Septfox

I've read around a bit and found various ways to import and export meshes from 3ds, but generally it seems to involve swiping the skin from the vanilla version of the mesh being worked on and various other corrections after export, via Nifskope. Since I not only want to modify the existing skinning, but also add bones if possible, it doesn't seem like this sort of workflow would work. So, is it currently possible to import the face and facial skeleton, modify them, and export them properly in one fell swoop? If so, which version of Max and the Nif import/export plugin do I need? Despite apparently importing fine, the unofficial 3.8.0 plugin doesn't appear to export correctly.

Ugh, I haven't done scripting since Oblivion...and I understand that whatever Oblivion used and Papyrus have various differences. Guess this is as good a reason as any to pick Papyrus up. Even if the function doesn't work, it wouldn't hurt to bring myself up to speed anyway. Thanks for bringing it up.

First thing I did. I derived what I was doing from how CBBE went about "patching" it, after all (since CBBE textures don't have a provision for scalp/headback). This all went on via PMs, putting up in the thread for future generations: TL;DR assigned headparts are stored in a small dictionary in the NPC's data, including the Player's modified NPC that's stored in the savegame, and LooksMenu presets also store the headpart dictionary. I was expecting everything to be pulled from the race as Skyrim does it. So to change the headback, you have to create a plugin with the new headback, then assign it by editing a saved preset (easiest way would be to use a LooksMenu preset since they're plaintext, NPC presets have to be poked with FO4Edit). Thank you to VlitS for showing me what needs to be done with the currently available tools.

No go, in my case. Obviously I've skipped a step somewhere, but I'm not sure where. I even went and messed with the material path on the headback and gave it a unique, modified file, since I had some problems with a piece of armor until I realized how things deviated from Skyrim's way of doing it. I'd imagine that what's set in the CK overrides it anyway (or should), but eh, worth a try. The plugin (older version without any changes to humanrace, presets and no extra formlist), textures and meshes are uploading, I'll PM you a link in uhhh...16 minutes. Yay for DSL and substandard upstream speeds \o/

Trying to make a mod to separate the player art assets from everything else. There're a few out there already that partially accomplish this, but I want to go all the way; including head textures. Unfortunately, I've hit a brick wall when it comes to the back of the head. Regardless of what's set in the player race or player NPC, the game keeps pulling the vanilla headback. The only way I've found to force it to use what's actually set is to check "Override Head Parts List"...which does what it says, overrides all the headparts with what's set in the Race/Face Data list. This would be fine if not for the nasty side-effect of forcing the hair model to stay on the one set in the parts list, too. I doubt anyone wants to use the Default Generic Mom hairstyle forever...I know I don't. To be clear, I have: * Made a unique copy of the vanilla headback and textureset for it (extension of how CBBE goes about it) * Set it in the custom playerrace's Race/Face Data And tried: * Creating a different Formlist for the player race and assigning assets to it * Changing the base player NPC to the created player race and made sure the assets were assigned * Using the custom-skeleton anti-crashing method (assigned the new headback to HumanRace and having the player race use the vanilla one); same problem, HumanRace ignored what was set and pulled the vanilla one too So what stupid, obvious thing am I missing?

In either ECE or Racemenu, it's simple enough to create a slider to scale and move fixed bones and other nodes in the player skeleton. It even works properly most of the time. But how about HDT bones? On top of not being in the player skeleton (instead having their own skeleton hierarchy packaged in the hair nif), they're physics-enabled and don't have a stable position. I've created nodes in the player skeleton that mimic the ones in the hair NIF, along with control nodes for each HDT node. This enables moving the entire HDT chain, but trying to move a part of it result in the part "shuddering"; I would guess this is because the physics engine refreshes the position of the HDT nodes and overwrites the new position. SO, how to get around this? I'm guessing that I'll need to mess with the hair XMLs, but I have absolutely no idea what needs to be done.

Hello~ I would like to request some full-length stockings for the UNPetite body, similar to Newmiller and Zlushka's stockings. Texture optional, I have one I can use already...I just can't seem to get the mesh side of things working. I'm much better at modifying than I am at creating anew :\ Er, that's all.

It's possible, in a roundabout way. To the best of my knowledge, skeletons are assigned on a race-by-race basis. Individual NPCs will use whatever skeleton that their parent race has assigned. What this means for you is, if you want your special NPC to sheathe his weapon on his back, then you'll need to create a custom race for him alone - or easier, modify the race that he is now and give it a unique ID, then make him that race - and assign that race a skeleton that's been modified to have its side sheathe node parented to one of the spine bones, just like the two-handed weapon node is. You can probably get such a skeleton out of one of the numerous back-weapon mods floating around. While you're at it, you'll want to reassign the two-handed sheathe/unsheathe animations to one-handed, so when he pulls his weapon out or puts it away it looks right. You can also do what I used to do in Oblivion; use a script that monitors whether the NPC has his weapon out or not. When he does, switch to a one-handed weapon nif. When he has it sheathed, switch to a two-handed weapon nif. This doesn't work very well for weapons that actually do have sheathes though, and the sheathe/unsheathe animations won't look right without some creative scripting for the timing. There might be an easier way, but if there is I don't know of it...then again, I'm not experienced at all yet when it comes to mucking around in the CK.

