nerdofprey

double post

You can't just delete animations or make them "blank." You have to replace the animation with another animation. Once you figure out which one it is, you can just rename one of the other one-handed idles and overwrite it. They'll still technically do the animation in-game but it will not be THAT animation, and any other one-handed animation should blend decently. I've done this before. I was annoyed by the "nervous lookaround" animation and just found a cool idle animation somewhere and replaced the file with that. It works great. Trying to disable it with an .esp or batch script is not a good idea. That's like if you don't like the song playing on your car radio so you pop the hood and start ripping parts out of the engine...

"Say once" doesn't work with quests that are not start game enabled. The game will reset it on load. I usually work around that by putting a long repeat timer on it and setting conditions based on quest stages. It IS better not to use start game enabled if you can avoid it, but that's one drawback. I'm not sure what you are doing as far as implementing or testing the copied character. It should be extremely simple. You drag-and-drop Malborn into Sky Haven Temple, set him as "initially disabled," set the original Malborn Ref as the enable parent, and check "opposite of parent." It might work best to make a duplicate of Malborn's base actor for this purpose, so you can give him his own AI packages and not trip over any vanilla mechanics. It's possible this copy would only become enabled at the moment when the original actor is disabled by the original quest, so you would need to test with a save where that hadn't happened yet. It's possible Malborn is not disabled when he "leaves the country" and that instead he is moved to a holding cell somewhere. I have not looked into it. If that's the case then the simple enable trick won't work. You could still work with a copy of the NPC instead of trying to move the original around, but you'd have to come up with some other way to enable him. This is kind of a tangent, but: Malborn in the vanilla game is a really weak character who can very easily get killed by random enemies when he's running around during quests. If you have big plans for him, it might be good to set him as protected.

In that case, since he no doubt gets disabled at that point, you'll need a script to re-enable him. Or you can put a copy of him in the temple that is initially disabled and enable it at that point in the game. You would probably be able to do that by setting the original reference as its enable parent and check that box that says "opposite of parent," and again, this would be a simple no-script solution.

You probably don't need to use any scripts at all. You could just put a sandbox AI package on him that says once quest X is completed, sandbox around Skyhaven Temple. You would probably need to override his AI that makes him flee the country after the assassin quest. I'm guessing putting it at the top of the stack on his alias in that quest would do it, but I have not checked. It would be possible to use MoveTo on package start, but it might be cooler if you don't; by default he would just walk there in real-time from wherever he is. For flavor you could add some idle markers like sweep the floor in Skyhaven Temple, and set him as the owner so other NPC's wouldn't use them.

Since this happens "off screen" it would be possible to disable her at that stage and swap in a different NPC for the remainder of the playthrough. I'm not sure how that might complicate quests, dialogue and scripts that point to her reference ID or base ID. I absolutely know it could be done, but I'm not sure how complicated it would be in the end; that would probably involve a number of edits to the quests. I have never tried this, and I'm not sure if anybody else has, but it seems like it might be possible to create a facegen mesh/texture for the new appearance and implement it as an armor object that the character equips. That way it would be the same reference of the same NPC, but with a new face, and all it would take is a little script to change the character's default outfit. Might be worth a shot.

When your item takes up the "head" slot, that means it will hide the head. You need to use only the hair slot or the circlet slot or something like that; you have a few choices. Just make sure absolutely nothing in your mesh or your plugin is using the actual head slot. Edit: It works like this across the board, BTW. Those partition numbers tell an armor item what to REPLACE.

There have been a few times where I just could not pin down the issue, and eventually resorted toward copying the _0 mesh and reshaping it into a new _1 mesh...

I believe what you're describing is what happens when the weight slider is correctly implemented in the plugin, but there's a problem with your meshes. They don't quite align. It's not a bad enough problem to crash your game or cause crazy graphical glitches, so it should be fixable. Check the names of the shapes, the order of the shapes, and the skin partitions.

"Fox race" is the default race just because it's first alphabetically; race is one of the few fields in the CK with no "none" option. You can't create an actor with no race. It's grayed out there because it's not applicable to that character record. At the bottom left where you see "actor base," that's your issue. The characters that show up as "fox race" are using a template and they pull their actual race from the template NPC. In the case of your screenshot they are pulling from a leveled NPC, meaning their appearance and varying other stats will be pulled from a leveled list of random characters. And that means they can't be edited in that character record. Only the unchecked boxes in that lower left area can be edited for this copied NPC. In your case you are able to edit "base data" which means their name among other things; this could be used to create a named NPC with a randomized appearance. You could also edit that character's keywords and factions in this case. Of course you can change those checkboxes, but it's not usually a good idea. What you probably want to do is edit all the TEMPLATE NPCs, then those changes will carry forward to every randomized NPC. You really don't want to un-randomize those NPCs, or you'll end up with LESS variety in your game, i.e. a room full of bandits with the same face, inventory, stats... It is not necessary to recreate the leveled lists if you edit the characters in those lists.

