Miscellaneous Nifs, where do they go?

[NekoNeko76]

Having only experience with SSE, I am finding FO4   npc  creation alot different. There are nifs  that were not present in SSE. Neck nif, don't know where that goes, female eye AO know where it goes but can't seem to find correct textures? shows as purple with no texture but I link eye texture it ends up looking like double eye. Then there's various facebone nifs that I understand tell the game where equipment go and or is positioned. Currently companion has invisible neck because I do not know where neck nif is supposed to go. I have looked at other npc's but I don't see a neck nif in their head parts or additional head parts.

[South8028]

the head is complicated. Not only because it consists of parts, but there are dozens of heads in the game. Each facegen morph required a separate head, and somehow all the heads were loaded into the game at the same time. All these difficulties are probably caused by the vanilla low poly body. The 4 weight per vertex limit combined with the low poly head forced the developers to create some sort of monster out of hundreds of heads and their parts instead of the simpler and more advanced solution of a high poly head with all the bones and morphs in one mesh.

[NekoNeko76]

FO4 is definitely a monster compared to SSE, hate to think what  Starfails going to be like. Figured out where the neck nif goes even though I don't see a neck nif listed in vanilla npc additional head parts list. Slowly figure out where the other extra nifs go but for now leaving them off as they will only show up as purple since there are no textures I see that associates with them (properly). Only thing I can think of is they're supposed to be invisible. Now I have to solve her mouth (teeth) poking out her chin. FYI companion is 2B  so she is using the head from a 2B follower I dl'd off of Arca I'm attempting make her more a normal companion other than just going huh? every time you click her. I also have figure out why her clothing meshes won't show the textures they are assigned amongst other things lol.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Edited February 15, 2024 by NekoNeko76
grammar

[South8028]

All head parts are located in the faceParts folder. They are not invisible. They have textures and materials. All head parts work not with the skeleton.nif bones, but with the skeleton_faceBones and skeleton_female_facebones .nif bones. I myself don’t know exactly how these bones work. All heads are in characterassets>morphs because the game's facegen data is loaded from the faceemotion states under havok. The character has a neutral faceemotion by default, but during the execution of animations (FaceEmotion annotations), these states are constantly changing, applying morphs from the morphs folder. Probably no one knows how exactly these morphs are loaded and how they all work together.

[NekoNeko76]

I think the facebone nifs are for telling the game how something attaches to the head or used for that ie: sunglasses etc. Figured out how to change the bgsm associated with nifs. Original mod her mouth did move if I remember right, but now it does not so I will have to figure out what's missing.  She is basically almost done being built or rather rebuilt. Then I'll probably do A2 and others. Need to do her swords other wise her outfit is showing up correctly on her. The problem I had was not understanding why the outfit textures were not showing even tho I had the correct dds file paths. I had to learn how to change the bgsm. As for the AO nifs, still no idea how those work or where they go. Learning process.

Edited February 15, 2024 by NekoNeko76
Added Screenshots

[South8028]

no, the bones of the facenones most likely control the face. And morphs of facial parts, and the mfg system. Clothes (glasses, hats, etc.) are simply attached to the bone in the skeleton.nif. As a rule, such clothes, or animObj for the head, are attached to one bone, have weight = 1 (painted in red). Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly how the facial bones are controlled. I know a lot about body bones and havok animations in the game. But no one has yet written a good manual about the head (in fact, I haven’t found a single manual about the head). You can try to assemble the head in os by loading skeleton_female_facebones .nif instead of skeleton.nif. I haven't tried... But it's an option.

[NekoNeko76]

I might have to pick apart an actual follower but I thought I saw something on piper having to do with expressions or face animations but heck if I can remember where that was. Other extra nifs I'll have to figure out is eye shadow, eye wetness, mouth shadow to name 3 besides face bones. I was thinking of creating some sort of template for others to use but I need to figure out those other nifs. 

 

Thanks for replying.

[NekoNeko76]

Perhaps I should use an appearance / preset mod for a json, that should make them have animated mouths considering all I am trying to do is improve the companion aspect of them having no dialogue prompts for trade etc? 

[South8028]

I'm happy to help, but I don't know, unfortunately. I create the faces of my characters simply in the game, in the looks menu. As far as I've heard, the pre-installed head cannot be assembled using third-party methods. Only in ck, in the character window and in the race settings. I also don’t know exactly how dialogue is implemented in the game. Try asking questions on the nexus Creation Kit and Modders forum. There are a lot of guys there who are knowledgeable about scripts and creation kits.