Modding with CK - Noob questions

[CaptainJ03]

I've got the Creation Kit up and running, and am able to do some basics.

I use the tutorial at creationkit.com as a reference, but some questions aren't answerde there.

If you know a better tutorial, I'll gladly take the hint.

 

My very unique mod idea was to build my own lightweigt Player Home. The ones I found were either tiny or huge, but I just want a house with a jail cell, and room to stay for two followers. I've chosen cell (2,-3) near Whiterun, put a house slapbang in the middle and spent the first hour to get the height right for the doors.

 

And here's my first question: How do I get rid of the grass? (see picture)

I thought, I can double-click through the plants in the Cell View window and delete the stuff that's growing in the doorways - but it seems that this grass is attached to something else.

 

2nd question:

Is there some searchable index of the stuff inside the kit? I'd love to have some chains dangling from a beam, but *chain* gives no result.

 

3) the house is still floating above the ground, but I cannot go further down because of the doors. Where do I find bits of landscape to shape the surrounding hill?

 

TIA,

Joe.

 

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

You have to edit the landscape.

It is not very complex.

 

 

[HexBolt8]

58 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

Is there some searchable index of the stuff inside the kit? I'd love to have some chains dangling from a beam, but *chain* gives no result.

The results are filtered by the category that you have selected.  If you're unsure of the type, you can select All at the bottom, but it's much easier to sort through the results if you know the type, such as Static.  I think ShipAnchorChain01 is what you're looking for.  Tip:  You don't need asterisks at the start and end of your filter string; use them only if you're skipping something in the middle (as in ship*chain).

[̖̪.]

 

2 hours ago, CPU said:

You have to edit the landscape.

It is not very complex.

 

Wow... 480p video xD not filling entire screen... ( Black borders )

 thats one of the worse if not THE worst CK video i ever seen xD

 

 

 

For land height:

1) in CK click H key to enter Landscape tool

2) You can grab and move land Up/Down... that should be enough

 

For grass:

1) again click H, unless u still have Landscape tool open

2) Hold CTRL and right click terrain to copy Land texture

3) change texture from list u have in Landscape Tool to texture that says "No Grass"

 

 

but tbh. its not worth to do... other mod can simply overwrite ur changes...

 if u use Whiterun areas there is rly high chance that other mod will overwrite it ;x...

[CaptainJ03]

@CPU Thank you. A 480p tutorial with heavy american accent, not easy to follow... I'll try to get into that when I find the time.

 

@HexBolt8 Thanks a lot! It's your fault, by the way. Mistress telling me that I have to sleep in the cage when I don't behave in her home made me want to do this.

Didn't realise that my choice of type limits the results, although it seems logic.

[HexBolt8]

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

A 480p tutorial

The important info is in the page text (if you click "Show More").

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

It's your fault, by the way.

It's good to be evil.  ?  If you just want a cage and few decorations, it would be much easier to modify an existing house mod.  You're going to have fun when you discover that you need navigation meshes, though there are tutorials for that, too.

Edited July 26, 2021 by HexBolt8

[CaptainJ03]

2 hours ago, -̒̈́̕?̖̪̼?̒̈́̕??̒̈́̕?- said:

For grass:

1) again click H, unless u still have Landscape tool open

2) Hold CTRL and right click terrain to copy Land texture

3) change texture from list u have in Landscape Tool to texture that says "No Grass"

 

 

but tbh. its not worth to do... other mod can simply overwrite ur changes...

 if u use Whiterun areas there is rly high chance that other mod will overwrite it ;x...

Thank you! The tricky bit with this was, that the change from grass to non-grass isn't shown in the Render Window. I deleted much more grass than I wanted.

...now to find the paving stones...

 

About Whiterun vicinity - I checked the spot with the few mods I care to install. It's far enough from Laura's Bondage Shop, and mostly empty concerning the vanilla game, so that's okay for me. I don't expect anyone else to ever see this mod.

 

1 hour ago, HexBolt8 said:

If you just want a cage and few decorations, it would be much easier to modify an existing house mod.  You're going to have fun when you discover that you need navigation meshes, though there are tutorials for that, too.

For the inside I took the Drunken Huntsman, and learning how to do the navmesh is something I either grow with the challenge or go mad. ?

[̖̪.]

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

that the change from grass to non-grass isn't shown in the Render Window.

