Wasbunny

I've got to say I really like your work, you obviously have talent and a passion for modeling / texturing. I do though think it would be worthwhile to follow through with the whole process of getting them into game, especially if you're at all thinking of following a career as a game artist. There are a lot of requirements & constrictions of the modeling process that only become apparent after it's put in game (poly count, weight painting, clipping, interplay of texture maps etc.). I've had to learn this myself through endless and often torturous days/months of trial & error, tutorials, and forum pleas for help. There are so many things you don't discover until the asset is actually in game that it's almost painting in the dark until you do. Things like how does the in-game lighting affect my diffuse / spec / normal maps? Does the weight painting look natural in all animations? How well does it scale with the weight slider? Are the pieces compatible with other armor pieces?...and on and on. Once you go through and get your workflow down you'll be taking these things into account from the start instead of trying to troubleshoot and backtrack all the work you've already done. The problem with creating assets to hand off to someone else to put in game is also the cold hard truth that no matter what, the mesh & textures will need to be adjusted and tweaked long after you initially get them in game. Sometimes endlessly. You'll be flipping back and forth between 4+ programs and the game itself and making any needed changes. It's therefore very impractical, if not impossible, to avoid this grueling part of the process. But take heart, you're already way ahead of the game judging by your modelling and texturing skills and if you have a real desire to continue either as personal art or as a career you should find it all worth it. I really hope you do get your work in game as it is some of the best armor designs I've seen. Good Luck!

I had something similar happen with my armor mod that I noticed after a Skyrim update (1.7 or something I think). All of a sudden my own mod, which worked great up until then stopped responding to the weight slider on just one piece of the male version. I eventually tracked down the problem and I'm still scratching my head about this one. The only difference between the armor pieces that worked and the one that didn't was the actual file name of the .nif, it had a capital letter while the others where all lower case. Really didn't think it would matter but I changed both 0 & 1 files to all lower case and what do you know...weight slider was working again. I have to assume it had something to do with the update as once I made sure everything was lowercase all has been wine and roses since. So check that all your .nif files are all lowercase. If they are and people are still having problems...then I guess I'm out of ideas. Hope that helps some.

Intriguing and ambitious. Reminds me of my first D&D dungeon creation as a youngling, made the 2nd plane of hell (I admittedly have a bit of a Mordor fascination). I'll help out if I can and PM you with more specifics. Great start though, you seem organized and knowledgeable about what all goes into a mod/DLC/game of this scope. Cheers!

Holy cow! Thank you...the inability to easily order the images has driven me nuts until now. One step closer to a perfect world...thanks Nexus!

Happy New Year everyone! You all make me a very happy bunny as well.

Thanks for the article Dark0ne. Sui Generis just blew my mind...if I had any money I'd be tossing it at that project myself.

Great moderation system Dark0ne. Endorsed!

Hey...that's actually a great idea, thanks Grimoa! That would should work as I've already added a custom forge, plus the perk is already required to forge any of the pieces. Thanks again...that might just be exactly what I'll do.

Hi all, I have a mod that has a unique player owned chest that I only want them to have access to if they have a specific perk that is included in the mod. All the pieces are already there (perk & chest etc.) but I need a condition added to the chest that will only allow it to be opened if the player has the appropriate perk. I don't want to use a key since the perk relies on completing a quest, some having completed it before installing the mod. So, that's my question: Can a chest be unlocked only if one has a certain perk, and if so how. Thanks!

Just going to echo what most people are saying with regards to taking Ceri out of vanilla. I too have been traveling with Vilja and Ceri and am 100% supportive of having Ceri taken out of vanilla. One reason being that I had wanted to eliminate the follower mod I was using (AFT) since it seemed to level all the followers to the point of being overpowered (in fact to keep things balanced it really should decrease the levels with each addition...but that's off topic). I was told by the Vilja team that since Vilja wasn't counted towards the usual follower count I could recruit her in addition to the standard (1) with no follower mod installed. They also actually thought Ceri was set up this way too, but as soon as I uninstalled AFT it became very clear that Ceri needed to be taken out of the vanilla system. Ceri and Vilja seem to get along so well, I know I'm not alone in eagerly awaiting any kind of real interaction between them (Ceri should stay the quiet one though imo, don't need two delightful chatterboxes). I don't know how I missed seeing the 1.7 update (it says in NMM 1.0 though)...but excitedly downloading now.

