OCO v.2. and Room207's Bodybuilder

[fikula]

Didn't you put it to the wrong place? :O

[Striker879]

No there's some really funky weirdness going on in the forums lately ... see this thread.

[fikula]

Great! >:(

[fikula]

 

 

A little problem with OCO and RMB. Did I screw up something or, I just shouldn't use Madness armor?

[IkeCoast]

Hey, guys!

 

Well, looks like the last part of our tut is gone for good. Rest in Peace.

 

In order to have our Cimmerian male set up, I'll resume here the steps needed to create the Race records with the CSE. All the funny jokes and witty sarcasm I put in the original version will be kept in the drawer until nex time.

 

By the way, Fikula, all I can discern on the screencap you posted is that there appears to be some clipping in the back of the neck. The textures on the armor look a bit strange, too.

 

Well, let's go to work!

 

PART... I LOST THE COUNT.

 

BUILDING BLOCKS

 

Now that we have all the files required for our Cimmerian Male, let's start assembling him on the CSE.

 

For now, we won't add new hairstyles, we will focus on the race itself.

 

Fire up the Construction Set Extended and, as soon it becomes available, click the Open File button or select Menu - File - Data... and tick the Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp.

 

We will make our Cimmerian Race OCO v2 dependant because this will save us compatibility issues. If you don't want to have Cimerian Race OCO-dependant, don't tick the OCO esp and istead tick the Oblivion.esm

 

In CSE, you don't need to tick the Oblivion.esm unless you're going to make a standalone mod.

 

But let's work on an OCO-dependant race, so tick ONLY the OCO esp. Don't set it to Active File! Just tick it and click OK. CSE will warn you about not having an Active File and asking if you want to continue. Click YES.

 

CSE will take its time to load everything. Once it's done, before clicking anything, go to File - Save and in the popup box, click SAVE AS ESP. Save this file as

 

Cimmerian (don't manually write the extension .esp! CSE will add it automatically, just type Cimmerian and click SAVE)

 

and done, we have our New Race Mod created. The problem is, there are no Cimmerians on sight. Let's populate our mod.

 

Go to Menu bar - Character - Race... and the Races Windows appear.

 

We could create the Cimmerians from scratch, but to save time, simply choose one of the vanilla races. I think Nords are close enough to Cimmerians, so I pick Nords. Right-click the Nord EditorID - Duplicate. On top of the EditorID list, a duplicate of the Nord race appears, highlighted in green.

 

CLICK TWICE on the EditorID field of the clone. Don't double-click, that won't work, just CLICK TWICE on it. The EditorID field changes into an input field. Replace NordCOPY0000 with Cimmerian and hit the ENTER key. Click YES in the popup message.

 

Now, the first row of the Races list is EditorID: Cimmerian and Name: Nord. Let's adjust it. See the tabs in the top of the Race Assets section? Click the Text Data tab.

 

The first element of the Text Data tab is the Name input field. Change Nord to Cimmerian. Be sure to write it correctly: Cimmerian, a capital C and two m. We need to write it right because there are some files we renamed Cimmerian_WhatEver.nif before, remember? The Race Name record must match! Blockhead will not work if not.

 

Make sure the Playable flag is ticked. If not, tick it. You can leave the Description field as is or go to Wikipedia and copy and paste here the entire "Cimmerian" entry.

 

Now look at the lower part of the Races window. See two buttons, Apply and Close? CLICK APPLY.

 

Now, don't close the Races window, but go to Menu - File - Save.

 

From now on, we will refer to this procedura as CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK. Understood? It's crucial you do this every time I tell you to do so.

 

Back to the Races Window. Click the General Data tab.

 

We don't need to change the Base Attributes, Skill Bonus, nor Specials records, but we need to change both Voices records because now they're set to Cimmerian, and since we have no Cimmerian dialogue recorded files, our race will be mute in-game. Change both Male Voice Race and Female Voice fields from Cimmerian to a voice set you like. Nord will suffice.