Really you can make a character look like anybody. Depending what the person looks like (relative similarity to existing Skyrim models/textures, or modded assets) the level of difficulty could vary. It also depends on if you're going for brutal honesty or a more fantasy version of yourself. You can check the nexus for hundreds of examples of people trying to do Skyrim portraits of celebrities, or friends of theirs, or probably even themselves, with varying levels of realism and varying degrees of success. It's sort of like asking "is it possible to paint a self-portrait?" Like yeah, it's always possible, but there is some combination of skill and dedication involved. Even if there's an automated process out there, you might want to fine-tune it from there. Definitely I'd start by installing RaceMenu and some custom hair mods if you want to take a crack at it. Personally my background is in art and specifically in sculpting, which really helps when I'm trying to make my video game characters look a certain way. I realize not everybody is trained in that field. I can tell you, there's a reason self-portraits are such a core part of learning art skills. It's the best learning exercise you can do. You can tell if it looks right or wrong because you know your own face better than any other image. Like if you draw a basket of fruit and the proportions are off you might never notice, but if you look at an image of your own face and the proportions are off, you definitely notice. Once you hone your skills by drawing yourself, you are much better equipped to draw other people or things. Similarly, I think trying to create yourself in RaceMenu would be a pretty great way to teach yourself how to make faces in Skyrim!

You probably did not add any bone weights to the mesh. You can do that really easily in Outfit Studio. Probably best to delete whatever bones are currently in there just in case anything was set up wrong, then copy all bone weights from a body mesh or a similarly shaped armor. You can fine-tune weight painting for each individual bone if you'd like to, but the automatic copy process in OS usually does pretty well.

I had another idea... It really seems like being in an exterior by itself should be an easy test for whether you're out of jail, since there are no exterior jails in the game. I'm pretty sure every crime faction in the game also puts you in an exterior cell when you're released. The only other way to get from a jail to another cell is to escape, and I've established that escaping works... I could add a condition on the AI package in question that the player has to be in an interior, then edit the script on the package to force JailQuest to stop when the package stops. That way I could avoid unintended side effects like the characters losing their stuff if you walk into a jail for some other reason later. If there's a mod that puts a jail in an exterior somewhere, the package would never start... which is better than anything breaking, at least.

Off topic but... I see this question asked frequently in this forum, which is called "Skyrim Creation Kit and Modders," which is in the category "Skyrim Modding," which is in the category "Skyrim." Are these threads being moved by moderators or something?

Oh yeah, I remember poking at that a little bit and not really understanding how it related. It could work, though. I guess I would need to figure out how many game days typically pass when you serve your time.

Yeah, but in this case I'm not trying to change how the arrest system works, I'm just trying to get my mod to react to it. Like I don't want to make a change to a core game script (even if it sucks) to get a gimmick to work in a comedy follower mod... When you have never been arrested, JailQuest returns stage 0. So the crime system doesn't rely on it staying at 10 all the time. I think it's safe to manually stop the quest after it's started. I tested stopping it via the console and then punching a guard, and I got thrown in jail the same as I was the first time. I don't think it's necessary to set it to 100. I think the 100 stage has to do with escaping?

Well, I was not talking to you Deathmarcher, I was answering the OP's question. To answer YOUR question: You're thinking of presets. That's a completely unrelated function from the mesh export thing. RaceMenu presets are not meshes at all, they are a big pile of slider data that reshapes the player character's face according to previous settings, and it's stored in a whole different folder. You can not use a preset file as a head mesh, or a head mesh file as a preset. I'm assuming the OP's question was about exporting facegen meshes, not about saving and loading presets? I could have misunderstood, but you don't typically have a reason to look for preset files outside the game or use them in the making of mods, so from context I assumed...

I don't think so? I have not seen anything to indicate that. I was thinking I might just have to put in a little dummy dialogue line, like a split second of silence with no subtitle so the player never sees anything happen, that tests for JailQuest running, the character being in an exterior cell and not having their gear on them, with a script that resets and stops JailQuest. I think the effect would be that the player tries interacting with the follower one time and nothing happens, then when they try again the issue is fixed.

Oh and by the way "spf" totally works, but it does NOT export meshes or textures, it exports vanilla game slider settings (as a .npc file in Skyrim's root folder) which can then be imported into the CK. It's actually useful even if you're using a custom head mesh, because it will match skin tone for you.

From RaceMenu you have to be in the "sculpt" tab to export a head. It will say what button to press, I think it's F9?

