chaospearl
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Posts posted by chaospearl
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Works like a charm! Which flora form did the original mesh come from? I need to change that form's mesh without changing the form in order to make all the vanilla kelps harvestable. And come up with an ingredient model using the small kelp.
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LOL harvestable ants. Now we just need a way to make chocolate.
The method you described... does that only apply to animated objects, or will I have to go through the same process to do a kelp that changes meshes when harvested? I can certainly give it a try, but considering how long it took me to get a simple copy-paste working, you just know I'll screw it up somehow.
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What I'm worried about is the fact that the activatable area of the mesh is very, very small, and located down at the bottom of the plant.
Enlargen the size of the collision object a little. I can't remember exactly how off the top of my head but it is like 1 minute's work just to increase the X,Y,Z dimensions of the collision box (or it might be a sphere or some other shape).
Figured it out after some trial and error. It's even easier than you thought. If you start with a mesh that's reasonably close to the right shape, all you have to do is scale the collision box larger by clicking the NiNode and using Transform.
I'm finally done. I did it. I have a clean esp that changes every fiddlehead fern in Skyrim to be easily harvestable. So, uh, now what? I've never released a mod in my life, I'd really rather have someone test it out in their game first in case I've done something incredibly stupid. Any volunteers?
Now, onto the kelp!
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Heh, I was CK-only (and not very good at it, either) until approximately two days ago when I got it into my head to enter Fiddlehead Hell. I wouldn't have tried it if I'd known it'd take me two 13-hour days of pure frustration, but I'm glad I know how to do it now. I think a lot of the problem was that I didn't know my way around NifSkope at all; I was confusing Copy Branch and regular Copy, then someone's suggestions threw the Export Object function into the mix too.
But the main thing is that I didn't know how to associate the branches I was copying with the parents. That's why I originally replied to Steve and said it wasn't as easy as just copying the NiTriShapeData into a harvestable mesh. It turns out we were both sorta right. You CAN copy it over just as he said, but it isn't a matter of simply copying and pasting and poof you're done. You have to click on the parent NiTriShape, then tell NifSkope to show you the Block Details, scroll down to where it says Data and change the number from the old NiTriShapeData to the number of the one you just pasted, then go back to the tree and remove the old block. I didn't know that, and that's why it wasn't working for me.
If you want another go at the kelp yourself, PM me and I'll walk you through exactly how I did it from the point of view of someone who's never opened NifSkope before in her life. I'm going to give it a shot myself and see how big of a mess I can make trying to create a harvestable kelp that changes shape when harvested. Heh.
Incidentally, turns out it actually does work to simply replace the vanilla mesh with the new one. In one fell swoop every plant in the game is harvestable and you don't have to do anything else. I don't know why I figured it wouldn't work, it seems simple enough. I guess by that point I was just assuming nothing is ever as simple as it looks.
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One last thing... AnkhAscendant, exactly which kelp were you trying to harvest when you attempted this? What's the file name of the non-harvestable nif? There's more than one kelp in the game.
When I finally get my f'ing fiddleheads to work -- and I WILL -- I'd like to give it a try with your kelp, unless you planned on giving it another shot yourself. The fact that you posted in my thread and were interested is what kept me from giving up entirely when I couldn't figure it out myself and found nothing by searching. Besides, kelp's edible, so it'll fit right into my food mod.
Edit: IT WORKS OMG IT WORKS FINALLY
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All right. A fresh pot of coffee does wonders.
I've gotten to the point of having a visible harvestable fiddlehead plant in the game. Hallelujah. Step One of the master plan is complete.
I'm going to attempt to see if I can change the mesh from the original fern plant to the new one, and therefore in one fell swoop make every fiddlehead in the game harvestable. I have a feeling that isn't going to work and I'll need to spend a large part of tomorrow replacing approximately 423 plants one at a time, but at least that's a reachable goal. I assumed from the start that's what I'd have to do.
What I'm worried about is the fact that the activatable area of the mesh is very, very small, and located down at the bottom of the plant. If you don't get your crosshair right over that spot, you can't harvest it. From what I've seen of the vanilla static plants in-game that I want to replace, a lot of them are positioned partially buried so that half the stalk is underground and the plants aren't nearly as tall. That's going to be an issue because if I bury my plants the same way, the harvestable spot will be under the ground, but if I don't bury them, there will be literally hundreds of places where there's supposed to be a short plant and I've replaced it with a tall one, so who knows how weird that will look.
