SSE Help! Repurposing Statics as Armour

[WesternWolff]

Hoping someone more experienced can point me in the right direction. I've been trying to make my own mods for a while now, and things that seem like they should only be a few steps end up being 50.

Case in point: I have a clutter item I want to turn into a helmet. The NIF already exists, the textures already exist, I just want the player to be able to pick it up and put it on their head.

Here's where I'm at

• I've made copies of the meshes and textures in my mod folder so as not to touch the original, and remapped the meshes in Nifscope to point to the copied texture files.
• I've created ARMA and ARMO records for the item in Creation Kit, and pointed them at my copied NIFs
• I've transformed the NIFs in Nifscope to elevate the item to head height and scale it to match.

So now the item sits static in head position when equipped, while my player character bobs around it as if it's not attached to them in any way.

 

I tried combining my clutter item with a circlet in Nifscope to get the static attached to a skeleton, but couldn't figure it out. So then I tried importing it to Blender, but you can't do that with SE meshes, so I found a tool that converts SE meshes to LE meshes, but then the textures were lost in import... you get the idea...

 

I found this tutorial on creating armour in Blender, but all the links are broken, and the YouTube tutorials I've found only seem to cover creating things in Blender, not how to actually get them into game, connect them to skeletons, etc.

 

Any help would be appreciated. A walkthrough even moreso, since I don't know what I'm doing and have gotten this far through trial and error.

[Hanaisse]

You're on the right track. In order to "wear" the item you need to rig it to the head, like helmets and circlets are. There are several ways to do that.

 

1. You can import the item and the vanilla head mesh into Blender and fight with it to weight the item to the head, it's not quite an elegant process flow. Btw, that's my tutorial and it's old and not worth following (and yes I know the links are broken).

 

2. The easiest way I work with meshes and rigging is in Outfit Studio. Simply import the item and the vanilla head mesh, set the head as a reference, make sure the item is aligned to it, right click and copy bone weights. Delete the head and export the item as a .nif.

 

Make sure you're using the correct partitions/body slot for your item, both in the nif and in the ARMO/ARMA records. Use SBP_30_Head if the item covers the entire head (like an ebony helmet) or use SBP_31_Head if it is like a hat (or iron helmet).

 

Very important point - make sure to delete the collision of the clutter item before rigging it. Save a copy though for your world/inventory object.

Edited August 13, 2023 by Hanaisse

[scorrp10]

You should use Outfit Studio for this.

First:

Go to Data\meshes\actors\character\character assets and import femalehead.nif into OS. In geometry tab, uncheck both Dynamic and skinned. Export it as 'femalehead_dummy.nif' somewhere.

Do the same for malehead.nif.

 

1. Locate the .nif of an existing helmet that most closely corresponds to what you want to use. (will call it source)

2. Import it into OS. Set it to be reference (green)

3. Import the .nif of the item you want to adapt. (target)

4. Import femalehead_dummy.nif

5. Move/scale/rotate target to its worn position onthe head. Delete the head mesh.

6. In the target mesh properties Geometry tab, check 'Skinned'

7. Right-click target mesh, choose 'copy bone weights'. Then 'Mask Weighted vertices'.

8. If any part of the target was not masked, just go to Bones tab, select 'Head', and paint the unmasked parts.

9. Go to partitions tab, set partition. 31 (hair) if item should replace hair. 42 (circlet) if not.

10. Export the target mesh as new .nif (female version).

11. Now import malehead_dummy.

12. Adjust position of target mesh to sit well on the male head. Delete male head.

13. Export the target mesh as new .nif (male version)

 

Optional steps: Consider also creating Argonian and Khajiit dummy heads, and create Argonian/Khajiit variants of your target mesh.

[WesternWolff]

Thank you both for getting back to me. I was almost mad enough to offer cheese for everyone by the time I threw up my hands and decided to post here.

Hanaisse - your tutorial may be broken, but there are links to it everywhere - it was undoubtedly the definitive answer at one time.

 

I'll jump into Outfit Studio now and give this a try.