Throw-on Combat Armor

[Relativelybest]

So, another random idea here: would it be possible to take a combat armor and remove everything but the actual armor parts, and then set it to be worn in a different slot to create the illusion of wearing it on top of any other outfit?

 

Obviously, this wouldn't go well with bulkier stuff like power armor, but still, the idea is that you could wear combat armor over your Merc grunt outfit/pre-war park stroller outfit/Chinese stealth suit/whatever you feel like, looking kinda like your character threw it on without wanting to bother with the belt and clothes to go with it.

[Deleted1084753User]

Neat idea that should be simple :) It's not though, unfortunately. You don't actually 'wear' armour in-game, your entire body mesh is swapped out for the appropriate male or female version of whatever apparel you're wearing. So basically, while it's a simple matter making combat armour wearable over other armours in the GECK (that bit's dead simple), the hard part would be extracting every single apparel item you'd want this mod to apply to, then editing them in your 3D program of choice to have the combat armour over the top, then put those all back in the game, then create a duplicate of every apparel item you need in the GECK and assigning the new meshes to those (for when you equip the combat armour over the top of the already worn apparel), THEN you'd have to write a script of some sort to check what you're wearing, whether you're wearing combat armour already, and to change to the armoured version of the apparel you're wearing should you happen to pick up and equip some combat armour over the top.

 

Phew.... so yeah, awesome idea but it'd be a lot of work :)

[Relativelybest]

What about stuff like the Tesla Power Pack or the various backpack mods? I can't imagine they required all that, so obviously its possible to make meshes that can be worn parallel to vanilla apparels without switching out the whole body mesh.

[Deleted1084753User]

Hmmz... you're right, I forgot completely about armour addons :o So yeah, actually that'd be a good deal simpler to implement, you'd need to export the combat armour mesh, pull it to bits and export those as seperate nifs, then create a new set of armour addons that would attach the pieces to the player mesh the same way backpacks and things work. I probably can't do that myself yet since I'm still completely noobified on nifskope and can't seem to get stuff to work as I want yet. Who knows though, I might look at this later when I've got to grips with how things work a bit more :)

[necKros]

Yeah, that's it. Isolate the armor parts you want to keep in the armor's nif, and save it to a new file. The geck work is as simple as adding the armor "complements" as BoddyAddon1, 2 or 3 instead of UpperBody. But expect major clipping if you are working with default meshes. I even made a test myself:

[Relativelybest]

Yeah, that's it. Isolate the armor parts you want to keep in the armor's nif, and save it to a new file. The geck work is as simple as adding the armor "complements" as BoddyAddon1, 2 or 3 instead of UpperBody. But expect major clipping if you are working with default meshes. I even made a test myself:

 

Hey, that's pretty cool. ^^

 

As for clipping issues, I did expect that kind of trouble. but at least it's nice knowing my idea isn't totally insane.

[necKros]

What the hell, now that I look at it, that 3 minutes effort armor pads over the brhamin outfit look preety good.

[charger]

So you could use the same method to add a holster for weapons as a body add on that is equipped separately to the armour?

You would just need to make a few different holsters for the different weapons...add them to the "withammo" versions of the weapons in the geck and voila! anyone with a pistol would have the correct holster! (would this work?)

I have no experience at actually making models or I would try it...

[TGBlank]

Problem with holsters is that the vanilla drawing animations are too screwed up if you look at them carefully, there's no way of making it without having horrible horrible clipping. It would look good when the weapon is off, but not when drawing/putting away.

Also, no need to edit the weapon nifs i believe, the shikebab already adds you a glove and a backpack when equiped through geck config alone. You could do the same for the hostler i believe.

[charger]

I wouldn't care about the drawing animations..they only last a split second anyway