Do you know anything about what property in a mesh is the one that determines where and how large the activatable area is? Is that possible to tamper with?
I really appreciate everyone's help with this, if I haven't said so. Steve and Nonoodles and most especially Hanaisse and Tamira on the Bethsoft forums for walking me through my Nifskope nightmares. If I ever get this mod into releaseable shape, all your names are going in as contribtors. I couldn't have gotten this far on my own.
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That sound you hear is me banging my head against a wall.
I can't get the texture to show up on the new mesh now. What the hell am I doing wrong? The nif is in Data\Meshes\Plants\Fern.nif and the textures are Data\Textures\Plants\swordfern.dds and Data\Textures\Plants\swordfern_n.dds. The texture shows up fine in NifSkope. But when I add the object using that nif into a cell, it shows up with a red exclamation point.
Edit: Okay, progress is being made. I now have an invisible harvestable fern in my game. (laughing)
In the CK's Render window showing the cell, the red-blue-green outline box surrounding the plant is empty. No red exclamation point anymore, just empty. When I go into the game itself, the plant is there, but it's invisible. I know it's there because when I move my cursor crosshair over the place where I put the plant, I can see the Harvest Fiddlehead mesage. I can even click and harvest it. But I can't see the plant at all, it's invisible!
Yes, I am an idiot, thank you. I'm trying my best here, I just... apparently am stupid. Could someone explain to me how to de-invisible my fern? I'll keep trying in the meantime. I'm not normally this dense.
Edit 2: Arghhh. Someone kindly sent me the nif file that she created using the same method I did (that ended in an invisible plant). She said that mesh worked for her. Well, I loaded it into the CK -- and it's still invisible. Apparently this is a texture issue somehow, and not mesh-related. I'm still harvesting invisible plants. :(
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My original problem with the copy-paste method was that it wouldn't let me copy the LODTriShape for some reason. When I finally figured out how to get the stupid thing into another harvestable mesh, the problem then turned out to be that the activatable area was so tiny I missed it the first couple of times, and never realized the method DID work because I kept sweeping my cursor over the plant and not finding the right spot where the harvest option shows up.
But in your picture it looks like the whole plant is harvestable area. I'll go try it exactly the way you did and see if I can make it work.
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One more thing. Just because I know someone is going to suggest it, whatever it is about the harvestable plant mesh has nothing to do with the file name of the mesh or the name of the flora object. That's the first thing that occured to me when I couldn't find any other differences. Maybe the filenames of the harvestable plants are somehow hard-coded in. Nope.
Quote from my other thread:
If you take a vanilla harvestable plant mesh, say the canisroot01.nif, and rename it to testplant.nif, it still works. You can change its object ID, or create a new object entirely using that testplant.nif, and it works. You can change the ingredient it gives you when harvested, you can change the name of the plant to be This Is A Test Plant, and it still works.
What you CAN'T do is use a different mesh. Whenever you use a nonharvestable plant mesh, it simply shows up in game as a static object and sits there, not showing the activator or the Harvest "Plant Name" message on mouseover.
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Unfortunately it's definitely not that easy. Believe me, I spent close to 13 hours on this yesterday. Adding an ingredient to the existing flora form does nothing. If the object doesn't use a harvestable mesh, the plant just sits there and has no activator. Even duplicating an existing herb, like a potato plant, and just changing the mesh to the fiddlehead mesh, still doesn't work.
I posted this over at the Bethesda forums also, and an extremely nice and knowledgeable person walked me through copying the fiddlehead node data over to a harvestable mesh with a similar shape. That didn't work either.
Here is that other thread at Bethsoft, so you can see what we've tried to do so far and what didn't work.
There is something about the mesh of a harvestable plant that makes it work differently and damned if I can figure out what it is. Specifically, it's something about the NiTriShape block. If you replace that block on a harvestable mesh with a different NiTriShape, it stops functioning.
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I was working with the fiddlehead ferns, which don't have specific parts. The whole mesh is just one single node. But there's something different about a mesh that is harvestable vs one that isn't. If you look at them side by side in NifSkope, the harvestable one has a bunch of extra stuff in there and I don't know enough about working with meshes to have any idea what it is or how to recreate it.