Make sure 'has vertex colors' is set to yes for everything in Nifskope and make sure the 'dismemberment' body part type number is correct and consistent with what you have in CK.

Also, double check your texture paths in Nifskope that they are not linking directly to your specific directory structure. They should all start with /textures. If you just hit the little flower link thing it will create a file structure identical to yours, not necessarily everyone else's (which I think is why it sometimes only works with loose files for some people).

Total wild guess but did you make sure under NiTriShapeData the Num UV Sets is set to 4097? Thanks for letting us know about the update to Nifskope btw.

Wow, it's hard to believe there's actually so much more to Ceri than I've already seen. Haven't found Elric yet, but a taunting tank punching bag is exactly what I was wishing for. Kind of tried making one myself by just giving a lot of armor and a wooden sword to Lidia :D An archetype I think that would be REALLY fun and balanced would be basically crowd control. Using Illusion / Alteration based spells that do no damage but severely confuse, fear, snare, stun, root, disarm, polymorph etc. Skyrim is lacking in snaring spells (had to make a custom one for my own mod), I miss Oblivion's Burden spells. So you might have to play with some new custom spells. I usually play kind of a Illusion based DPS for this reason, it's just so much fun manipulating the enemy and strategically controlling the battle. I think it would be so interesting to see what your crowd controlling (jester?) follower would do next. I think it would be wise if they were programmed to get out of harms way and elude / evade as much as possible (slightly faster, invisibility spells, Calm when attacked directly...). Man, a sly fiendishly amusing crowd controlling jester adding constant chaos to every battle...I now have my Christmas wishlist.

Hey Mujuro, thank you for all the mind blowing work you've done on Ceri (and for helping me with my own project). My 2 cents: I really just started using Ceri (I won't take up space to gush about her, but she's my only real follower now) and I'm using AFT. She does work flawlessly with AFT but I've been recently eliminating followers because even on master, with the Deadly Dragons cranked up for NPC's and monsters it's becoming unbalanced, too easy. You've done such a great job balancing and calibrating her abilities that I see no problem at all taking her out of the equation with other mods for everything except still being able to recruit more than one follower at a time. This way you can focus on balancing her by herself and the player has the option to add more followers (I've been giving various Interesting NPC's a wooden sword and no armor just for the company).All the 'tweak' commands I use (gather horses, summon followers, etc.) can be issued to any other followers I have with me, I like her to remain unique. I actually find it a little immersion breaking to have her show unvoiced 'Tweaks' at the top of her conversation list. If that one multiple follower compatibility would remain I think it would be perfect to divorce her from the other mods. ...and maybe continue to ride horses too =)

I figured it out!!!! Yay! Thanks pfthemagicdragon for looking into this and yeah I tried everything you suggested...but here's the BIG ANSWER for anyone trying to add an additional piece of armor (cloak, mask or whatever) and want it to be listed under Light Armor or Dragonscale or whatever but NOT have it invalidate the Matching Set perk.... There are TWO forms in CK that need to be edited and evaluations changed: PerkMatchingSet and MatchingSet (spell). In the second form open the list at the bottom and another list of conditions shows up. All these must be changed from ==4 to >=4. So now adding additional items of any type won't fail the condition. My mistake was I was only changing the evaluations in one form, assuming that was controlling everything...it doesn't. All armor mods that are adding additional items should make this easy change so the perk system doesn't break IMHO. Anyway, that's the fix...wow, what a long hard road out of perk Hell! WOOT!

