Armor HOWTO

[Hakuna_Matata]

Can someone point me to documentation explaining how armor actually works visually in Skyrim?

 

Here's my journey so far (feel free to skip):

I got devious cursed loot, but the silk dress didn't work well with my body mod, so I found it in Bodyslide, opened it in Outfit Studio, removed the CBBE body in it and loaded the 3BA model as reference body. Made sure the bones are used and the sliders still work. Rebuilt the outfit.

I have been having trouble through various iterations of this process, like there being visible gaps in third person. The forearms and calves didn't render, basically.

Now I got as far as having calves and forearms in third person, but in first person I see no forearms.

I used sseedit to edit the armature record so the 1st person model is the same as the 3rd person model, but that did not help.

 

I compared the records to an armor that displays properly in game in both 1st and 3rd person and I am seeing the same flags, so I think it may have something to do with the NIF of the dress?

 

How does the game decide what parts of the reference body to render?

 

Also note that if I swing a sword or cast a spell to extend the arms more in first person, I can see that the arms themselves are there but a big part between the arm and the hand is invisible.

Particularly puzzling to me is that that part does not end on a circle, it looks more like a jagged end. How can that be? Is maybe something wrong with a texture somewhere?

 

I need a better understanding of how the parts play together, I think.

If I remove the dress, the arms show up right with no gaps in sight.

 

Can anyone help?

 

EDIT: BTW: I "fixed" it now by putting Armor\Draugr\1stPersonDraugrArmorFemale_1.nif as 1st person female model. I'd really understand what the heck is going on here.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Hakuna_Matata