Copy-paste doesn't work; I can copy the whole node from a harvestable plant mesh into the fiddlehead mesh file, but that brings the shape of the plant along with it, and I can't copy over just the node's properties and attach them to a node with the fiddlehead shape. If that makes sense. People who know how to work with meshes are probably laughing pretty hard right now. I know just enough about NifSkope to be frustrated with what I don't know, and to sound like an idiot.
I've been arguing with this for literally four or five hours now and I just give up. If I can't get an answer I'm going to simply commit mass floracide and replace every single fiddlehead in the game with a different harvestable mesh. Someone was kind enough to create a modder resource full of harvestable plants. I'll pick one of those. I'm just frustrated because the whole reason I wanted the fiddleheads was for a cooking\food mod, and most of the plants in the resource file aren't food-related.
Also, if I knew how to make an existing mesh into a harvestable, I'd go through and add a lot more after the fiddleheads. There are a bunch of plants in Skyrim that I always pass by and try to harvest because they look like a harvestable plant -- detailed, colorful, kinda stand out from the background -- but they're not.
I have nothing but free time, and I don't mind tedium, I just don't have the knowledge to do this.
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I'm trying to figure out how to make a vanilla plant into a harvestable plant. After some aggravation I've managed to figure out that the difference is in the nif file being used. You can change everything else and it'll still be harvestable, but the nif files of regular plants are somehow different from the nif files of harvestables and for the life of me I can't tell why. I'm not experienced enough in Nifskope. Anyone better than I am who could tell me what I have to do to fiddlehead fern mesh (meshes\landscape\plants\treeswordferncluter06) to make it harvestable?
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That first question isn't quite fair... the choices aren't mutually exclusive. Skyrim doesn't have supermodels, no. They're unrealistic and\or not lore-friendly. Choice 1.
Except I might well have modded my game into Sexrim anyway. Choice 4 isn't stating that you think it's totally realistic, it's just stating that you did it anyway. ;)
Personally, I use Bella's Better Females mod, but not the stripper makeup option. Most of the women in my game are pretty, but not sexy, if that makes sense. Pretty faces, yes. Skimpy armor and huge jigging boobs, no.
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Okay, I'm a bit confused. I'm trying to add specific items for sale at inns depending on whether they're under Stormcloak or Imperial control. All was well until I got to Markarth, where there seems to be some confusion as to the name of the inn. The only vendor chest I can find is named MerchantMarkarthSilverFishInnChest. Except there is no Silver-Fish inn. Not in Markarth, not anywhere in the game that I could find. There is however a Silver-Blood Inn in Markarth.
Is it pretty safe to assume that I've got the correct vendor chest here, and apparently the name of the inn changed at some point during development?
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I just wanted to mention that in Oblivion, there were a couple of mods that allowed you to set a sliding timescale depending on where you were. You could set it to 10 for in-town, 30 for in the wilds, something else for in a dungeon, or in combat, or in conversation with an NPC. Then your timescale would shift automatically as you played and you'd never have to mess with it again. It was fantastic. I don't know if anyone's made such a mod for Skyrim yet, but I wouldn't think it'd be too difficult.
Edit: Found one. Kuertee to the rescue!
Variable TimeScale:
In combat, or while sneaking: 10.
Indoors or when not moving when outdoors: 20.
When travelling on roads: TimeScale increases up to 60.
When travelling cross-country: increases up to 90.
These features "virtually" increase the distance while travelling outdoors because more time will pass while
travelling. Survival mods has more of an impact when TimeScale is set high.
You can adjust any of the default timescale settings to whatever number you like, or turn them off entirely on an individual basis. It's not an absolutely perfect solution -- it won't detect when you're "inside" a town but still technically outdoors, as in Riverwood -- but it does solve the issue of time passing too quickly in towns and too slowly in the wilds.
Here's another: Dynamic Timescale
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Hey, I was wondering if there's a way to make the drinks from a new mod I'm creating compatible with Basic Needs?
I've figured out how to do the foods, and the alcohol -- but I'm running into a problem with drinks such as milk and cider. There's no script in Basic Needs that applies to a nonalcoholic beverage, and I can't write one without seeing the source scripts.
I'd really like my mod to be compatible with Basic Needs, because I can't play without it!
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Same issue here. It's like I never installed the mod at all, nothing seems to be working.