 

Skyrim can render only up to 6 Terrain textures at time 

 If there is more than 6 Textures Skyrim will refuse to continue rendering 

 

1) Open Landscape tool ( and keep it open )

2) go to cell where u have Terrain Bug 

3) Click I on Your keyboard 

( Click it to make it bigger )

 

You will see Window like this ( on Left side with title "Land At < name > " )

In that window You can see what textures Your current terrain is Using

 

if there is more than 6 Textures delete dexture with smallest % ratio

Creation Kit is not deleting Terrain Textures even if there is 0% of this Texture, so u have to do it manualy

 

 

Its common bug when You edit Vanilla World or other locations made by other ppl.

 

 

//Edit:

About Navmesh... You can build that manualy rly quickly or use Creation Kit Navmesh Generator...

but using Generator cause Crash almost every time... and Manualy builded Navmesh is usualy much better...

 

Making navmesh is simple

1) Create 3 points

2) Select them

3) Push "A" key to connect them together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

//Edit2:

And btw. Navmesh don't have to be pixel perfect, it need to be at least "close" to what it should be...

Important is to make it where NPC can go, and dont make it where they can't go... 

 

but if its not 100% perfect, they will find way anywaa

Edited July 26, 2021 by -̒̈́̕?̖̪̼?̒̈́̕??̒̈́̕?-

[CaptainJ03]

Okay, Navmesh. Going mad.

I deleted the part where I put the house. Easy.

Created some new triangles to get the shape - more or less. It's sufficient that my follower doesn't bump into the walls.

But - trying to finalize it, I get the error message, that the Teleport Marker for my main door is not sitting on a navmesh. This results in a green triangle, and I have no idea how to deal with that. I can confirm that my follower spawn somewhere else and comes runnig to me from the backside of the house (where I did not put any marker)...

 

Spoiler

 

[Guest]

The navmesh should not be just a single triangle. Should be an "area" (made by triangles) where NPCs can walk over.

Technically all the triangles outside the house should be part of the navmesh.

And reacheable from the other cells/navigationpoints.

[Scrab]

..also you dont delete existing navmesh, you extend the existing one or if isnt possible (e.g. because you want/need/have to merge different mesh areas together or the existing navmesh is "too far away" from what you want to do) you move the existing navmesh under the ground, very, very far down so you can barely see it anymore (not doing this will cause ctds) to avoid ctds in case another mod edits the same area you do (if you dont do it it may cause ctds if you do it wrong it will cause ctds)

Depending on the Area its more or less likely that thats an issue but there are millions of mods, so you never know

[CaptainJ03]

5 minutes ago, CPU said:

The navmesh should not be just a single triangle. Should be an "area" (made by triangles) where NPCs can walk over.

Technically all the triangles outside the house should be part of the navmesh.

And reacheable from the other cells/navigationpoints.

Thanks! There is a whole bunch a triangles, and as far as I (human) can see, they are all connected, no yellow (border?) lines left inbetween.

But the machine tells me, that there is an error in placing the Tardis... pardon, teleport box. It was there before I started editing the Navmesh, and to my eye it looks as if it's still standing right in the middle of some of those triangles. And one is green. *sigh*

[CaptainJ03]

1 minute ago, Scrab said:

..also you dont delete existing navmesh, you extend the existing one or if isnt possible (e.g. because you want/need/have to merge different mesh areas together or the existing navmesh is "too far away" from what you want to do) you move the existing navmesh under the ground, very, very far down so you can barely see it anymore (not doing this will cause ctds) to avoid ctds in case another mod edits the same area you do (if you dont do it it may cause ctds if you do it wrong it will cause ctds)

Depending on the Area its more or less likely that thats an issue but there are millions of mods, so you never know

I don't delete existign navmesh? Good to know, and even better I discared all my changes and concentrated on the indoors for now.

How do I move the dots (?) vertically? Half of my Navmesh is already below ground because I edited the landscape a tiny bit.

The warning occurs in the CK, with nothing more than skyrim.esm and joeshouse.esp loaded.

[Scrab]

2 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

no yellow (border?) lines left inbetween.

The "yellow borders" show you the cell edges. Navmesh cant cross cell boundaries, so the game will instead make those yellow lines to link up two cell's navmesh with each other. If they arent there, thats a good thing for you because they can be very annoying to work with  

In general when those yellow borders come into play: Dont change them. There should always be the same number of yellow lines connected to each other and ideally the same triangles should be linked up together; if you change that NPC may have issues crossing those borders, just getting stuck and AFKn on that border for eternity (I learned that the hard way and trust me, you dont wanna learn it the hard way)

 

5 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

still standing right in the middle of some of those triangles. And one is green. *sigh*

the green one is showing you a door. NPC dont actually use doors like the player do, instead they move into one of those green ones which are basically NPC doors. There should be 1 green field for every yellow (teleport) marker in your world - linked up to each other. If that isnt the case, your navmesh is broken or unfinished or the yellow marker is placed out of reach of navmesh

Without the green field, NPC cant use the door

[Scrab]

7 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

How do I move the dots (?) vertically? Half of my Navmesh is already below ground because I edited the landscape a tiny bit.

