Creating "flower vase" showcasecontainer - where to dig?

[IvirtualDragonI]

Good day, gentlemen. I've been playing with CK since TES IV, but I use it just for adding some pre-made things, redecoration of some houses, replacing things with other ones. I never faced scripts, model conversion, collision, etc. I do not ask for step-by-step tutorials, but I expect experienced modders to show me clear direction where to "dig", what to learn.

 

Recently I've come up with the idea of creating a flower vase. Its purpose - use a vase as a showcase or container, putting flowers in it, like a book in a bookshelf or weapon on a rack. A decoration.

As an example - I've picked up a Dragon Tongue and want it to decorate my dining table, where the vase is standing. In a day I gather a bunch of Mountain Flowers and replace DT with MF. As simple as that.

 

I tried to use defaultbookshelfbookmarker and playercontainer, and create an improvised bookshelf-container, but none of the items "match" and they immediately return to my inventory. May be due to size.

And here comes the 1st thing I'm confused about:

1) How to create a _new_ marker for flower (or anything else except book or weapon), from scrap? Is it a model? Or script? Both? I have really no idea what to study to do so.

Many tutorials I saw are about duplicating a thing, wiping it out and replacing with the one of your own. But can I create a really _new_ one?

 

I'm quite fine with the standard models of jugs, pots, etc, so I guess extracting a few .nif's will do for the vase itself. It's also OK for it to be static only (for now, I hope to make it movable in future).

Yet another question appears in my head:

2) How do I make NPC's use it as well as me? Guess it's kind of a script to inject into their daily timetable? Is it correct or it's something else?

 

One great thing annoys me in Skyrim - ingredients and food are stone-like when they hit smth. BOOM your sweet roll faces floor (and leaves a tremor there...)

3) How do I get flowers "softer", not being so monolithic? What does it depend on? Scripts? Havok? Model properties? :confused:

 

That's a whole bunch of questions, answers may be as simple as an egg, but I'm really blind atm in this situation. I hope anyone will find little time to explain what shall I look for.

Your help will be most appreciated.

 

vD

[Moraelin]

Well, the way _I_ would do it -- which doesn't mean the best or anything, just the quickest hack I'd go for -- is:

 

1. make an empty vase

 

2. make a vase with a flower in it, one for each flower type you want to have. Basically at this point I'd copy the empty vase, and use NifSkope to just copy and paste a flower or a whole bush into it. It's literally a copy and paste exercise, unless you want to actually edit the mesh of the flowers to look different in the pot.

 

3. Make them different game objects with the CK.

 

4. have a script pop up a menu when you try to use a vase, asking which flower you want to put in. Then it would disable the current vase, and activate the one with the right flower in it.