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bodyslide - invisible outfits in game - general diagnosis

Fraying9981

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Fraying9981

Fraying9981

Posted
Posted (edited)

hi all,

 

looking for general tips to debug outfits being invisible in game.

 

Interestingly, this happened a lot more lately on an existing save. So it looks like some form of garbage accumulating somewhere?

 

Situation:

  • Mods A, B, C (independent authors): fresh installs. ran body slide with both build morphs/build batch boxes ticked. The outfits are displayed in BS. But all outfits are invisible in game. Mods are from independent authors so I have doubts they are ALL broken (but could be possible). All esl flagged.
  • I already have a Mo2 mod called bodyslide output where BS stuff is redirected. 
  • Nevertheless, idk why but over time I do get extra meshes above this BS output mod directly in the overwrite. I simply merge, I did it again this time, reran bodyslide afterwards, restarted the game but outfits were still invisible.
  • Obody 3ba user so I generally just leave zeroed sliders and batch run.
  • Strangely enough, for one specific mod (let's call it mod D): I had perhaps 2 outfits visible from that mod in game out of ~30. not sure why these 2 worked but not the others.
  • this save: ~1000 saves so far lvl 20.

 

Tried:

 

It seems to me there is a fight somewhere. but i barely know about meshes so not sure where to look for beyond overwrite/meshes.

 

Thanks in advance for your tips!

Edited by Fraying9981

IBAGadget

IBAGadget

Posted
Posted

Not an MO2 user, so not much help I can provide.

 

Invisible outfits are usually the result of the following:

 

Outfits not built in BS, or the files are not being put in the right place

Partition mismatch between the outfit Nif, ARMA, and ARMO records. Body Partition (slot) taken up by the outfit must match exactly between all three records. Nif partition can be checked easily in Outfit Studio, while ARMA and ARMO records will have to be checked using SSEEdit.

 

Additionally, you should know that all those mods are pirated and posted to that site without the original author's permission. Arca sourced mods are generally ok, as they are generally available to all, if hard to find and access, but anything that is not listed as having come from Arca was likely sourced from behind a paywall and uploaded without permission (stolen)

traison

traison

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Fraying9981 said:

looking for general tips to debug outfits being invisible in game.

 

Generally the mesh partitions should match the equipment slots in both the ARMO and ARMA records. Notable exceptions potentially being helmets and armors where extra partitions have been added to hide certain armor elements to avoid clipping. Think the Fallout PipBoy for instance that will hide the sleeve on certain armors, or certain Skyrim armors that hide necklaces because they have their own built-in ones (wench outfit).

 

5 hours ago, Fraying9981 said:

I already have a Mo2 mod called bodyslide output where BS stuff is redirected.

 

Remember that only NEW files are placed here. If a file already exists elsewhere, it won't be where you might expect it to be. I personally wouldn't recommend using this feature.

 

5 hours ago, Fraying9981 said:

sometimes zeroed sliders dont seem to be available for all outfit mods.

 

Zeroed Sliders is a preset just like any other; most likely provided by your body mod. And just like any preset it has outfit groups assigned to it. If the group an outfit belongs to hasn't been included in the Zeroed Sliders preset then it won't be available. In the end the only thing BodySlide cares about is the slider names, and thus you're free to mix-n-match UNP presets on a CBBE body, or in other words, add the outfit group to your Zeroed Sliders preset and you're back in business.

 

This has nothing to do with invisible outfits however.

 

5 hours ago, Fraying9981 said:

It seems to me there is a fight somewhere. but i barely know about meshes so not sure where to look for beyond overwrite/meshes.

 

ARMO and ARMA records are in xEdit. This is where the equipment slots are. Outfit Studio can show you the partitions. Remember to rebuild the outfit in BS after modifying it in OS or NifSkope.

 

2 hours ago, IBAGadget said:

Outfits not built in BS, or the files are not being put in the right place

 

Since it seems like Bethesda removed the red exclamation mark for missing meshes at some point (I haven't properly tested this) it is indeed possible invisible armor could be the result of a missing mesh (not a missing texture, that's different). More Informative Console can show you this easily.

