stages of the process and humans have limited dialogue responses after stage 3.  I didn't plan to work on the dialogue trees today but too many hucows complained about the bed situation last night.  Sheesh!

 

Afterwards, I used GIMP, Outfit Studio, NifSkope, and the Creation Kit to work on constructible orange colored refrigerators.  Nearly all of this process was similar to how I created the blue Vault-Tec refrigerators except for coloring a copy of the texture DDS_s in GIMP before creating the NIF, BGSM, transforms, constructible objects, and furniture/door objects.

 

GIMP was a bit more painful than I expected.  The user interface worked well and wasn't difficult but I lost a few hours trying to figure out why my dds files were not being exported with a new date-time stamp and the file type for every dds was now GIMP 2.1.0.  I finally realized that I could hide the date-time and file type columns in file manager and use new columns for date-time modified and file extension.

 

OK, wall of text is getting too long.  Here are some pics:

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

Pic above shows some of the hucows chasing my character hucow out of Sanctuary.  I have no idea what I did to piss them off.

 

Another sunrise and sunset with a day of learning to mod in between.  I taught my wife how to make a refrigerator using GIMP, Outfit Studio, and Creation Kit.  She wanted a green colored fridge so we made one together.  Then I learned about ENB for Fallout 4 from CRWREX and decided to download it and use the Decent ENB preset from Nexus Mods.  I don't think I will ever get my ENB to look as good as CRWREX's but a lot of things look better in my game now.   This afternoon, I watched another Kinggath tutorial and learned more about NifSkope and using it to create snap points on objects.  Now all of my refrigerators have snap points for their doors.  No more fiddly movement and squinting to see if the door lines up properly with the fridge.  Just snap it and place it.

 

I have talked too much.  Links and pics below.

 

 

 

ENB for Fallout 4:  Fallout 4 (enbdev.com)

 

Steam step by step to install ENB:  Steam Community :: Guide :: How to Install ENB - Fallout 4

 

CRWREX recommended these ENB presets:  FW/PRC/QH/MariENB/Visceral/Decent/Subtle;  from left to right they go from most performance heavy to least demanding on your hardware

 

Decent ENB Preset:  DECENT ENB - Natural and Performance Friendly at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community
Warning:  His page has several download links for other things so hover over the link to make sure it is the ENB download and not something else.
 

Kinggath's tutorial on NifSkope and snap points: Bethesda Mod School: Nifskope 101 - Basics and Snap Points - YouTube

 




 

 

[GrimGrim31]

Today was spent learning several things:

 

1)  FInd why your ESP is linked to a master:  Nebuchadnezzer2 told me how to apply a script called Report Masters in FO4Edit so that I could see which forms in my personal ESP were linked to masters, five of the six DLCs.  It turned out that 11 forms were linked.  A couple sound descriptor files did not need to be linked to DLC04 but were using an output model from that DLC.  I changed them to an output model from the original FO4 esm.  Then I realized that the other forms were armor addons and needed to be linked to the DLCs if I wanted the armor items to be equippable on humans added by those DLCs.  I guess this future mod is going to require almost all of the DLCs.

 

Spoiler

 

2)   Create a World Model for an Armor/Clothing Item:  I was in the game and dropped one of the Vault-Tec restraint sets (collars and manacles) to see what would happen.  It just froze in the air in front of me and then I realized that I needed to create a world model of the restraints so that the item would drop to the ground where you could pick it back up again.  So I spent a few hours in Outfit Studio and NifSkope turning my NIF of the restraints into a world model NIF with the collar and four manacles on the ground in a group near each other.  This required deleting the BSSkin::Instance and BSSkin::BSBoneData and the five NiNodes associated with the collar and manacles from the NIF and repositioning the collar and manacles at ground level.  Then I copied the collision physics and BSXFlags node from the DLC04 Slave Collar NIF and saved the new world model before going into the Creation Kit and changing to the new world model for the restraint set.  All seemed well until I went in game and tried dropping the restraint sets again.  They all used the new world model but every single one of them hovered in the air at chest height.  

 

 

I went back into NifSkope and didn't see anything wrong.  I asked a few folks on the AAF Discord for help and they thought that maybe the collision physics were not right so I copied a different object's collision physics and tried again.  Still hovering.  Then I decided to examine my world model NIF in Outfit Studio and was surprised to see that the 3D render in Outfit Studio was different from the one in game and in NifSkope.  Instead of the collar and four manacles being grouped together, the collar was a long way below the manacles on the Z axis.  So the restraint set was not falling to the ground in the game because the collar was already on the ground.  It was odd that it didn't render that way in NifSkope and in game but I was quickly able to go back into NifSkope, select the collar (which still appeared to be on the same floor level as the four manacles in NifSkope), and transform the coordinates so that the position of the collar relative to the manacles became its new 0,0,0 coordinates.  I had already transformed the manacles coordinate positions but had somehow missed doing that step for the collar.  Back in the game, the restraint sets dropped correctly and I was able to pick them up again.

