Making Static Display Armor

[KainsChylde]

So I have a personal mod with some nifty Power Armor that has generic names. The Armors all look really cool, but it's hard to tell which ones which short of equipping them. I know the base game has statics of some of the different BoS and Enclave power armors for various displays/statues/whatever, how would I go about turning my armors into one of those?

 

[GreatKazooMan]

What kind of armour are we talking about? Is it a full suit like the ones you mentioned or more like the Leather Armor etc? For those, I think all you need to do

is add them to a mannequin or a full body of the modded ones (like Roberts, Type 3 etc) and make them mannequins instead of actual bodies.

 

I myself was thinking of making hanging clothes like the set in Moira's shop, but that'd take a bit more work, I think...

[KainsChylde]

I have Power Armor that I want to set up like the T-51b in the Anchorage reward closet. But uncollectable, just a display.

[jonas_opines]

You piqued my curiosity and I dug into the GECK and game files to take a look at this, but you're not going to be happy.  That display armor is just that, a static full body armor nif with its own clutter-object-type collision field, set with a script to disable and disappear when the player activates the display pod.  You can take a look at the nif yourself in the Anchorage BSA files - dlcancht-51displayarmor.nif   

 

 

[shardoom]

I'd imagine the remnants PA 'statue' functions the same too?

[KainsChylde]

You piqued my curiosity and I dug into the GECK and game files to take a look at this, but you're not going to be happy.  That display armor is just that, a static full body armor nif with its own clutter-object-type collision field, set with a script to disable and disappear when the player activates the display pod.  You can take a look at the nif yourself in the Anchorage BSA files - dlcancht-51displayarmor.nif   

So in other words, it's a special nif that would be a royal pain to reproduce for a noob who doesn't know what he's doing? Well hell.

[Halstrom]

There's also a security/armored vaultsuit somewhere too that is a Static.

[KainsChylde]

Ok, new idea (I'll move this to a new thread if needed), turning armors into robots. Massively complicated, or relatively easy? I found the tutorial on the Nexus forums by Corehound, but for one it requires his mod and two, he's been banned so he's unavailable for questions.

[jonas_opines]

Without seeing his original mod I have no idea what he was doing or what kind of robots he was even talking about.  His little tutorial operates under animations and skeletons already being loaded and pre-selected, so it's kind of hard to say.  It sounds like, from what he was saying, that his robots used a humanoid skeleton and normal animations.  If that's the case, it might be so easy as making a new race and instead of selecting normal body parts, you'd actually select the armor/helmet/gloves.  I can't say for sure, never tried it, but that might make a suit of armor that behaved like a normal person/humanoid robot.

 

If we're talking about like a Securitron or something, that's a little trickier.  You'd have to put the armor in blender, erase all the armature, import in the robot skeleton, parent the armor to it, and then re-rig the armor to the skeleton.  I don't know if there's an existing robot that's humanoid enough to make it look natural, though.  

 

One guy a couple years back, though, took the teddy bear nif and rigged to the securitron skeleton to make TeddyTrons that walked around like securitrons and fired lazers.  Those were terrifying.  

 

Actually, now that I think about it I might do that myself with my bunny bear mesh . . . . 

[jonas_opines]

Ha, found the picture!  Ruanhuan was his name.

 

[KainsChylde]

I like Securitrons and Eyebots the way they are. I want to change Protectrons, Robobrains, and Mr. Handy/Gutsys, preferably in a TTW compatible way that will affect both wastelands and all DLCs.

[jonas_opines]

I have to be a little theoretical here, but I think that's doable.  Not even really very difficult, but potentially very tedious.  The way I'd go about it would be to take the individual armor pieces and make one creature nif out of them.  You'd import the armor, gloves, and helmet into blender, erase all the armature, and then import a fresh whole human skeleton and parent the full thing to it, then export it as a single nif, that would work off all human animations.  Once you did it with one armor you could easily cut and paste new armor combinations in nifskope.

 

But getting them into the game is where the problem is.  If you're replace the existing robots you'd pretty much have to reassign each one individually.  You'd have to change the skeleton to human and the model to your new nif in the model list tab.  You'd have to change the existing selected animations as well, I would guess, to give it some range of motion and attack.  

 

The real problem here is that you'd have to do it for every single entry in the creature tree of the GECK.  Which even for Mr. Gutsy's is like 20 or 30 different ones.