 

2 hours ago, IBAGadget said:

Partition mismatch between the outfit Nif, ARMA, and ARMO records. Body Partition (slot) taken up by the outfit must match exactly between all three records.

 

Mismatches are fine but to keep things simple we should indeed start with a 1:1 setup. It's the overlaps/conflicts that cause invisible armor and armor parts. Equipment slot conflicts cause parts to get unequipped when something else is equipped, like a helmet removing your gloves when equipped. Partition conflicts will hide your gloves but leave them marked as equipped in the Inventory menu.

Fraying9981

Fraying9981

Posted
  • Author
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3 hours ago, IBAGadget said:

Partition mismatch between the outfit Nif, ARMA, and ARMO records. Body Partition (slot) taken up by the outfit must match exactly between all three records. Nif partition can be checked easily in Outfit Studio, while ARMA and ARMO records will have to be checked using SSEEdit.

 

 

thank you.

  • what is the workflow like for Nif x Outfit Studio? I have tried nifskope once and still have nightmares about it :D 
  • SSEEdit: would a script be able to do the work for any mod (given the name), or must this be checked one by one?

 

3 hours ago, IBAGadget said:

Additionally, you should know that all those mods are pirated and posted to that site without the original author's permission. Arca sourced mods are generally ok, as they are generally available to all, if hard to find and access, but anything that is not listed as having come from Arca was likely sourced from behind a paywall and uploaded without permission (stolen)

 

I'm starting to consider that this could be the main cause. This website is relatively new.

I don't understand why people would upload broken mods though.

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

Remember that only NEW files are placed here. If a file already exists elsewhere, it won't be where you might expect it to be. I personally wouldn't recommend using this feature.

 

 

yeah but then it would be either here or in the overwrites/meshes right? that's the only 2 places to cover, correct?

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

ARMO and ARMA records are in xEdit. This is where the equipment slots are. Outfit Studio can show you the partitions. Remember to rebuild the outfit in BS after modifying it in OS or NifSkope.

 

 

is there any reason that a certain user on a certain machine would have to do this but another wouldn't?

I'm trying to understand if the issues I have are somewhat specific to my machine. Or if it's just the mod that is broken and requires this polishing done by every user.

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

Mismatches are fine but to keep things simple we should indeed start with a 1:1 setup. It's the overlaps/conflicts that cause invisible armor and armor parts. Equipment slot conflicts cause parts to get unequipped when something else is equipped, like a helmet removing your gloves when equipped. Partition conflicts will hide your gloves but leave them marked as equipped in the Inventory menu.

 

Is there a simple way to check this in game, real time?

I'm building an outfit wardrobe mod and this could be an interesting feature: flag the items that have this kind of issues in the selection list

traison

traison

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Fraying9981 said:

yeah but then it would be either here or in the overwrites/meshes right? that's the only 2 places to cover, correct?

 

If BestHatMod17 has path\to\mod\file.txt and you edit this in a tool, that mod file will be edited. There most likely (see list below) won't be a file.txt in your overwrite folder, nor will there be one in your mod output folder. Some outfit mods come with prebuilt meshes, thus these won't be in your mod output folder.

 

My point is, if you use this feature and you want to be sure all (lets say Pandora generated files) are all in your mod output folder, you must first know the following:

  1. Which files will this tool write to.
  2. How is it going to write to these files?
    1. Open and truncate - writes to an existing file.
    2. Open and append - writes to the end of an existing file.
    3. Delete and create - appears to write to an existing file, but from the pov of the filesystem this is a new file.
  3. Every time you install a mod you need to go through its files to see if any of them conflict with your "Pandora file output map".

Personally I don't bother with this and just assume the file is either in the mod it came with or in the Overwrite folder; or to put that another way, I browse the Skyrim Data directory with the included Explorer++ app or by using the Data tab on the right side of MO2's UI.

 

Edit: I should perhaps mention that this might be an unfair advantage I have for modding Skyrim for over a decade. I can see the appeal in keeping files well organized and that's probably the path you should pursuit regardless of how good you are at modding. I just warn people of this pitfall because when it says "new files" it literally means that, and there might be a disconnect between what a human considers a new file and how the computer sees it.

