Missing heads on some dunmer guards in Project AHO

[Jotasran]

But not all.  I looked to see what mods are overwriting, but don't see anything.  Any ideas on how to track this down?  I'm using vortex. 

Edited January 31, 2023 by Jotasran

[traison]

...and if you do:

prid 516a86d6
unequipitem 51b20649

 

What happens?

[Jotasran]

The head magically appears.  So the helmet is invisible.

 

In xEdit... the only 51b20649 is "Morag Tong Light Helm" which comes from dwarfsphere.esp.  Nothing overwrites it.  I reinstalled before.

 

I may have optimized it as some time but since realize that optimizing nifs en masse is bad. Reinstalling the mod resets the nif to its original state... no?

Edited February 1, 2023 by Jotasran

[Jotasran]

OK.  I completely unistalled it (including deleteing the archive) and reinstalled... still the same problem.

 

Edit:  I'm completely confused.  There is no 61b20649 in xEdit.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Jotasran

[Jotasran]

Stupid ADD. 

 

I found it in xEdit.  the mesh is HelmetGND.nif.  Form ID 51B20649.  EditorID DwaSpArm04Helmet.

 

Edit:  I searched for the nif in Notepad++ and it came up with a number of mods.  I reinstalled them all (ensuring LO stayed the same with Wyrebash).  Still the same issue.  Dont know at all where to go from here.

 

Edit:  I found a nif with the same name in zzjay's clothing mod.  I disabled the mod but it didn't change anything. 

 

Edit:  I believe BD Armors is somehow responsible.  The armor in DCL Dragonborn is being overwritten by BD.  When I disable, the helmet shows up. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Jotasran

[traison]

GND typically refers to the mesh used when the item is in the world, as in, dropped on the ground. You're on the right track, just messing with the wrong nif. If you need help locating it, upload the esp/esl/esm file at mod index 0x51 and I'll take a look at it. Problem is still in the nif most likely but I can get you the path from the plugin.

[Jotasran]

OK.  I'll do that when I get home tonight... thanks.

 

Edit:  This is the nexus link to the mod.  I didn't make any changes to it..   https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32518

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Jotasran

[traison]

While 1 GiB isn't a problem for me, I'd hate to waste someone else's money downloading that for what is likely a 10 KiB esp file. Doubt you're in that much of a hurry anyways. ?

[Jotasran]

Downloaded at work... yeah... didn't realize how big it was. 

BD Armor and clothes replacer.esp

[traison]

That is an esl, it is not the source of your helmet. Esl form ids start with FF, your helmet starts with 51. Also, DwaSpArm04Helmet is not found in this esl.

[Jotasran]

There is a ton I don't understand about the way this is set up... obviously.  Are you looking for the nif itself?  There is that .esp, a .bsa file, and folders with meshes, bodyslide, textures, "pre-build" and a Fomod folder (assuming that's what tells Vortex how to install?). 

 

Looking in meshes/dlc02/armor/chitinlight/, I see helmet nifs. 

 

Hopefully I'm right in assuming you are looking for these...

helmet_0.nif helmet_1.nif helmetarg_0.nif helmetarg_1.nif helmetkha_0.nif helmetkha_1.nif

[traison]

The first 2 numbers of a formid is the mod load order index. Your mod manager will know what 0x51 is. It couldn't have been BD Armor and clothes replacer, because despite being named esp, it was in fact an esl and those work differently. I also don't know where you got that plugin name from, as it seemed like you found the correct mod and form earlier:

Quote

the only 51b20649 is "Morag Tong Light Helm" which comes from dwarfsphere.esp

 

Anyhow, I checked helmet_1.nif and as far as I can see there's nothing obvious wrong with this. The arg and kha variants are for beasts I assume, and the NPC in question (based on the name) seems to be "human".

 

I have a feeling these are still the wrong nifs/plugins, but it's hard to tell from here since I can't see your setup. ?

[Jotasran]

14 minutes ago, traison said:

I also don't know where you got that plugin name from, as it seemed like you found the correct mod and form earlier

 

I put 51b20649 in xEdit and that's the only entry with that ID it found.  dwarfsphere.esp is the file name of Project AHO.  I'm not at my gaming pc but will look to see which one 51 is later tonight.  In addition to dwarfsphere, there was a fixes and improvements patch.  For some reason, disabling BD fixed the issue, but beyond that I don't necessarily know that it was the problem. 

