Jump to content

Recommended Posts

  • 2 weeks later...

Sometimes modding is one step forward, two steps back. Today it was about 100 steps back. Turns out none of my helmets show up in game, tho they show up in CK. Digging into it I found out there's a whole second way of tagging segments I didn't know about, much more like Skyrim's body part system. And I'm gonna need it because it's what keeps hair from showing through hats. So back to the export tool to make that happen, then re-export a bunch of helmets. Gak.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

So back to the export tool to make that happen, then re-export a bunch of helmets. Gak.

You're definitely gonna need support for proper segments in the plugin so that has to happen at some point, but it might be possible to salvage the current helmet nifs if Outfit Studio can fix whatever issue that is. Would still need to load every single nif, do whatever the fix requires, and then export again, but it can be done in the meantime and by anyone with a minimal understanding of how OS works (like me). So outsourcing might be an option there, lol.

Link to comment

Oh yeah. In fact I got concerned about whether I could get them to show up *at all* so I did exactly that and it works. I think handling the part names isn't too hard--just another lookup table. Right now I'm glitching on saving the external file name, which I don't even know what it's for.

Link to comment

Freakin A, I am so furious.

 

The goddamn helmets have been driving me to daylight drinking. Well, really I was already there but still. I could *not* get the damn things to show up in game reliably, so I'd rewrite the export code and compare how the segments are exported and shuffle the files around and finally cut everything in the esp back to plain vanilla and then start adding changes in one at a time until something broke AND IT NEVER FUCKING BROKE and finally I'd have the same setup I started with except this time it would be working. 

 

And I finally figured out it's the goddamn index numbers on the armor addons.

 

So CK is too brain damaged to let you sort your armor addons which you HAVE to do because the furry variants have to come before the vanilla so they get picked up by the furry races. But CK has this index for each of the addons in the list, which you can set, and hallelujah it will sort the addons by that index so that's clearly what you do, right? Is set the index numbers to sort the addons the way you want. 

 

EXCEPT IT'S A FUCKING LIE. 

 

If you enter non-zero numbers in that index list the addons don't show in game. It's not the fucking exporter, it's not the fucking nif, it's not the fucking file paths. It's not the fucking segments and subsegments and user slots and material hash values. 

 

And because fuck you AND ALSO it hates your shoes, it DOESN"T EVEN SORT THE ADDONS. When you look at them in FO4Edit, they're all scrambled.

 

What I'm doing now is setting them all to 0 and ordering the addons in FO4Edit. That works. 

 

Jeebus. I'm gonna take up gardening or something.

Link to comment
58 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

And I finally figured out it's the goddamn index numbers on the armor addons.

...I totally assumed you already knew how those worked so I didn't think about bringing them up at all. :classic_wacko:

 

The index system is meant for you to be able to have different ArmorAddons in the same base ARMO record and for the same slots so you can pick which one(s) show(s) up using OMODs.

 

For example, most vanilla armors have 3 "variants": Light, Medium and Heavy. You can have the same base ARMO have access to all three AAs (instead of separate Light/Medium/Heavy item entries), and pick which one must show up with an OMOD that modifies the "iAddonIndex" property. In this case, you'd have the Light AA set to index 1, Medium AA to 2 and Heavy AA to 3 and then the Light OMOD sets the iAddonIndex value to 1, Medium OMOD to 2 and Heavy OMOD to 3 (not the real values used in the vanilla items but same basic principles). You can even swap OMODs on the fly at the Armor Workbench and see the actual mesh get swapped for the new one if you use a mod like AWKCR or Crafting Framework that enables those options.

 

Any AA set to Index 0 will always be visible no matter what (only for the races it's enabled for, obviously), while any nonzero values will require either adding an OMOD that sets the corresponding index or manually adjusting the "index" data field in the ARMO itself. That's why items that aren't meant to use the AA-swapping system have all their AAs set to 0 instead.