 

Spoiler

 

 

3)  Create an AnimFurn:  I spent the evening watching Kinggath's tutorial on animfurns, animations for furniture.  He was using the same animation, drinkloop, that I want to use for my HuCow water troughs.  I followed all of the steps in his tutorial including making a new BA2 file for the animtextdata files.  That is my first BA2 file so hurray for that milestone!  Unfortunately, none of my NPCs are using the troughs with that animfurn keyword.  I will tackle that problem again tomorrow.

 

 

 

Kinggath's YouTube tutorial for animfurns:  Bethesda Mod School: Reuse Animations to Create New Furniture for NPCs - YouTube

 

[GrimGrim31]

I have to admit that I haven't tried again to get the animfurn to work.  I was tempted by other shiny buttons and spent the last two days improving the script for the feed trough and learning how to make tattoo overlays.  I also made the Vault-Tec restraint sets (male and female) into constructible objects at the Chemistry Workbench.

 

The process of making new tattoos is quite involved since it requires a mod esp, a .json file, a _en.txt, and then for each tattoo you have to create a .BGEM or .BGSM material file and the tattoo texture (a .dds file).  Nexus Mods has a fairly good written tutorial (.PDF format) by krisser143.  Unfortunately, it isn't written for a beginner but rather for modders that are familiar with .json, tabulation, and photo editing.  I put my toes into the icy waters anyway and was able to get working tattoos.   I am considering writing a tutorial for beginners using GIMP because krisser143 is a Photoshop user and his instructions for GIMP have some errors.

 

 

 

 

I ran out of time today to reposition the tattoos.  Some of them may need resizing as well.  I will work on that tomorrow.  The other problem that remains unsolved is getting my tattoos to show up in the LooksMenu list of overlays.  I assume that something is wrong with my .json or _en.txt file.  The .json is the more complex of the two and I copied and pasted a portion of a .json from JBpy's Tattoos for Captives .json to use as a template.  Then I used my IDs, tattoo names, and file paths.  It didn't work so I must have typed something in wrong.  I was able to get the tattoos on my character in game by renaming my tattoo texture files with file names from Tattoos for Captives and dropping the renamed .dds files as loose files in a folder named JB in Data/textures/overlays.  Loose files overwrite the ones packed into BA2 files for game load so my tattoos overwrote four of the ones for Tattoos for Captives and I was able to use my tattoos in game and get validation that my tattoo textures worked.  It's not a permanent solution but will allow me to refine the tattoos while I figure out how to get them to show up in LooksMenu.  Then I can just delete my loose files and no harm done.

 

 

krisser143's tutorial:  How to make LooksMenu body overlays at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community

 

JBpy's mod:  Tattoos for captives (LooksMenu Overlays / Facial Tattoos / Males / Females) - Sexual Content - LoversLab

 
 

 

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

Well, the good news is that I figured out how to get my four tattoos to show up in the LooksMenu Overlay list.  The bad news is that it took me about eight hours to solve the riddle.  It turned out that my .json file and _en.txt were written correctly but the .json file was formatted for Unix LF instead of Windows CRLF.  Apparently, the game engine prefers the latter to the former.  It only takes a few seconds to make the switch.  Doh!

 

So time for repositioning the tattoos was very limited.  I am still learning how to use GIMP and there were some misadventures where I was accidentally saving the 1st mipmap instead of saving the main layer.  I was wondering why my file sizes kept shrinking and the tattoos were not changing positions.  I learned to pay attention to which layer I was exporting because whenever I deleted my positioning layer (the femalebody_d.dds used as a visual reference to place the tattoos), GIMP automatically made the 1st mipmap layer the active layer instead of the main layer.  "Knowing is half the battle."  Fortunately, I always keep original copies of files in case I need them later.

 

I will work on the tattoos again tomorrow.  I want to get the arm text level so it will probably  move lower on the arms.  The upper chest tattoo probably needs to move a bit lower.  The upper back tattoo needs to move left and the lower back tattoo needs to move right.  Then I will make the male versions of the tattoos.  Once I get that done, I may try to create some bar code tattoos.

 

Pics!

 

 

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

Progress was very fast today since my .json and _en.txt file are working.  I copied the female _d.dds tattoo textures and material BGEM files and renamed them as male versions.  Then I went into the BGEM files with Material Editor and set new paths for the Base Texture and Normal Texture in the Effect tab.  Unlike other textures, the tattoo overlays only use a diffuse texture and then point to the male or female body texture for the Normal Texture.  I also added the male tattoos to my lists in my .json and _en.txt files.