This concern is actually completely unrelated to my other thread about trying to make a custom crime/arrest system. Right now I'm having issues with a different mod and the default vanilla arrest system. I'm having a lot of trouble getting the conditions on an AI package to work. I want the package to start when the player goes to jail and stop when they get out. I recently added a feature to my follower mod where the characters will lose their items, change into prison clothes, and land in a cell along with the player whenever you're arrested. I set it up as start/end scripts on an AI package, and the package has a condition that "JailQuest" has to be active. It works perfectly when you get arrested, and it works perfectly if you escape; if you reach the "prisoner belongings chest" JailQuest stops, the AI package stops and the followers' inventories are immediately restored. The problem is, if you simply serve your time in jail, the package never stops and the followers lose their items indefinitely. I've done a lot of testing of this and found that: - JailQuest starts if you're arrested but doesn't actually stop when you are released - If I use the console to forcibly stop JailQuest, the AI package will update and they will get their stuff back - Checking the current stage of JailQuest before and after stopping it always returns stage 10; it doesn't really seem to use other stages, and it just sits there at stage 10 doing nothing before and after you serve your time - If I walk into the nearest jail and interact with the prisoner belongings chest, even with nothing in it, the package updates and they get their stuff back; this might be "immersive" in a sense but it's tedious I've been testing a bunch of other conditions for the AI package, but anything I add either makes no difference or stops the package from ever starting. I can't figure out a reliable way to test for the player being in jail. I can't go off quest stages if JailQuest is literally always at stage 10. I can't go off location keywords because some jails in the game are apparently not tagged with jail keywords, plus if JailQuest stays active forever then just walking into a jail as a free citizen would trigger the AI package and the followers would suddenly lose their stuff again. There's a "GetArrestedState" condition but I can't find any documentation and I can't get it to do anything. Apparently you can use "IsArrested" in scripts but there's no "GetIsArrested" condition function. I could work around this with a dialogue option that restores their inventories, but I'd prefer that this be a nice seamless feature where the player does not need to micromanage it.

In this case I'm pretty sure there's no alternative. This quest is part of a chain, and I can't think of a way to replace a link in that chain without editing a vanilla script somewhere. I've had absolutely no issues with the edited script working flawlessly in testing, but I'm just worried about the potential for the user to break it on their end somehow, most likely by having the original script loose in their files somewhere, or by somehow having another mod lower in their load order that edits the same quest. (I don't know of any mods that edit the Cidhna Mine quest.) This is why I'm thinking of pointing the quest to a totally different script in the plugin, which renaming it should accomplish? That way the vanilla script, if present, should do nothing because it never fires. Can you tell me a specific reason why editing vanilla scripts "isn't a good idea?" It's something I avoid unless strictly necessary, to be sure, but I'm more worried about mod compatibility than anything else. If it's a script that does a bunch of different things in the game in different circumstances I could see an issue, but I'm only touching stuff that affects one quest in one location. I'm reasonably comfortable with quests and scripts at this point, and I'm not seeing the potential for catastrophe in this case, but feel free to explain...

Arthmoor: This isn't necessary. It's perfectly safe to delete selected triangles from the vanilla navmesh. It only becomes an issue when you delete the ENTIRE vanilla navmesh in a cell. Case in point: Every mod I've ever released that needed navmesh work both adds and deletes triangles from vanilla navmeshes. They work just fine. @wizardsmith: Do the edits you need to do. Be careful NOT to remove the navmeshes entirely. When you're satisfied, you need to go into the two cells you edited and use the functions to find "cover edges" and "finalize". This will properly restore the borders between cells and they should light back up in green as expected. You should then check it for ITMs and deleted references in TES5Edit to make sure nothing went wrong in the process. So I didn't need to drag the original navmesh away, what I tried first but was pretty much complicated. I have now deleted the triangles below the house and trees and other places and connected my new to the vanilla one and it's working without issues. Perhaps this may help you. Holy crap, if this is true this is a serious game-changer! I'm going to have to test this tonight. I have recently been working with navcut boxes, and that's been working just fine for what I was doing... but if I could safely delete a few triangles, wow, that would make things work so much better!

Thanks! Might be worth a try. I actually got this to work via the forcegreet package method. It did involve editing the base actors of every type of guard in the Reach, which was tedious, and which could potentially cause mod conflicts. I made sure to carry over USLEEP changes to those NPC's. It may be a better idea to do as you've suggested and have a dynamic script attach the forcegreet package to guards as the player encounters them. This might also potentially eliminate a weird bug I've run into where guards' AI packages are too slow to update, so they actually follow you into the mine and try to forcegreet you there, after you've already been captured. I'm already making significant edits to the original Cidhna Mine quest scripts, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem to throw a line in there that puts a cloak effect on the player when they're first thrown into the mine, and one that removes it again on quest completion. Edit: On that note, I was thinking the mod might run more smoothly if, instead of simply editing the content of the vanilla quest scripts, I rename them as well, effectively removing the vanilla script from the quest. But I'm worried about both scripts trying to fire at once if something goes wrong, which would probably totally break it...

If you want to get really fancy you can also add a script to the book that sets a quest stage when you read it and put that quest stage as a condition as well. You wouldn't need to write a script; there are several default ones that will set stages when a book is read, just go to add script and search for onread or onclosebook or setstage. This is totally unnecessary but it would be a cool extra. What's fun about this is the player needs to actually read the book to "gain the knowledge" to craft the stuff. You could put images of the armor in the book or something. Having the book in your inventory should still be set as a condition, though, because that way people can set the book aside again later to un-clutter their crafting menu.