 

CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK.

 

Click the Body Data tab. Here we will set the general assets for the bodies. See the Male Bodies section? We can't set here the body meshes, they're fixed and unchangeable. Blockhead will handle this for us provided you renamed the files as I instructed you and put them where I told you. So let's assign the correct texture source: click the Foot asset path button, and in the popup box, click Select Asset On Disk. A browser window opens. Use it to navigate to our Data - Textures - Characters - Cimmerian - Male and select the footmale.dds file. Click Open.

 

CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK.

 

At this stage, we don't need to change anything else here, so click the Face Data tab. The Asset paths are, from top to bottom, Head, Ears (male), Ears (female), Mouth, Teeth (lower), Teeth (Upper), Tongue, and Eyes (Left/right). For Head to Tonghe, the left field is for Mesh asset and the right one for Texture asset. For Eyes, both left and right fields are for Mesh asset, since the eye textures are not set here. We will change only the Head assets:

 

Click the left Head asset, the one where you can read Characters - Nuska - Nord - headhumannord.nif, and in the popup box click Select Asset On Disk. Navigate to our Meshes - Characters - Cimmerian and select the headhuman.nif. Be sure to select the headhuman.nif, NOT the headhuman_m.nif. Here we set the failsafe file, not the final file for our males.

Now click the right Head Asset, where you can read Textures - Characters - Imperial - headhuman.dds, click Select Asset On Disk on the popup window and navigate to our Textures - Characters - Cimmerian folder and select the headhuman.dds (the one without the _m suffix).

 

Remember that the Wideneck Head we're using is a variation of Head06? This means that it has different geometry and the eyelashes Nuska put on OCO don't match with our Cimmerian eyelids. So go to the Tongue asset path, click on both (one after another) and then click Clear Asset Path on the popup window.

 

CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK.

 

We will leave the rest of the asset paths untouched, so now click the FaceGen Data tab.

 

Since we're using OCO v2.2, a gray face with the words INSTALL BLOCKHEAD is staring at us from the preview screen there. Don't freak out, it's normal.

 

You can leave this FaceGen tab alone, but I recommend to hit the Reset Face button, since this will make our life easier when in the Chargen menu in game. If you click the Reset Face button, CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK.

 

The last tab is Reactions and its purpose is to set alliances and feuds with the other races. Nords are neutral and have no Reactions with other races than Nords themselves (a +5 modifier). You can set here how the Cimmerians will react when stumbling on another NPC, accordingly to the NPC race. If there is no Race modifier for, let's say, Argonians, our Cimmerians will simply ignore Argonians. If we put an entry for Argonians here, with a Disposition Modifier of 5, Argonians and Cimmerians will be more or less friendly. If we put a Disposition Modifier of -10 (Minus Ten) for Argonians, our Cimmerians will kill on sight any Argonian they encounter. Even unprovoked.

 

Put here the Modifiers you want, or none at all, then CLICK APPLY AND SAVE YOUR WORK and close the Races Window.

 

Assuming you arranged and resized the diverse floating windows than conforms the CSE Workspace, we have here the Object Window in the left side of the Workspace. See the Hierarchy Tree? The topmost element of it is the Actors branch, and below it, three other sub-branches. We need the NPC branch. Click on it. The EditorID list in the right side of the Object Window now shows the list of all the characters on the game. Click anywhere on it (I poked RalsaNethan), and then hit the P key on your keyboard. The highlighted element now changes to Pajeen. Scroll a little down until you find the Player character. Double-click on it.

 

WARNING: While we're inside the NPC (Player) Window, don't CLICK OK. Never. I repeat, while we're inside the Player NPC window, you never must click the OK button it has. Nor save your game. We don't want to make active changes to the Player character. It's a very bad idea.

 

Well, in the Player character window, the Preview screen (right side) shows an Imperial staring at us. We don't want an Imperial, we want a Cimmerian, so we go to the left side of the NPC window, look for the NPC section, Race drop-down list, and on it we select the Cimmerian race.

