Mesh/Rigger needed for collab

[ruddy88]

Hey guys n gals.

I am making a mod and looking for some help with assets.

TL;DR: I need someone to help with creating animal skeleton meshes, preferably already weight painted to the animals skeleton.nif as it will have to be made in to an "armor" of sorts.
I can do the weight painting myself if needed, but the skeletal mesh will need to line up with the vanilla animal mesh.
Can use bone resources from Mihails Animal Bones mod.

So, the mod.
The mod is inspired by Hunterborn and Hunting in Skyrim.
I am adding the ability to physically skin and gut animals and creatures when you take pelts or meat from their inventory after they are killed.
I am doing it in a much more compatible and performance friendly way and will be adding some other features but the main idea is to keep things functional, but LITE.

I already have a working proof of concept working using the skinned mesh/textures from Hunting in Skyrim, and I have messaged the author of that mod to ask if I can use the assets he has already made, but I will need more variations.

So here's what I want to happen (mostly already working):

When the player opens the inventory of a dead animal, the mod will detect if they take any Pelts/Skins/Hides, or if they take any Meat/Food/Parts specific to the animal.
If the player HAS taken either of those items, the screen will quickly fade to black then back again (this fade can be toggled off for people who don't like the delay and just want to get on with it, but it means the animal skin will change in front of their eyes instantly).

During the fade, if the player has taken pelts or hides and hasn't taken any meats, then the "Skinned" texture/mesh will be displayed on the carcass.
If they take Meats (with or without skins), it will show a "Gutted" texture/mesh.
If they take neither, and just take non-animal part items or nothing at all, then there is no fade to black, it just operates as a regular inventory menu and will trigger again if the animal is accessed again.

 

A Skinned animal can still be Gutted if the player re accesses the inventory and takes the meat.
A fully gutted animal will be treated as any other normal dead body, no further effects will play again.

There are internal conditions in place to make sure this entire process does not even trigger unless you are activating a creature belonging to one of the included races, so animals with modded races, or animals that I haven't included will just use the regular inventory menu, but if they use the same vanilla races then they will still work. I will also look at making patches for popular animal mods where possible.
During this entire process, the carcass will still be treated as an actor. It does not swap to a static or anything. The Skinned and Gutted effects are added as an armor to replace the existing creature skin. This also let me add keywords to the skinned armors to help with condition checking.
I have ALL of this working (except I haven't added sound effects yet).

Furthermore, the entire thing is executed from a single perk applied to the player, which calls a function stored in a quest that is only about 10 lines.
It's all very quick, simple, there's no dialogue menu's to contend with. So far the ONLY issue is that the fade to black doesn't work with some ENBs (the mod works, you just wont see the fade effect, which is toggle-able anyway).

BUT to implement it fully I need to create assets to use as the replacement meshes for the animals Skinned and Gutted versions.
This means I will need:

Skinned versions of each of the races to include (things like: Deer, Wolf, Troll, Chicken etc. Though I was planning on letting you skin and hunt people as well as other monsters).
Gutted Versions (these can either be an animal skeleton with blood effects applied, or a skeleton with chunks of meat and organs still present, either will work fine).

These HAVE to be rigged as an armor for the animal though. They cannot be statics. This is because I use a script function to equip the skinned/gutted armor to replace their default "worn armor" (SkinWolf for example), which lets me continue to treat the animal as an actor.

Now, the skinned versions should be easy enough, I can probably do these myself just by opening up the vanilla nifs, stripping them back and applying bloody textures, then just copying the bone weights from the vanilla skins, much like Hunting in Skyrim has done.

But the Gutted ones need more work that may be beyond my capabilities.
I have an idea of how it could be done but it's not my forte and I was hoping someone more experienced with 3D could help out.

My plan, was to use the animal bones resources from Mihails Animal Bones - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/89445 (He has already given permission).
Load up the vanilla animal mesh in Blender/3DS, then create a "skeleton" using the bone resources from that mod, making sure the bones line up with the vanilla positioning of the animal mesh.
Combine it as one object, export as OBJ, open it in OutfitStudio, then go through and weight paint it there.
The weight painting SHOULD be easy enough, since they are bones they will be 100% rigid, so just have to paint each bone "section" and paint it so it is 100% fixed to the corresponding bones of the animals skeleton nodes.
It also wouldn't have to be TOO precise, because for the most part the animal skeleton will just ragdoll on the ground, however it WILL be possible to re-animate these creatures even after they are skinned so some level of precision is needed.

Anyway, That's my plan so far.
I am really hoping that someone can help out here and join in on the progression of this mod.

At bare minimum, I am hoping someone can just make the single object skeleton meshes lined up with the vanilla animal mesh and Ill do the weight painting.
But ideally, if someone could volunteer to do both the models and the weight painting that would be very much appreciated.
Or if someone wanted to go all out and do proper, field dressed meshes for all the animals that would be ridiculously amazing (I'm not holding my breath).

If someone CAN help out with this, then while you are busy with that I will be looking into other functionality of the mod. I love the idea of trapping in Hunting in Skyrim and was thinking of re-implementing that sort of thing.


Also, if anyone else is reading this and has further ideas on features to implement or just has general advice on the direction it's taken so far, feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts on it.