Ctrl + Z grabs the vertices (dots) and locks them to the Z-Axis, if you then move your mouse up or down, itll move the vertices up or down, and only up or down

 

7 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

The warning occurs in the CK, with nothing more than skyrim.esm and joeshouse.esp loaded

idk about warnings, in the SE CK (with patch) I got a second window in the background of the CK where they are all displayed and ready to be ignored

Most of those are false positive, they can be really useful but most of them arent - and are far off from your working area too (there are areas about DLC1  Quests n stuff, stuff you dont do anything with)

 

The one displayed specifically for your mod might be worth looking into but depending on the size & kind of mod you write, there will be false positives too

For example, those are Errors I got in the CK about Yamete:

MAGIC: Magic Item (0505024D) 'Yam_CalmCloakCLOAK' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
MAGIC: Magic Item (0515EB60) 'Yam_AllianceArenaCLOAK' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
MAGIC: Magic Item (051C9073) 'Yam_ReapersMercyCLOAK' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
MAGIC: Magic Item (052B6FA3) 'Yam_BleedoutMark0_Interface_SPELL' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
MAGIC: Magic Item (052C11B7) 'Yam_BleedoutMark3_Interface_SPELL' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
MAGIC: Magic Item (052D04C6) 'Yam_BleedoutMark2_Interface_SPELL' is AIMED but has no Magic Effects with Projectiles assigned.
 

This one here warns me that some of my Spells dont have a visual Effect attached to them - are "invisible" in Game, but I want them to be invisible so this report is basically a false positive in this specific instance. There are also other reports which can be really useful such as "Quest ABC has an non-optional Alias forced to NONE, the Quest can never start" or something like that. Those Errors are really helpful, so looking into that can be useful sometimes but 90% of the errors there are just there to be ignored

Edited July 27, 2021 by Scrab

[CaptainJ03]

@Scrab thank you for your replies to the Navmesh, I'm letting that lie until I've finished the rest.

 

Two more noob questions. Rather than learning things the hard way, I better ask.

 

1) Locks and Keys

I've placed a strongbox and some doors, I've found the tab where I can set the lock difficulty. There's a tickbox for "use key" and a dropdown list of a plethora of existing keys - but how do I make my own key?

//Edit: okay, found it. Take a key, change the ID, get asked to create a new form.

 

2) Contents of Boxes

I want to place some lockpics (or the key) inside a chest/box/drawers - whatever. The tutorial talks about loot and levelled lists, but silly me was unable to find an interface where I can put stuff inside.

 

3) Markers for Crafting Stations

I've found and put an Alchemy Lab and Encanting Table on top of a counter to have that, but not take up too much space. Had to reduce the size to 80% so that it fits on a normal counter. Now in the animation that shows in the background places me too high off the ground - even without wearing High Heels. Can I move the marker vertically, while leaving it's visual part where it is? Haven't seen my follower sandbox there, so maybe I'm just stuck with a case of perfectionism...

//Edit: yup, my follower is floating too. ?

 

//Edit:

4) Change House's Owner?

I realised that my follower should change her attire to her Home Outfit when we're home - obviously my house isn't mine yet.

Where the heck would I change that?

 

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by CaptainJ03

[Scrab]

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

//Edit: okay, found it. Take a key, change the ID, get asked to create a new form.

Alternatively you can RMB an object and select "Duplicate" or in the Object Window on the Tree View click on the Object you want to create, click on an empty row and click "New"

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

2) Contents of Boxes

I want to place some lockpics (or the key) inside a chest/box/drawers - whatever. The tutorial talks about loot and levelled lists, but silly me was unable to find an interface where I can put stuff inside.

When you have a Container in the Object Window, double click it and just drag'n'drop things in there, you can also use the interface of that window at the bottom below the item list to add items or set the amount on how often that Item is in there

Leveled Items are basically little RNG Boxes that calculate their content based on lv and rng and blah. Getting into them is a whole other topic but they basically work the same way as Containers but cant be placed in the world and thus need a real container to represent them

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

Can I move the marker vertically, while leaving it's visual part where it is?

