Need a solution to the schlong / body gap

[Fredas]

After having a surprising amount of difficulty finding guides to this, despite the near certainty that other people have had to wrestle with the same issue by now, I decided to fall back to my kludge solution to the schlong / body gap issue.  I use CBBE Manga Body 1.4, available here.  I'm trying to make use of Evil's Horse Penis 2 for Females 1.4.

 

My kludge goes like this:

1. Load the body_1 and schlong_1 in Outfit Studio.  Make positional adjustments.  Note the exact numbers for Y/Z required to achieve desired fit.  Exit.
2. Load BodySlide's skeleton_female_xpmse.nif in NifSkope.  Make the adjustments noted in (1) to the "Schlong" node.  Apply.  Save nif.
3. Temporarily replace BodySlide's skeleton_female_xpmse.nif with skeleton created in (2).
4. Load schlong_1 in Outfit Studio as armor.  Make the same adjustments.  Save as new .nif.
5. Replace schlong_1 with new schlong_1 created in (4).
6. Replace PC's skeleton with skeleton created in (2).
7. Revert BodySlide's skeleton_female_xpmse.nif back to normal.

In the past (different body, different schlong, different skeleton), this was the only means I could work out for achieving the desired result.  It doesn't work anymore, in part because the schlong's base seems to be attached to a different node (Pelvis?  Anyway it remains attached to the body, with the gap), and in part because there are two schlong .nifs and each require different spatial adjustments, whereas there is only a single skeleton.  That all ignores the obvious downside of having to use a tweaked skeleton, or indeed having to jump through these hoops in the first place.

 

I am utterly convinced that there is a better way, but I do not know where to begin.

[Samustus]

I think you're over-complicating the problem.

 

Just load the schlong into outfit studio by itself. Adjust the position, I 'think' it's the z-axis. Save the .nif.

 

Do a practice run with a body to get your adjustment values, but don't save. Note the values and then do a blind run with just the schlong.

 

That's it.

 

If you load a body etc it will add values to the schlong that will cause problems.

[Fredas]

Just load the schlong into outfit studio by itself. Adjust the position, I 'think' it's the z-axis. Save the .nif.

 

It probably should have been as simple as that, yes.  Unfortunately, Outfit Studio's export in this scenario only adjusts the position of the mesh; it pays no attention to the necessity of adjusting the rest of the .nif in turn.

 

 

This has two consequences:

 

First, the schlong itself is somewhat distorted.  The more adjustment that was necessary, the more distorted it will be.  Try shifting the schlong by a value of 10.0 and seeing how that looks in-game.  It won't be pretty.

 

 

This is because the player's skeleton's schlong bones are dictating that the schlong mesh should be in a certain place, and so the mesh is being squeezed into the correct location as best as can be managed.

 

Second, on top of all that, even if the distortion is minimal, the moment one examines how the schlong looks going from flaccid to erect, it becomes obvious that even a minimal amount of distortion is a dealbreaker, as the schlong pivots at some completely unnatural spot.

 

The whole point of my convoluted process of tweaking skeletons is to trick Outfit Studio into playing nice.  Unfortunately, I have not yet gotten a good (or even usable) result with my current project.

[Samustus]

That's odd. I did a similar thing with SOS alignment and it worked fine. Adjusting the mesh should be all that's needed, as the mesh is the part that is manipulated.

 

I think you're right when you said that the schlong has skeletal positioning stored somewhere. Have you opened the nif up in Nifskope and checked the alignment? I'm not sure how SOS worked. Did it use a script? If your mod does, then maybe it needs checking.

 

Sorry I can't help more. I don't have Skyrim installed atm, in the middle of a re-install.

 

Good luck.

 

EDIT: When saving, you just need to export the .nif, not a normal OS save. Perhaps this is the problem?

[Fredas]

That's odd. I did a similar thing with SOS alignment and it worked fine. Adjusting the mesh should be all that's needed, as the mesh is the part that is manipulated.

 

This works perfectly fine if the schlong is intended to be kept as-is - pointing straight ahead, just like how it looks in NifSkope.  Of course that is not how schlongs operate in Skyrim.  The image above is how it looks when flaccid.  If you toy with the erect slider, bringing it to neutral gives a normal-looking schlong, and then bringing it to fully erect gives just as much distortion as in the image.

 

Did it use a script? If your mod does, then maybe it needs checking.

 

This phenomenon occurs regardless of which schlong I intend to adjust.  For example, it definitely happens with the built-in UNP schlong.  This is why it is so confounding to me that there hasn't been written some kind of guide for solving this.  Obviously the authors of these schlongs have some means of perfecting the adjustment.

 

EDIT: When saving, you just need to export the .nif, not a normal OS save. Perhaps this is the problem?

 

No, I export as .nif.  Although this is a good time to mention that Outfit Studio has a bug (or a curious feature) where its .nif export will occasionally strip out a lot of the .nif's original data.  In the case of this schlong, the final filesize ends up being 87 vs. 95k.  I have to watch out for this.