SSE - removing collar from armor

[FrenzyVenom]

First of all thank you for your time in reading and hopefully assisting me with this issue.

I would like to remove a collar from an armor mesh in Skyrim Special Edition. The armor is a mage robe from "Remodeled Armor for SevenBase Bombshell HDT TBBP" (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3511/?). IMG: http://imgur.com/a/Gumys

 

Basically form what I've read so far it can be done in two ways: 

1) by adding an alpha channel in a texture dds file (so that the chosen mesh fragment will become transparent)

2) manually via Outfit Studio

 

My first attempt was texture editing. I've added an alpha channel, and marked the specific area to be transparent. Saved and checked the game. It didn't worked. I've read somewhere that it is also necessary to edit mesh file with Nifscope to enable the transparency effect. Can someone give me a step-by-step instructions what to do in Nifscope?

 

Additionally i also tried the Outfit Studio. And here i was partially successful - i removed the collar's shader from the mesh and then exported the new nif file. It worked, but there are now some clipping in the belt area on the back of the outfit: http://imgur.com/a/jK5y8

 

Can anyone advise me on how to do this correctly without causing undesired clipping etc.? I've attached meshes of the armor for anyone who would like to check it on his/her end (without downloading the entire mod).

magejourneymanrobesf_0.nif

magejourneymanrobesf_1.nif

[Azazellz]

Simply deleting forms in BS should not cause clipping where it was not before.
But, in any case, you are lucky. The collar is a separate object, so you can remove it in NifScope. Simply click on it with the right mouse button and select "block" -- "remove branch". Repeat it with both files,

 

As for transparency, it's not enough just to edit the texture. It is also necessary to make the Skyrim apply transparency on object.

For SSE you need to do next steps;

1) Right-click on the form to which you want to add transparency.

2) Select the block - insert - NiA - NiAlphaProperty
3) Left-click again on the block, at the bottom there will be a line "Num Extra Data List", you need to change 0 to 1
5) Click on the update icon below and then on the small arrow on the left
6) In the opened field, insert number of block with NiAlphaProperty that you add before.

 

Now we need to edit NiAlphaProperty block

 

7) Click on it with the left mouse button, below there will be the couple of fields.
8) in the Flags field, put 4844 (for full transparency - for example, for holes on clothes), or 4845 (for semi-transparency, like wet t-shirts ).
9) Threshold determines the strength of the transparency from the base texture will be applied. 0 - only fully transparent pixels. 255 - all pixels (this number will make the object completely invisible, even if you did not add transparency to the texture). 128 - pixels with a 50% transparency.

9b) Also if you use semi-transparent texture, it's be good to add some flags to main shape for avoid errors in lighting. To do this, select the form to which we added transparency, then select BSLightingShaderProperty, there Shader Flags 2, and there add SLSF2_Assume_Shadowmask.
And that's all =)

 

Well, I hope I explained everything clearly, and my terrible English will not prevent you from understanding what I wrote =)

[FrenzyVenom]

I've tried the "remove branch" method in Nifscope and it worked like a charm - thank you

 

Also thank you for a detailed tutorial on transparency in Nifscope.