As an aside, I love the fact that you can come to this site and be like, "Yes, I downloaded a sex mod because I want to see pixelated nudity and animated characters getting it on" and nobody even blinks because they all downloaded it too.
For what it's worth I wanted the mod because I like to play a full immersion set-up, which means Cutthroat Merchants and not being awarded 12 dozen gold for a fetch quest, among other things. Yes, it's realistic and all, but it can also be difficult to come up with enough coin to buy food and a place to sleep, both of which are required by various immersion mods. When you start out with nothing, your first need is to get food, which you can't buy with no coins and can't hunt without a bow which you have no coins to buy. You could get a bow from a dead bandit, but you'll never be able to train your unarmed skill up to the level required to kill a bandit before you starve to death.
So your options are limited; become a thief, or get used to the taste of stale apples and cabbages found in other people's garbage. If Skyrim were real there should also be a third option - sell your body for coin. Why won't the game let me do that, damnit? I mean, I bet certain nobles would pay a whole lot for a chance to (censored) the Dragonborn. Hmph.
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Dawnguard removes the alchemy lab and replaces it with a child's bedroom?
Screw that. The brat can sleep in a cupboard under the stairs.
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I'm wondering if I can get away with using a whole bunch of torch mods together. Even though these all affect torch-related stuff, from my limited understanding I suspect that each one is editing a different aspect and in theory nothing should explode by using them at the same time. That said, I'm usually wrong.
Dynamic Torches
SM Drop Lit Torches
Double Torch Radius
Light Up the Night - People Have Torches
Dynamic Torches is a mod that replaces all the static torches in the game with regular torches that you can grab and use. The others pretty much all do exactly what it says on the tin.
I'm thinking that Dynamic Torches edits static torches and replaces them with vanilla torches, Drop Lit Torches replaces the script on vanilla torches, Double Torch Radius edits the light source, and People Have Torches edits NPC inventories. Since those are all different edits, I shouldn't have any Rule of One edit wars?
Or I could be totally misunderstanding how mods work. This is a fairly likely possibility.
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Unfortunately I've got no useful advice, other than to agree that it does sound like the description of SkyTEST. I just wanted to say that I almost spit coffee on my keyboard reading your post about wild bands of super-intelligent frost spiders methodically conquering one village at a time as they sweep through Skyrim on what is obviously some sort of spider jihad. I haven't laughed that much in a while. Brings back memories of someone's plea for help regarding dozens of naked women in the lobby of the Tiber Septim Hotel.
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It works, it works! (does the my-mod-finally-works-after-6+-hours-of-swearing dance)
Thank you both so much.
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Before you make the patch, esmify the .esp you want to make a patch for with Wrye Bash. Whenever you want to test it, you need to espify the master .esp again.
Remember to do this each time you want to make changes to the patch, otherwise it will get broken.
I'm not sure I follow.
To make the patch, I first esmify the original mod, then load up the resulting esm in the CK, and create my esp with the esm as a master. Then... ? When I want to use my patch, do I espify the original mod again, or keep it as an esm?
If I espify the original mod before trying it out, wouldn't my patch now be looking for a master esm that doesn't exist, since I've turned it back into an esp?
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I'll try to make this quick, but my question necessarily requires some explanation.
How do I go about creating a patch for an existing mod using the CK? In Oblivion, I would open the CS and load up the mod I wanted to patch, but not set it active. Then I'd make whatever changes I wished, save my work as a new esp with the original mod as a master, and put it into my load order making sure the patch went below its master. All done.
Evidently, that's not the way it works with the Creation Kit. I followed the same method as above to create my patch, but when I try to load the game with my patch placed after the original mod in my load order, it crashes. If I place my patch BEFORE the original mod, the game won't crash, but none of the patch's changes are taking effect either.
What am I doing wrong?
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Iliana wasn't banned for misbehavior (that I'm aware of) -- she asked the mods for her account to be banned. She used to do that periodically when she was really having a problem coping with the barrage of insults and demands from stupid people, but until now she'd always come back after awhile and make her mods available again. I just assumed that's what happened this time only without the coming back part. I could be wrong, maybe she got fed up and went on a swearing spree or something to get herself permanently banned on purpose. Whether by her explicit request or not, I'm sure the ban was at least by her own wish.
Creating Harvestable Plant Mesh
in Skyrim LE
Posted