Dwarfsphere.esp DwarfsphereImprovedPatch.esp

[traison]

 [05] Dwarfsphere.esp (3365C7A4) \ Armor \ 05B20649 <DwaSpArm04Helmet>

 [05] Dwarfsphere.esp (3365C7A4) \ Armor Addon \ 05B20641 <DwaSpArm04HelmetAA>

 

Meshes from ARMA record:

DLC02\Armor\ChitinLight\M\Helmet_1.nif

DLC02\Armor\ChitinLight\F\Helmet_1.nif

 

With alternate textures:

DwarfSphere\Other\DwaSpArm04Helm.dds

DwarfSphere\Other\DwaSpArm04Helm_n.dds

 

So the things to check here then are:

1. Anything that overwrites the Helmet_*.nif meshes in both M and F directories of ChitinLight. Edit: If you only have one mod providing these files, they're still overwriting the vanilla meshes - so this is still a potential problem.
2. The alternate texture files. To test without them, it might be easist to just remove their MO2S records from the ARMA record. I doubt your issue is caused by a texture however.

Edited February 1, 2023 by traison

[Jotasran]

So how could deleting BD armor would make the helmet visible?  I believe DB does overwrite them  because both male and female have open face helmets with goggles as opposed to the vanilla ones.

 

I'll try removing the record on the textures and see what happens.

[Jotasran]

Deleted the textures from dwarfsphere... no effect.

 

I disabled the BD armor mod and the helmet is there. 

 

Edit:  I tried deleting the Helmet_0.nif, Helmet_1.nif, and Hemlet.tri from the vortex folder (I backed them up 1st).  It has no effect.  Is it possible to remove a nif from a mod so it defaults to vanilla?

 

Edit:  Looking at BD armor mod... ppl are posting about invisible issues there.  The mod author references this and state to play with load order.  That has no effect for me.  BD is a armor replacer of vanilla armors.  Dwarfsphes to the same that BD overwrites.  I don't really understand how BD would not replace the nif in some way since it replaces vanilla pieces with their own models somehow.  Obviously you know way more about this stuff but I'd like to understand that that works.  The thing is, BD only replaces vanilla... I have no other vanilla replacers (except maybe 3ba vanilla refits?.. but those should be overwritten by BD).  I see no mod conflicts in vortex, but vortex doesn't seem to show when a mod overwrites a vanilla mesh (at least not that I can see).  

Edited February 2, 2023 by Jotasran

[traison]

First of all, recognize that there's typically 2 load order lists. I don't know how vortex shows it but you usually sort plugins and mod files separately. So in this case you could for instance have a situation where dwarfsphere overwritesd BD's plugin changes, and BD overwrites dwarfsphere's meshes. Typically I would try to keep the order somewhat similar in both lists, but this is by no means a rule, nor is it possible in all cases.

 

Both dwarfsphere and BD overwrite the same vanilla models it seems. Whichever is last in the load order is the one that will win the conflict. If removing BD fixes the issue and it is lower in the load order list, then BD is the one that has broken meshes in it. If you want me to look at the BD mesh as well then send the same 2 meshes from the BD install:

 

DLC02\Armor\ChitinLight\M\Helmet_1.nif

DLC02\Armor\ChitinLight\F\Helmet_1.nif

 

The "quick fix" solution here will most likely be to delete the ChitinLight helmet meshes from the BD install directory, and redeploying in Vortex. Keep in mind that there's going to be *_0.nif mesh variants as well (so 4 files in total).

[Jotasran]

These are nifs from BD. 

 

I attempted to get rid of the nifs before, but failed.  By "install folder", do you mean to go into the zip file I download from nexus and remove the nifs from there?  What I attempted to do was remove them from the vortex folder in appdata but it had no effect on the game.  The other thing that occurred to me is that I'm misunderstanding the "redeploy" process.  After deleting the nifs from the appdata folder, I closed down Vortex and restarted.  It looked like it was redeploying but didn't fix the issue.

 

If you can "fix" the nif, that would be the best option for me.... maybe let me know the basic process so I can do it myself should this occur again?  Your help on this is appreciated more than you know.

helmetarg_0.nif helmetarg_1.nif helmetkha_0.nif helmetkha_1.nif helmet_0.nif helmet_1.nif

[traison]

Fairly certain the equipment slots are wrong. Esp uses slot 30, nif is 131. There is no 131 option in the esp so, just need to figure out how to fix it. Typically esp and nif slots need to match but I've seen helmets in particular where this is not true, I just don't know what the 131 equivalent would be if that makes sense.

[traison]

Fixed.

 

Simply changed equipment slots in the esp to match those expected by the nif. BOD2 record in both the ARMA and ARMO records from whatever they were to:

31, 41, 42, 43

 

It's possible some of those slots are not needed. I simply used another mesh with the 131 equipment slot as a template. You can play around with the slots, or accept them as they are. Didn't seem to have any negative effects in my 5 second gameplay test. ?

Dwarfsphere.7z

[Jotasran]

Thanks

 

I will mess with this tonight when I get home. 

 

How do you determine what's "expected by the nif"?  Do you use nifskope?  I've heard of that but never messed with it beyond changing penis size for flower girls with sos light back when I used those mods.

[traison]

8 minutes ago, Jotasran said:

Do you use nifskope?

 

Yup.

[Jotasran]

Beautiful!  It worked perfectly.  Thanks

 

[Arcadia559900]

Same. No clue