 

As for actually sorting the AAs so the beast ones end up above the human ones, yes, it can only be done in xEdit. Sorting AAs isn't meant to be a thing in vanilla so the CK just does whatever the fuck it wants and places them wherever, you have to clean up the mess in xEdit afterwards (or just do all the work in xEdit in the first place and sort them properly as you add them).

 

I guess Plan B would be to make a xEdit script that checks the AA list and re-sorts it to make sure human AAs always end up at the very bottom of the list (to be run on any plugin you edit after going through CK), but I dunno how hard that would actually be and whether just sorting things properly manually would simply be easier.

Link to comment
4 hours ago, AreeSoothsayer said:

Also do you plan to make the wolf type actual mesh and not armors that fit over the body. x..x Really annoying having my girls legs get stripped down to human.

If you're talking about the Lupine digi legs being replaced with human ones when equipping any torso outfit, that's Bethesda's fault for making the feet/legs part of the body instead of a separate part like in Skyrim. I have no idea what you mean by "an actual mesh" since it is by definition a 3D mesh already.

Link to comment
38 minutes ago, AreeSoothsayer said:

actual body mesh.

It actually is so already so I still don't understand what you mean.

 

Quote

Then I can use the Fomod to choose legs on installation and have all wolves with them.

If you just want all Lupines (or Lykaios or whatever the race in question is) to have the custom digi legs body, you can simply edit the RACE record in the plugin so it uses the Digi naked skin as its default instead of the standard/human one.

Link to comment

What do we think about hiding the ears under helmets? FO4 doesn't have an ear slot that I see, so I'd have to use the hair slot or something. Be too bad to lose them under the soft headgear, but they're kinda silly poking out from under the helmets. Or maybe steal one of the little used slots, like 54-58?

 

 

Link to comment
41 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

What do we think about hiding the ears under helmets? FO4 doesn't have an ear slot that I see, so I'd have to use the hair slot or something. Be too bad to lose them under the soft headgear, but they're kinda silly poking out from under the helmets.

Ideally it'd be cool to have either ear holes or ear "guards" on the helmet meshes so you don't have the ears clipping through (for example I did that for the custom Selachii-fit headgear from Far Harbor, as well as a custom tacticool outfit mod I'm working on).

 

That being said, I see how that would fall somewhere between "doable but a pain in the dick" and "absolutely impossible" depending on the mesh in question, and the only "shortcut" I can think of would be to make a "generic" ear cover for each race and then edit the UV map so it picks up a fitting(ish) texture from whatever helmet you're currently editing (which is actually what I did for those two helmets I mentioned). So that's probably a no-go.

 

I don't like them magically disappearing unless there's enough room under whatever they're wearing for them to simply be tucked comfortably underneath, so I'd vote "don't hide them". That's just me, though.

 

Quote

Or maybe steal one of the little used slots, like 54-58?

There's a lot of mod-added gear that use those slots so I would try to avoid taking them up as much as possible.

 

The only slot I see as a reasonable option would be slot 59 - Shield, because nobody uses it due to a bug. Whenever something is equipped in that slot, the PC will keep auto-blocking whenever you unsheathe a melee weapon or change between camera modes (1st->3rd and 3rd->1st). Possibly a leftover from the Shield slot/system being used in Skyrim for, well, shields, but there's no fix so people simply avoid using that slot.

 

If you can somehow assign the ears to the Shield segment (assuming there even is a Shield segment in the first place), and assuming you simply edit any helmet ArmorAddon that should hide the ears to add slot 59 to it, this might work. The AA having the slot tagged should hide the ears when equipped, and since that slot is only on the AA and not on the ARMA record itself (which is what seems to trigger the bug), in theory it should avoid the auto-blocking.

 

...it's probably better to simply leave them be and just not hide them under hats, though.

Link to comment
8 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

@Blaze69, you or anyone know what's up with the power armor? There's no mesh in any of the nifs, that I see. I'm wondering if there's some sort of framework mechanism that allows different meshes to fill the slot.

I assume that's the case seeing how PA works and how you equip and modify pieces in each frame and stuff, but I've never tinkered with PA so I can't really help there.