 

The Imperial on the preview screen changes to a VERY UGLY dude. Ewwwwwwwwwww.

 

But, hey, no INSTALL BLOCKHEAD on him! This is the magick of Blockhead, contrary to the FaceGen Data preview window, the NPC window preview screen does pick up the Blockhead Head override function. Don't believe me? Look for the Female flag (left side of the NPC window, next to the Race drop-down list) and tick it. INSTALL BLOCKHEAD. I told you! We have no female head mesh nor texture set for females, so Blockhead is not overriding the failsafe files, and Nuska put this grey face texture on OCO v2.2 to make clear that you need to have Blockhead installed and running. Un-tick the Female flag.

 

Well, our Cimmerian is again male, but boy how ugly. Let's change that.

 

Just next to the preview screen, there's a bunch of tabs. Click the one marked Face. Look down until you see the Reset Face button and click it. The ugly guy rejuvenates. Quite an improvement but not quite yet a Cimmerian. So look up until you find the Complexion slider, which is now set to Light (rightmost position). Pick and grab it to its leftmost position, Dark. Now that's a Cimmerian. You can also meddle with the Age slider, but since we have no agemaps for Cimmerians, only the geometry will change, not the face texture. I don't mind it, with the Complexion and Age sliders, even without agemaps, we can achieve appealing results, so I'll not kill myself looking for Head06-compatible agemaps. No, vanilla ones aren't compatible, nor are Nuska's.

 

Play a little with the Complexion and Age sliders, and you can play too with the Geometry sliders on the Face Advanced tab. Just for fun. Remember, DON'T CLICK EVER THE OK BUTTON!

 

When you'r fed up of torturing our poor fellow, click the Inventory tab. Select everything in his inventory and delete it. Now go to the lower left portion of the preview screen, where the Full and Head flags are. The Head flag is ticked, the Full one is... greyed out? Damn. Click some tabs, randomly, until the Full flag becomes available. Then, tick it. The preview screen changes fron Head-only to Full-body.

 

He's not a bodybuilder! Yup, he's not, the Body Asset Override doesn't work here. If you're using RMB Replacer, the body texture will show ok. If you're using vanilla body, the body texture looks warped and weird, and it's ok. If you're using vanilla bodies and the body texture looks ok, THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG HERE, DUDE. The texture we defined before, footmale.dds, is for RMB...

 

Well, let's finish it. Click the CANCEL button on the NPC Window.

 

If everything went good and you did not click OK on the NPC window, there's no asterisk on the Application Window frame title. If there's an asterisk, you did some change and I hope it wasn't while on the NPC window...

 

Just close the CSE, we don't need it anymore for now.

 

Now open up your Mod Manager, and activate our Cimmerian.esp. And fire up Oblivion, start a new game, and the Cimmerian Race should show up as playable in the Chargen menu.

 

After some meddling with the Age, Complexion and Face Shape sliders, we will end looking like this:

 

http://ikesdungeon.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/conan01.jpg

 

 

That's all.

 

Before we move on to create our Cimmerian Females, you better test this tutorial and post here your issues and questions. Setting the Females is the exact same as the Males, only the needed files and naming conventions are different.

 

So let's rock!

 

Cheers!

[fikula]

Should I have the hairstyle too? Because I don't have it... :whistling:

Edited February 14, 2014 by fikula

[IkeCoast]

The hair is from Throttlekitty's Hair Pack, the Barby Band one. I put it on to have something Conan-esque, but it's not quite the final hair for our Cimmerian. Notice the heavy clipping on the neck. This hair needs adaptation to the Wideneck head, and we will address it in future steps of the tutorial. We will try to conformulate the hair, and if it doesn't suffice, we will need to edit the mesh on Blender.

 

Cheers!

[fikula]

Cool! :wink:

 

 

 

[fikula]

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[fikula]

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