 

 

 

 

For fun, I went straight into the game without editing the male tattoo texture files to see where the ones copied from the female version would show up on the male body.  The male body texture is very different from the female body texture.  I was about to learn how very different indeed they are from each other.

 

 

 

 

The front tattoo was up into the neck seam.  The arm tattoos were barely visible on the back of the lower triceps.  The higher back tattoo was about midway down the back and the lower back tattoo was right across the male's butt cheeks.  It was pretty funny.

 

The male body texture is roughly one quarter of the image size of the female texture and rearranged quite a bit different.  You can see from the size difference in the pictures below.  The male texture is the one inset of the larger female texture.

 

 

To make the female tattoos usable on the male body, I used GIMP to scale the tattoo layer to match the scale of the male body layer (from 4096 x 4096 pixels down to 2048 x 2048 pixels) that I used as a reference layer.  Then I resized the canvas to match the size of the layers because the large grey canvas behind my layers was irritating to see.  It was easy using select, cut, paste, and move to reposition the tattoos and then anchor the paste layer to the Main Layer.  Once the tattoos are correct on the Main Layer, I just delete the reference layer and export the tattoo Main Layer as a .dds to my data folder with the correct name.  I use BC3/DXT5 compression and generate mipmaps.

 

 

 

 

So the male tattoos are finally in the right positions and I can get started on Bar Code tattoos.

 

 

 
 

[GrimGrim31]

I am all done with the tattoos.  There are two types of tattoos:  Property of Vault-Tec and Bar Codes.  Each type of tattoo can be positioned in four different places on a male or female actor: front, upper back, lower back, and sides of the arms.  The arm tattoos are a set so they are always positioned on both arms.  I may go back later and make separate arm versions but I am done with tattoos for a while.  I enjoyed learning how to make them and I got my workflow process to be very efficient.  I will write it down tomorrow so that I can use it again in the future.

 

Pics of a male and female wearing all of the tattoos are what you want so I'll stop typing now.

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

It has been a busy week but I've been working mostly on things that aren't connected to my mod.

 

I wanted pubic hair for the male actors so I took some advice from Nebuchadnezzer2 and looked at the NIFs created by prinyo to put pubic hair on male Enhanced Vanilla Bodies (EVB) in the mod, Pubes for Male EVB, on Nexus.  I was able to adapt the pubic hair to a BodyTalk3 model using Outfit Studio to pair the pubic hair shapes with the BT3 body shape to create a new malebody.nif file but I had to learn a bit more to add the sliders for the model so that I could build a morph.  Otherwise, the males would never have erections.  Modders that know Outfit Studio well are probably thinking how easy this is but I had to figure it out.  I finally learned to Conform All using the Sliders tab to get the sliders from the BT3 reference body added to my version of the malebody.nif.  Then I deleted the BT3 reference body, saved the project, and was able to build a morph for the body in BodySlide.  Then I just copied the morphed body into the FO4/Data/Meshes/Actors/Character/CharacterAssets folder as malebody.nif to overwrite the pubeless BT3 male body.

 

 

 

Pubes for male EVB at Fallout 4 Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)

 
 

 

I also spent some time examining how to change the color of the pubic hair.  I had hopes of using the game's method of changing head and facial hair color but this does not seem possible.  I will continue my research but it seems a bridge too far right now.  I did learn a bit more about grey palettes and the hair color palettes used by the base game, Azarkiowa, and Looks Menu Customization Compendium.  I am able to change pubic hair color by swapping a diffuse texture file in Data/Textures/Actors/Character/BaseHumanMale but that is not an elegant solution for players that are uncomfortable with moving files around in their data.  It also means that every male actor has the same color pubes.  For my own use, I created several different color variants of the pubic hair diffuse texture file using the colors from the base game hair color palette which has 32 different colors.

 

CRWREX, CG!, and Nharra introduced me to A Forest mod, which adds a lot of trees, bushes, and other greenery to the Fallout 4 environment.  I had to join another Discord server, Brotherhood of Cheeki Breeki, and find a channel there called #deathbykitty-and-onlylen-mods to get to the download page for the mod.  It really makes the Fallout 4 world almost too pretty.  I enjoy it but I imagine that many FO4 players want their Commonwealth to be barren and bleak.  I also discovered that the mod was changing the color of the tatos in my HuCow feed trough from red to green.  It affects the diffuse texture file, Tomato01_d.DDS, even when the game isn't running.  So opening my feed trough NIF in Outfit Studio or NifSkope will still show green tatos.  I assume that A Forest mod is changing something about the way my computer or monitor displays the red color from that texture.  It is odd because I can use the red texture from tomato02_d.dds and it works just fine.  So I switched my material file for the tatos in the feed trough from Tomato.BGSM to TomatoVine.BGSM and my tatos were red again.  I figured this out because the tatos on the vines were still red while my feed trough tatos were green.