Thanks DreamKingMods, I've been starting with a character without the perk, adding via the console. The really perplexing thing is I downloaded a mod that fixes this called 'Matching Set Perk Fix' and when that's installed things work perfectly. As far as I can tell I'm doing exactly the same thing as the author of the mod, changing the conditions from ==4 to >=4. The changes I make in my .esp just don't seem to 'take'. My workaround has been to just add a link to his mod, but I really need to permanently fix this with mine. Please let me know if you know of anything I'm overlooking. Thanks for the help.

I have a custom armor set that includes an additional item, a cloak that is forged under dragonscale armor: keyword 'armormaterialdragonscale'. So I'm trying to edit the perkmatchingset perk in CK since the condition is ==4 (no more and no less than 4) which fails if I add another dragonscale item. Any and all changes to this are having absolutely no effect in game, the conditions of the perk fail everytime I equip the 5th item. Changing the equation does nothing. Changing the number in the condition changes nothing. Is it just not possible to create additional items that are wearable without it invalidating the perk? Really need help on this one...been banging my head against a wall for days trying to find the solution. I'm convinced just changing the equation to >=4 should work. But of course...it doesn't. Thanks everyone.

I guess might as well try, although logically is shouldn't work with the dragonscale keyword if it doesn't work with mine (just re-tested for the zillionth time...still the same). When I player.addperk 00051b17 (Matching Set) I do see it in the perk tree, but I'll verify that out too with the method you mentioned. REALLY appreciate all the help on this Mujuro, thank you.

Yeah right? Seems like it should work. To test it I've been assigning the dragonscale keywords to all 4 pieces of armor, go ingame, and through the console and and remove the perks...and it works fine. I go back into CK, change to my custom material keyword and in game the Matching Set perk has no effect. The base skill of my test subject is not >=70 but since it does work with the dragonscale....I don't know. I'm starting to think I'm just doing something stupid, so I'll have to keep trying to trouble shoot the problem. I guess I could also try reverse engineering someone else's armor mod to see what they did to get it to work. Thanks!

Thanks Mujoro, Yeah, I have actually added the entry with my material keyword and used the same conditions (==4), even tried other conditions to get it to work and still no luck. I'll keep fiddling with it though. Really appreciate your help.

Thanks for the response Mujoro. Not trying to add to the required conditions (4) just want to substitute my 'material' for the 'ArmorMaterialDragonscale' keyword to fulfill the condition. Everything works fine except with the material keyword that I made. Really seems like it would would work...but doesn't. At a loss...

Hi, I have a custom armor set that I've added 1 (will be adding another) unique worn item, let say a cloak and I can't seem to get the 'Matching Set' perk to acknowledge the material keyword I made for any of the items. If I add the keywords for say ArmorMaterialDragonscale to the four main items (leaving it out of the cloak) everything works fine. But I've added a new material keyword by duplicating another and changing the name, then adding that keyword to the condition list of the perk 'PerkCustomFit" with the same everything else, then add it to the four items it doesn't work. I'm sure I'm missing one little thing and I have to think others have come across this same problem when creating custom armor. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'd like to have this fixed by the time I upload the last 'extra' piece. For now I just left it so that you can get the Matching Set bonus with either all this armor or a mix of this and dragonscale...not ideal really. Thanks Everyone!

I'm also looking into this and so far this is my understanding of how this would work. New armor colors have to be their own mesh/texture files, so a complete new version in each shade of the armor would have to be created. One method I've come across is to create the base at the forge and then go to the tanning rack and there would be a recipe that includes the base armor and maybe some dyes or plants and the new colored version of the armor is created (destroying the original as if it was an ingredient). This makes the whole process a bit heavy since every variation of each piece must be created (with unique names) separately. But if offering a couple color variations to some custom armor I think it might be the way to go. As far as I know there is no way to create a recipe that would just swap out the texture files of the same .nif file. If there is a way to do this with scripting or something I would also be very interested.

Hehe...figured it out! For anyone else running into this here's the answer: scaling models (0 & 1) are REQUIRED for 1st person, at least if your main mesh has 0 & 1 (scaling) files. I stupidly thought I could get away with only one mesh for the 1st person *DUHOY!*. Anyway live and learn, thanks me for all the help and I'll definitely credit you when I release my armor tomorrow. ;)