'lo guys. Horses are decent for getting around and all, but the vanilla riding animations are decidedly un-ladylike. As such, I would like to put in a request for animations of the character riding sidesaddle. ... So uh, I'll just leave this here I guess. *wanders out*

Hey guys. Back in my Oblivion days, I found that I rather liked one of the coolsims hairstyles. I tweaked, prodded and experimented until it was perfect for my character. Ended up using it until I stopped playing a while back. Fast forward to the year 200x. I find that another of the coolsims styles is about right for my character, so I load it up in 3ds to add my personal touches. Everything goes fine; I import it, make my changes, export to a nif, and copy the LightingShaderProperty and AlphaProperty blocks from the old nif so all the settings are right, check normals to make sure they are in fact normal, make sure tangents are updated, etc etc. The game loads fine, no unusual loading time, no crash. But my hair...well. Before: After import/export: (just to clarify: the hair actually uses two nifs, the outer, nicely-transparent hair you see the most of, and the inner, mostly-opaque hair that provides a backdrop since Skyrim's transparency handling is kind of bad. the problem here is some spots in the outer nif don't seem to be lighting the same as the rest) I don't get what I've done wrong. I didn't add or remove any vertices, only moved some, but it still seems like some kind of weird sorting error. 3ds import/export settings: Any ideas? Do I have something set wrong, or am doing something stupid here?

Yea, 90% sure that it's a lighting quirk, probably having to do with self-shadows judging by where the lines generally appear, though some have suggested that it's the fault of improperly-made body/face texture replacers. Strangely, I haven't seen it happen at all while running ENB, so it might be that it runs some sort of fix. If the lines bother you that much, and you have some graphics power to spare, perhaps you could try giving ENB a spin? Even the basic configuration that it comes with might be adequate.

I can see all sorts of things underwater in a swimming pool, if you can't then you probably need to clean yours :/ If you're having the problem where your underwater view is completely opaque and you can literally see nothing, I used to have this problem, but I don't remember exactly what I changed that fixed it. Probably turning Dof off (set bDoDepthOfField in SkyrimPrefs.ini to 0), since DoF is part of what causes the underwater effect. Confirmed in the mod below's description :v Fortunately, there's a mod available that replaces the apparently buggy vanilla underwater effect and doesn't require you to muck about with settings: Green Water Fix.

Welcome to the er, forum section. Have some punch. ShadowsOnGrass causes grass clumps to be tossed through shadow calculations along with the rest of most opaque objects. Trees, characters, buildings etc. cast shadows on them. Basically, anything that blocks light from the sun, causing a shadow to cast, will cast a shadow on grass. Anything that adds more shadow calculations to the game will hurt performance to a varying degree, particularly on a low- or mid-end card. Grass shadowing in theory is a rather simple type of shadowing though, so it shouldn't hurt the framerate on adequate hardware much, if at all. Adding/modifying the line does have an effect: it needs to be under the [Display] section, and probably in both files. Setting it to 0 causes grass to be ignored when it comes time for the engine to recalculate shadows. Note that changing it and using "refreshini" in the console to reload configuration won't work, it needs a full game restart to take effect. Also, ENB's SSAO is a completely different creature, so it ignores any shadow settings while it's on. What I'd do it find a grassy area with trees (but not too many, you want the sunlight to make you some shadow borders), get a good viewpoint, save your game, reload the game to reset the view to "neutral", record your framerate, exit the game, turn grass shadows off, reload your game, check framerate again. If it's gone up by a significant amount, congratulations, your video card hates grass shadowing. Ah, that brings back fond memories of my Radeon x1600...it found any sort of shadowing in Oblivion repulsive and dropped frames like mad when forced to do it. Though certainly not to the degree my Mobility 9600 did. *sigh* Those were the days... You can try adding/modifying bGrassPointLighting and b30GrassVS under [Grass] in Skyrim.ini, see if those have an effect on your lighting issue. Turning them on if they aren't already will almost surely affect your framerate adversely, but it doesn't hurt to try. s'about the limits to what I think I know, as far as grass goes. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come in and educate us both.

Do you, by chance, have an Ati video card and are using the 12.7 beta drivers? They're usually the cause of the bars and compass freaking out. The common solution is to change iShadowMapResolution in SkyrimPrefs.ini to something else if it is set to 4096, i.e. halve (2048) or double (8192) it. Preferably half unless you have a high-end card. You can try setting other numbers as well (like say...3072), but in my experience this'll cause odd things to happen. On the other hand, the drivers only address 7-series cards, and apparently have a positive effect on framerates for 6-series cards as well. If you have something older, then there's absolutely no downside to downgrading to 12.6 until 12.7 reaches maturity/official release, and you might even see a minor performance boost.