SSE Looking for a way to attach nif or effect to the camera (Non-SKSE)

[SamHe11]

I'm looking for a way to create a visual effect that remains temporarily in the camera view regardless of the player's activity. Sort of a quick and dirty HUD element. My end goal is to keep track of the number of critical hits the player scores with a specific dagger and then, one way or another, flash a little graphic of the running total on the screen momentarily. I've got the first part scripted and running beautifully, but I have no way to show on screen the running total aside from using debug messages. And I don't want to spam Notification messages this way. That's done to death and rather distracting from what I've observed around the community over the years.

 

I'm thinking more of using an art object in the form of a nif or visual effect particle. I've gotten pretty good with scripting and nif editing, but I'm unfamiliar with a couple of the other elements I'm trying to implement here, namely effect shaders, particle emitters, AddOnNodes, etc...which is why I'm looking for help now. I've also looked into adding custom HUD elements, but from I've seen that would require SKSE and I'm trying to avoid that.

 

Some things I've considered and/or experimented with:

 

 

 

• Use nifskope to attach a 2 dimensional nif to a node on the camera translated out into the camera's field of view. This would be great if it's possible as the nif would be visible regardless of whether the player is using 1st or 3rd person view, moving, jumping, looking around, etc. But there are several different camera objects listed in the CK and the system is confusing to me. The CK wiki also has very limited info on camera manipulation.

 

• Use a Visual Effect attached to the camera (check box in the CK) with custom art added to the nif of the VE. Again, this would be ideal as the graphic could show regardless of 1st/3rd person view. However, the custom mesh I add to the VE nif in nifskope doesn't show up at all in game. I've played around with its positioning thinking maybe it was hiding behind the camera's view or off to the side somewhere. But no amount of tampering has brought success. This is most likely b/c of my limited understanding of particle emitters used in VEs and effect shaders.

 

• Instead of adding to the Visual Effect nif, instead change its settings so that it is slowed down to a stand-still with a custom texture file as the particle "frozen" in place on the screen for the player to see. The amount and combination of settings for these systems is staggering and my understanding of them is very limited. I don't even know if what I'm suggesting is even possible.

 

• Use a script to repeatedly translate the graphic nif to the player, making it float along beside him/her. Also add a Billboard node to the nif so it's always facing the camera regardless of angle. Not too crazy about this method as depending on the camera view, the graphic likely wouldn't be visible half the time depending its position relative to the player. If translated in front of the player, it probably wouldn't be visible while in 3rd person. If translated behind the player, it wouldn't be visible while in 1st person.

 

 

 

That's all I have for now. I've spent hours experimenting with different methods and I have no idea if I'm wasting my time or not. I think the Visual Effect or Camera node methods would work best. But the systems used by each are complex and confusing. I'm hoping someone else has had experience getting this to work or can at least point me in the right direction. Thanks.