No, the Marker on Furniture is hard linked to that Furniture - Position and all

The Alchemy & Enchanting Tables that dont have their own "foot" to stand on, are made specifically for regular tables (e.g. CommonTable01) and line up completely fine with that. If you want to make it work with something else you will have to put a custom floor or something there or create a new Crafting Table with the Marker being ligned up differently (I dont hink you can do that twithin the CK and thus I go from being semi intelligent to utterly stupid and cant you help you there :< )

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

I realised that my follower should change her attire to her Home Outfit when we're home - obviously my house isn't mine yet.

Where the heck would I change that?

In the Cell Window, RMB a Cell and check ownership, set it to something that isnt you (none is "owned by everyone") once the Player is intended to own the place, use the Papyrus "SetActorOwner" Function in Papyrus (though idk how well that one works, I never had to do this kind of thing). In theory because a Cell can only be owned by 1 Faction or NPC at a time, this should remove the ownership from the previous owner

[CaptainJ03]

2 hours ago, Scrab said:

(Content of Boxes)

When you have a Container in the Object Window, double click it and just drag'n'drop things in there, you can also use the interface of that window at the bottom below the item list to add items or set the amount on how often that Item is in there

In the Object Window? Oh thank you Bethesda, never put anything where you'd expect it to be. And if you don't pay attention, every strongbox in the game now has a Cage Key and ten lockpicks inside...

 

2 hours ago, Scrab said:

No, the Marker on Furniture is hard linked to that Furniture - Position and all

The Alchemy & Enchanting Tables that dont have their own "foot" to stand on, are made specifically for regular tables (e.g. CommonTable01) and line up completely fine with that.

Okay, I feared as much. So I'll just take a sledgehammer and lower the counter a bit.

 

2 hours ago, Scrab said:

In the Cell Window, RMB a Cell and check ownership, set it to something that isnt you (none is "owned by everyone") once the Player is intended to own the place, use the Papyrus "SetActorOwner" Function in Papyrus (though idk how well that one works, I never had to do this kind of thing). In theory because a Cell can only be owned by 1 Faction or NPC at a time, this should remove the ownership from the previous owner

Uh, that's a lot more complicated than I'd hoped (I guess that's where you plainly recognise me as a noob)

 

I tried to set the Owner to be the player, but as I used the template for the Drunken Huntsman, that part is greyed out.

Tested it with the aaaMarkers cell from the tutorial, was able to set the owner to be the player. Put in some floor boards, simple walls and a bedroll, coc'd inside. Nope, not my home, Mistress doesn't take her armour off and I don't get the Well Rested bonus. There must be more to it.

I have no idea how to do anything with Papyrus...

 

Despite all my nagging and grumbling: Thanks a lot!

[Scrab]

43 minutes ago, CaptainJ03 said:

I used the template for the Drunken Huntsman, that part is greyed out.

A Cell can only be owned by either one Actor or one Faction

If the Cell is owned by one, the other is greyed out and to unlock the Collection to swap from Faction owned to Actor owned you need to set the Faction to none or vice versa

[CaptainJ03]

2 hours ago, Scrab said:

A Cell can only be owned by either one Actor or one Faction

If the Cell is owned by one, the other is greyed out and to unlock the Collection to swap from Faction owned to Actor owned you need to set the Faction to none or vice versa

Thank you, that worked. As soon as I set the faction to none, I can set the owner to Player. Didn't change anything useful, but at least it worked. *sigh*

 

Spent some time fiddling with the crafting stations - rezising seems to be a really bad idea. I managed to get them on the counter, where they take more space than I'd like, but it's still better than having no stations...

Edited July 28, 2021 by CaptainJ03

[CaptainJ03]

Sooo, some days later. Done with navmeshing - there's a nice button "Balance for Optimization" that does funny, useful things.

I had a dozen warning about flipped triangles... whut?! how can they have an upside down orientation where I'm unable to manipulate that?

But at last it worked.

 

still no progress with making this house a home, or getting the Well Rested bonus.

 

On to scripting. Found Darkfox127 on youtube, watching and trying to understand that will take a while.

But a question arises nontheless: When I try to add a "new script" I get a zillion warnings about... something, missing masters I guess. CK tries to load every script in the directory, even though I only have skyrim.esm and my esp loaded? How do other people even get things done?! (That ominous "Yes to all" Button doesn't exist since Win98)

 

[Scrab]

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

still no progress with making this house a home, or getting the Well Rested bonus.

