armor models not showing up on character

[armornox]

I'm a lurker, not a poster, so forgive posting in the wrong place. But I'm at a lost. I'm a low level modder, exclusively for private use. Note: my skill level is not where i use custom models, I put mostly vanilla meshes together in Outfit Studio to make .nifs, along with doing some minor edits to the textures. For instance i recently made a white armor set mostly using the daedric models and they came out fine. Simple. My weapons come out mostly fine as well, but nearly every time i attempt to make a single piece of armor, it does not appear on the player-character when equipped. if it does show, a part is missing, like when i attempted to make a helmet using the vanilla dwarven helmet and the dwemer bust, when i equipped the helm, the bust parts did not show. M .nifs show complete in the CK, and the menu, but not on character....

What am I doing wrong?

I recently tried to make "Daedric Pauldrons", i.e., I took the shoulders off the daedric armor and located the result to slot 57 and 58, I believe, and when I equipped it in game, no show....

[Hanaisse]

Couple of tips to check;

 

- all parts of equipped armor must be "skinned", meaning weighted and rigged

- all parts of equipped armor require a "partition", a body slot assigned

- all partitions of the armor nif must be reflected in the Biped slot of the ArmorAddon record in the CK

 

So either one, or all of the above went wrong for you.

[armornox]

define rigged please

[Hanaisse]

Rigged, like any other armor or clothing, means attached and weightpainted to a skeleton.

 

I'm going by your mention of adding a dwemer bust to a helmet. A dwemer bust is a static item, that needs to be added to (rigged) and weighted just like the helmet you're attaching it to.

Edited January 13, 2023 by Hanaisse

[scorrp10]

'Rigging' means adding proper skeleton nodes to your mesh. You can't weigh vertices to a node that does not exist.

'Weighting' is determining how much a given vertex should move when a given skeleton node moves.

 

If you combine existing Skyrim meshes, they should come bone definitions and weights assigned, so it should be not an issue.

 

However, what you should pay attention to, is partitions.

Considering this example:

I recently tried to make "Daedric Pauldrons", i.e., I took the shoulders off the daedric armor and located the result to slot 57 and 58, I believe, and when I equipped it in game, no show....

 

Being parts of the overall armor, they would belong to 'BODY' partition (slot 32).

Suppose you want pauldrons to be a separate item going into 'shoulders' slot (57). In Outfit Studio, you select the pauldrons mesh, switch 'Partitions' tab. Below, from dropdown next to 'Type', you select '57 SBP_57_MOD_SHOULDER', then you click 'Apply'.

Now your pauldrons mesh is assigned to partition 57. Then, in CK, when you create the ArmorAddon form, make sure that it specifies slot 57, and same goes for the 'Armor' form that will use that ArmorAddon.

[armornox]

I knew wHat weight was, but I wasn't sure on rigging....

About the Partitions thing, hank you, knowing that solves a couple issues. Should it be done for each mesh in the outfit?

[scorrp10]

Yes. If by 'outfit' you mean BodySlide outfit. If a mesh in a .nif file is assigned a partition that is not selected in ArmorAddon referencing that .nif, that mesh will not render.

 

Be also aware that even within the same mesh, there can be multiple partitions defined.