 

 

Brotherhood of Cheeki Breeki server: https://discord.gg/JePpaFm

 

YouTube:  A Forest mod: Fallout 4 - Vegetation Mod: A Forest - YouTube

 

A Forest mod download page: Download - MEGA 100%

 
 

 

 

I spent my time available for modding the last few days correcting the AAF xml files for Savage Cabbage's female-male sex animations.  I don't know how well they work for everyone else, but my male actor wasn't getting an erection if I started an AAF scene with one of those animations.  Every other animation was working correctly so I was puzzled.  My AAF sex animation mods are set up using the current Up-to-Date Adult Oriented AAF Setup Guide so I checked to see if Ulfberto's Animation Patch was overwriting Savage Cabbage's Female-Male animation xml files.  It turned out that UAP doesn't affect SC's FM xml files so I checked to see how Ulfberto was making males erect in his patch.  He was adding a morph,  <morph id="Erection" to="1.0000000000001"/>, for the male actors for each animation.  I did the same in SavageCabbage_animationData.xml and now the guys get their cocks up.  

 

Now I am just working on a few other edits for Savage Cabbage's xmls because some furniture doesn't work correctly like the vault beds with the white sheets and olive drab green blankets.  This is because the workshop version was added by DLC06 so it isn't in SavageCabbage_furnitureData.xml.  There are also some position problems for the actors on some of the furniture.  I don't know if it affects anyone else but it bugs me so I am modifying some x, y, z positions so the actors don't clip the furniture or hang off the side of the furniture.  It's tricky because the same anims might be used on five or ten similar pieces of furniture (based on the groups created in the furnitureData.xml) so I have to make sure any position changes work for all furniture items in that group.  Otherwise, I will have to create new groups.

 

The only real progress on my mod was to add an NPC.  His name is Doctor Moreau and he will be rather important to the story.  Does he have a face that you can trust?  Hmm...

 

 

 

[GrimGrim31]

 

A couple more days have passed and I have been busy on the mod.  I improved the water trough's water layer shape so that it doesn't have gaps between the water surface and the edges of the trough.  That was a simple fix in Outfit Studio to move vertices.  I worked on my invisible sleeping bag idea some more and finally figured out that it was easier to use a small rug instead of a sleeping bag and just texture the rug with a ground texture.  I had to rescale the texture because the rocks became pebbles so I changed the scale in the texture BGSM file to make them rocks again.  Now my hucows are sleeping all over Sanctuary and it looks quite natural.  I made the new rug name, HuCow Sleeping Spot, and the player can also sleep in those spots if the player is a HuCow.

 

 

 

I also created a separate menu section within the Chem Lab for my craftable items.  I have around 14 of them now so the Utility section was getting crowded since so many mods use it for their new items.  It is very easy to create your own menu section.  Just add a new Keyword that is a recipe filter in Creation Kit.  Keywords are in the Miscellaneous section of the CK.   Use your new Keyword instead of RecipeUtility for the Constructible Object.

 

 

 

I added a male ear tag by copying the NIF file for the female ear tag and duplicating the armor item, the armor addon item, and the constructible item in Creation Kit.  Gave them new names and pointed them to one another.  Then I had to change the position of the earring on the NIF (mesh) so that it was on the edge (helix) of the male actor's ear.  I did this in NifSkope.  It was a bit tricky because I didn't have a male head NIF for reference so I kept modifying the XYZ values in NifSkope for the BSSkin::BoneData block and then going into the game to see how the earring position changed on the NPC.  It took 4 or 5 adjustments. 

 

 

 

I also made a world model for the ear tag to use for the both the male and female versions.  The world model lets you drop the item during a game and the item will fall to the ground and look like whatever NIF you are using as the world model.  This took a bit of time to get right and I spent almost 10 minutes looking for the ear tags on the ground before I finally got the positioning correct.  I had a bit of a laugh while I was looking under the Sanctuary driveway mesh to see if an ear tag had fallen through.  There are a lot of other meshes below Sanctuary along with about 20 of my refrigerator doors and three refrigerators from when I was trying to add them to my workshop build menu.  I thought they were not appearing at all but it turns out they were appearing about 15 feet below ground level!  Weird!  So I disabled and deleted all of those extra doors and refrigerators.

 

 

 

 

Now I want to add snap points to the water trough and the invisible mat that it sits on so that they will always line up correctly for the NPC animation.  Then I will take another look at fixing the milk crate issue with the refrigerators.  After that, I will try to create HuCow serum syringer ammo.  I have already built some items for it but the ammo will need a script.