You should get the well rested bonus when sleeping in a bed you own in a house you own. Doubleclick the Bed Object and move to "Ownership" and from there, select Player

Beds and Furniture in general are a bit special when it comes to Ownership; they dont inherit it from the Cell

 

If you want a Bed to be "owned" and properly used by the NPC (or the Player) you need to specifically set the Ownership of that Furniture to belong to that specific NPC/Faction. The Player can use Beds that arent owned by anyone but NPC usually dont use Beds that they dont own on their own (read: unless forced)

Other Furniture behaves similar but the restriction there is reversed: NPC use all Furniture unless the ones that are owned by another NPC. Meaning if you got 2 NPC A and B and you have a Chair that is owned by NPC A, NPC B will never use that chair. Though if you set the Ownership to none, both NPC will be allowed to use it. I believe the Player is ignoring this ownership flag for every furniture except Beds

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

I get a zillion warnings about... something,

You should look on a tutorial on how to properly setup the CK, there should be a setting somewhere to have all errors displayed in an extra window that you can ignore (not seperated from the CK like in SE with fixes but still an extra Window that you can just move to the side (or minimize)). Almost all of those errors are meaningless for you

The trianlg error might also disappear that way, not sure what flipped triangles are tbh, as long as your triangles arent overlapping each other you should be fine

[CaptainJ03]

3 hours ago, Scrab said:

You should get the well rested bonus when sleeping in a bed you own in a house you own. Doubleclick the Bed Object and move to "Ownership" and from there, select Player

Yes, I tried that, and the other option I found, setting the faction to PlayerOwnsBed - nothing helped. The house is mine too. Nüscht.

 

3 hours ago, Scrab said:

You should look on a tutorial on how to properly setup the CK, there should be a setting somewhere to have all errors displayed in an extra window that you can ignore (not seperated from the CK like in SE with fixes but still an extra Window that you can just move to the side (or minimize)). Almost all of those errors are meaningless for you

Thank you! That's the SkyrimEditor.ini, and the setting is bBlockMessageBoxes=1 under [Messages] - now it starts without all that fuss ?

[CaptainJ03]

Sooo, started scripting.

 

I don't like dungeons where you are the first to enter in ages, and all braziers, lamps and torches are burning brightly. So I added a pull chain near the fireplace to get the fire burning and light the room.

Having a pull chain to open the smoke flap (or whatever that's called) in the chimney is okay, but having a switch to light candles feels odd.

So I took a candle, added a OnActivate script - but as it seems I cannot activate a candle. What am I missing?

 

Next question.

I managed to close and lock the cell door or cage gate when I go to sleep in that bed/bedroll.

Now I have the problem, that the bedroll in the cage is 'visible' (activate-able if that word exists) through the bars or the gate. So the door locks with me outside, which isn't what I want. I've seen mods where the PC is walked by the mod's AI to some place, but I have no idea where I would even start looking how to move my character...

[Scrab]

On 7/30/2021 at 9:33 PM, CaptainJ03 said:

nothing helped

Thats weird. I actually slept in the bed of Helgen Inn the other day and thats really just a regular player owned bed and did get the well rested bonus there

Sure you dont have something else going into the way there?

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

What am I missing?

Youre missing that the Candle isnt an Activator, yes

Cant activate things that arent activators (or Furniture). The clean way of doing this would be creating a new Activator that upon activation changes states from a not burning candle to a burning one & vice versa. But Im not an artist so i cannot tell you how to do that

My uncapable self would create a Triggerbox, a new one and when doubleclicking at the object you just created, you want to go to "Primitives" and select "Player Activition" there. That thing will then be clickable by the Player ingame and on that triggerbox you want to attach an "OnActivate" Script that enables or disables the candle. Then at the same very spot you want to create another candle that is lighten up and set the first candle as an Enable Parent, make sure that "Pop to" checkbox is clicked so it doesnt fade in but will be replaced in the very same frame the other candle is being disabled

 

1 hour ago, CaptainJ03 said:

Next question

Thats usually done through Scenes where in the start script there is a "Game.SetPlayerAIDriven(true)" and in the end fragment is a "Game.SetPlayerAIDriven(false)" or however the scene needs to time things

 

Another option would be to block the Activation of the Bedroll until the Player entered the cell themselves, doing so requires yet another triggerbox that you fill the cell with an use a Script on that, which OnTriggerEnter() will allow activation and on leave disable activation again. The Bedroll itself should probably have a script with OnCellAttach that blocks activition

 

A 3rd option, probabvly the easiest one, would be  to add a Script to your Bedroll and OnActivate() registers for Sleep and OnSleepStart() moves the player onto itself

Edited August 2, 2021 by Scrab