 

Due to characters in Power Armor actually being swapped to a different race to apply the new skeleton and anims to them, I doubt you'll be able to have race-specific helmets, but IIRC equipping a helmet hides the (N)PC's head mesh completely so you might be able to get away with simply finding the vanilla helmet nifs and directly replacing them with vague "beast-ish" ones that look large enough to fit nonhuman heads in them and call it a day.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

I don't like them magically disappearing unless there's enough room under whatever they're wearing for them to simply be tucked comfortably underneath, so I'd vote "don't hide them". That's just me, though.

Yeah, I'm thinking particularly things like the hazmat suits where (1) you don't want your ears poking out and (2) there's enough room inside to plausibly claim there's an ear under there.

 

That doesn't deal with the horns, tho.

Link to comment
11 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

It actually is so already so I still don't understand what you mean.

 

If you just want all Lupines (or Lykaios or whatever the race in question is) to have the custom digi legs body, you can simply edit the RACE record in the plugin so it uses the Digi naked skin as its default instead of the standard/human one.

I'm not sure what you mean, the only place I can find the skins are in the Armor Addon part.

 

Edit: When I made my Lupine version of Captives I used the WNAM - Skin for each one to give them the Digi legs. Any mod that stripped my character or the Settlers would strip their legs down to human with lupine textures.

 

 

Clipboard02.jpg

Link to comment
3 hours ago, AreeSoothsayer said:

I'm not sure what you mean, the only place I can find the skins are in the Armor Addon part.

Untitled.jpg

 

Change that record to whatever skin you want (DigiFull, DigiPartial or Planti).

Link to comment
7 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Yeah, I'm thinking particularly things like the hazmat suits where (1) you don't want your ears poking out and (2) there's enough room inside to plausibly claim there's an ear under there.

In those specific cases I get the feeling you could simply get away with adding the "FaceGen Head" slot to either the ARMO or the AAs so the whole head is hidden, which means no headparts will be visible at all (so no ears or horns or hairs or whatever). Don't think there's any vanilla item with glass/transparency so you don't actually need to have the head underneath full-face-covering items (unless the neck itself is visible, but that's not the case with hazmat suits).

 

Quote

That doesn't deal with the horns, tho.

Honestly any headgear made or designed for humans simply won't work/look right on anthros with ears or head stuff like horns without quite some work, that's just an unfortunate fact. I'd say "leave them be" as well because I don't think horns magically being hidden makes sense either. For hair you can pretend it's tucked underneath, but horns are solid.

 

Most you could do would be making horn-holes for the Cervid versions of the helmets (don't think there's any other race that's meant to have those?), but that would require all horns to come out of the exact same spots and have roughly the same(ish) girth, and would obviously need the hat/headgear/helmet meshes to be edited for that in the first place.

 

There's also the thing where in theory that'd turn ballistic helmets into bump ones due to the holes but it's not like realism is a thing with FO4's vanilla gear (oversized cartoony """""armor""""" pieces, anyone?).

Link to comment

There are the flight helmets, which have transparent visors. Of course you might be able to see in well enough to see the missing ears. I wonder if there's something to be done with the faceBones system, where they push the ears around in some way.

 

I can't think of a way to handle the horns either, so meh.

Link to comment

Apropos, getting the canine feet in game: 

 

Spoiler

image.png

 

Based on the bodytalk body, with all their morphs incorporated and blended into the new feet as needed. 

 

I'm actually thinking it might be fun to use some of the BT morphs--a skinny one for foxes, deer, and cheetah, muscular for hyenas and horses, athletic for wolves. No requirement to use the same body for everybody.

 

BTW--My tri morphs import into OS just fine but I haven't been able to get them to work in game. I think it's because I don't really have a clue how to use LooksMenu but maybe there's an issue. Anybody want to test?

 

Edit: With special cases, like the mayor of Diamond City, but who gets a fat body cuz he's a sleaze and is battening on his city.

 

Edit again: Except I suppose that would require special body armor for everybody, so yeah, not gonna happen.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. For more information, see our Privacy Policy & Terms of Use