Help with armor connection points

[Katsoro]

Okay so i'm trying to add the fridge magnets from Nuka world as attachable items for the ushanka hat.

I edited the the armor to have a new attach point & mod association.

 

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I made an object modification with the new attach point & mod association etc.

 

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I edited the winter hats mesh to give it the new attach point parent.

 

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And I made a new mesh with the magnet and child attach point.

 

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Now i can attach the item mod in game and I even see the magnet attached in the workshop menu. However when I equip the hat it dose not display and my character is bald. What am I doing wrong?

 

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[Katsoro]

Seriously dose no one have any ideas?

[AWP3RATOR]

A simpler (maybe) way, and how I've seen and done it is to also create Armor Addons for each variation, including the hat and pin or pins.  Say you had 2 pins you wanted to have on the hat.  You could have 4 combinations:

1. Base hat (no pins)
2. Hat + left pin
3. Hat + right pin
4. Hat + both pins

Link the additional armor addons to the main record for the hat under the Models dialogue.  From what you describe, it's "working" in that the game engine is switching to the other and non-existent model.  You have the correct slots assigned, which hide the hair on the actor, this is why they are bald.  The missing armor addon reference is causing no mesh to be displayed, but everything else works.

 

You would also need to create a default object template which includes no pins (if that is your preference).  This would allow all the Ushanka hats to be unaltered when spawned on an NPC or found in the world - but be moddable at an armorer's bench.

 

Have a look at Cross's Handmaiden mod's files.  (because it's simple and straightforward).  Specifically, the overcoat has several variations (long, short, buttoned, unbuttoned, long or short sleeves, etc.).  This should be a good guide to getting at what you're after.

 

The key though to this method is having the nifs with the various combinations you want to offer premade.  This would not involve attach points - as I'm not 100% sure that works with armor/clothing - whereas it does work with weapons.  Power Armor is somewhat of an anomaly here as it's technically furniture and so attach points work with it when at that armor bench.  When wearing Power Armor, the game actually disables that furniture and enables a new armor/clothing version of the PA furniture that has the correct pieces on it - around the player.

 

 

[Katsoro]

I tried adding them via armor index first, but no matter what I try it just displays the normal model and not the edited one.

 

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[Katsoro]

Well It seems it's "working" using armor index but that my edited module is not working. Looks like you can't just load a armor peace in NifSkope move a item into place and add the new mesh as a child. Sadly there are no tutorials for adding a none clothing item to a piece of clothing so I'm going to have to learn how to do this myself. 

[AWP3RATOR]

The most comprehensive list of tutorials and references for Fallout 4 is here:

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/5978333-fo4-modding-tutorial-list/

 

 

I am looking up a reference for you on this.  There are plenty of mods that do this - it's "easily" possible, just need to find the right steps, so I don't steer you incorrectly. 

[AWP3RATOR]

As it happens, since this is a more "easy" variation and doesn't involve much more than the hat and pins.... you put the mesh with all pins on it in to game, and use a material swap (like a color swap with Armosmith) to achieve the same net result.  This would be only one mesh, with several textures including the various pin configurations with the hat texture itself.

[AWP3RATOR]

This one seems to be close to, if not what you need to sort out the visual mesh swaps:

 

https://www.loverslab.com/topic/56300-tutorial-visual-armor-modifications/

 

 

[Katsoro]

I actually started this whole endeavor by reading the post you just liked Visual armor modifications. 

 

I see what your saying, I could simply load the hats texture into gimp and add the pins texture onto it then set up some material swaps (I actually have around 24 texture swaps in the mod already). The only problem is that in order to have say six pins and six color swaps on the same hat I would need 36 new textures, seeing as the"pins" are just retextures. I guess this is my contingency plan now, thank you

 

In the mean time I need to find a way to merge a junk items mesh into a armors. I think this is my problem because the modal looks fine in nifskope, with the pin where it should be on the hat but when loaded into outfit studio the pin is no ware near the hat and in game the pin is not there at all. 

[AWP3RATOR]

With a few, like 6 or less you could get away with the material swap method.  With more than that, it's best to "do it right" and save on both your time and the user's download size.  That being said, it sounds as if your meshes are set up properly, you just need the right combination of settings in the plugin to make it happen.

 

If you post the assets and plugin, we'd be happy to look at it for you.

[Katsoro]

Here is the mod in its currant form. It was originally part of a much bigger mod that required far harbor and Nuka world but I thought it best to separate it for uploading.

 

Edit re upload still needs Nuka world.

Modable winter hat.zip

[AWP3RATOR]

Thanks, will take a look and report back.  We'll get this sorted!

[AWP3RATOR]

@Katsoro I got it working.  The plugin and meshes needed some tweaks.  Since you seemed to have moved away from the Attach Point method in favor of the Addon Index, I went with that.

 

In the plugin, the only change I made was to add a default object template pointing at the "No Pin" OMOD.  This is why the actor appeared bald when equipping the hat.  As for the meshes, they actually were swapping properly, but the pin mesh itself wasn't rendering in game.  When testing it, I made a retexture of the hat to a different color and observed that when switching to the "cow pin" option, it the hat color changed - so this confirmed that the addon index was working, but that the pin mesh was not.  Or it was and it was outside of the bounding box.  The xyz translation appeared to be overriding. 

 

I generated new meshes in Outfit Studio, by opening the vanilla hat, importing the pin mesh, scaling and positioning it, then copying the bone weights from the hat to the pin.  The bone weighting was the key to keeping the xyz translation at 0, but having the mesh in the correct place.

 

I moved your original meshes to a folder called ORIG.  You should be able to add as many as necessary now in the Addon Index, OMOD, COBJ categories and meshes folder now.

 

Cheers!

 

 

Modable winter hat_fixed.7z

 

 

 

[Katsoro]

Awesome Thank you! You actually got it working! I was thinking that not having bone whats was part of the problem but I never figured it out. By the way how did you copy the bones weights from the hat to the pin? I never succeeded in doing so.

[AWP3RATOR]

Easy peasy to rig the mesh.  In OS, set the Ushanka hat as the reference, then highlight the pin, right click on the mesh layer name and hit "copy bone weights".  Since the pin neatly fits on the hat, etc. the weights copy very cleanly.

[Katsoro]

 

Got it working! (Insert glorious victory music here) the first 10 times it failed Intel I double clicked the magnet mesh and went to geometry and checked skinned. 

 

Thanks so much for the help  now to do the other 3 magnets and maybe some other things for every hat in the game and DLCs 

[AWP3RATOR]

Anytime!  There are quite a few other things you could add as pins.  This is a great idea