 

1 hour ago, Fraying9981 said:

is there any reason that a certain user on a certain machine would have to do this but another wouldn't?

 

Sure. If you have body armor that occupies slots 32 and 48 you might have issues with components from TAWOBA, specifically those occupying slot 48. For example, maybe you can't wear TAWOBA's pauldrons with this body armor even if it would work fine visually. If we stick to components provided by a single mod then no, everyone will have the same slot conflicts with the same combination of worn items.

 

1 hour ago, Fraying9981 said:

Is there a simple way to check this in game, real time?

 

I don't think MIC can show mesh partitions so I'm going to default to "no". MIC will however show you which meshes are worn in which equipment slots, and from these mesh file names you can get the partitions using either NifSkope or Outfit Studio.

Edited by traison
Fraying9981

Fraying9981

Posted
  • Author
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1 hour ago, traison said:

If BestHatMod17 has path\to\mod\file.txt and you edit this in a tool, that mod file will be edited. There most likely (see list below) won't be a file.txt in your overwrite folder, nor will there be one in your mod output folder. Some outfit mods come with prebuilt meshes, thus these won't be in your mod output folder.

 

My point is, if you use this feature and you want to be sure all (lets say Pandora generated files) are all in your mod output folder, you must first know the following:

  1. Which files will this tool write to.
  2. How is it going to write to these files?
    1. Open and truncate - writes to an existing file.
    2. Open and append - writes to the end of an existing file.
    3. Delete and create - appears to write to an existing file, but from the pov of the filesystem this is a new file.
  3. Every time you install a mod you need to go through its files to see if any of them conflict with your "Pandora file output map".

Personally I don't bother with this and just assume the file is either in the mod it came with or in the Overwrite folder; or to put that another way, I browse the Skyrim Data directory with the included Explorer++ app or by using the Data tab on the right side of MO2's UI.

 

Edit: I should perhaps mention that this might be an unfair advantage I have for modding Skyrim for over a decade. I can see the appeal in keeping files well organized and that's probably the path you should pursuit regardless of how good you are at modding. I just warn people of this pitfall because when it says "new files" it literally means that, and there might be a disconnect between what a human considers a new file and how the computer sees it.

 

im not editing any files so far.

i'm just saying once i run bodyslide on an outfit mod, the output is pushed to a certain folder. no manual edits from me.

 

from there I'm not sure I get your point? Could you clarify because I can tell it's interesting, since you go in depth into the theory and I'm curious about it

traison

traison

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Fraying9981 said:

Could you clarify...

 

mod "A":

  • \path\to\mod\file_01.txt
  • \path\to\mod\file_02.txt
  • \path\to\mod\file_03.txt

mod "B":

  • \path\to\mod\file_02.txt

Mod "B" since it loads after mod "A" will overwrite "file_02.txt" in mod "A".

 

Now introduce a tool, lets just call it "hammer" . Have it output its NEW files into mod "C". Hammer will generate the text files in mod "A" because that's what it does, plus an additional file called "hammer.log":

  • If hammer writes the files with the open and truncate/append method:
    • file_01.txt and file_03.txt in mod "A" now got edited.
    • file_02.txt in mod "B" got edited.
    • A new file appeared in mod "C" called hammer.log.
    • So despite you having a mod output folder specified, both mod "A" and mod "B" now contain hammer made files and the output from hammer is spread out over 3 mods rather than 1.
    • When you uninstall mod "B", file_02.txt in mod "A" will not be generated by hammer and may thus be incompatible in some way. When you uninstall the output mod "C" all you achieve is removing hammer's log file - the changes made by hammer still remain and most likely function as if nothing had happened.
  • If hammer writes the files by first deleting existing ones I'd recommend you read up on the source code of the USVFS. Specifically the DeleteFile hook, and see how it handles it.

 

 

Edit: And to clarify further, not using the mod output folder is not going to dodge any of these issues. The files from hammer will still be spread out over 3 mods but the point is that the mod output folder feature might put you in a false sense of security where you *think* you know where your files are. If that assumption is never made, you're hopefully better prepared for the day when you have to start hunting for these files.

 

Edit again: A cookie for you if you've used the Hammer map editor and/or know what it is.

Edited by traison

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