Mod Concept: Diverse Body Types

[talion]

Hello, everyone. As I was browsing mods, I came across one called Set Body and Set Body Self. In it, the player gets an ability to change the body type of him/herself and targeted NPCs. The idea behind it got my mind going and I wondered if there wasn't a way to come up with a more immersive way to give NPCs a more diverse appearance.

 

The idea I came up with would work as follows:

 

1) All NPCs are given a special non-lootable "body suit" of a various body type. Lots of things can be done with these body suits to make each race and class and thus every NPC more unique (ex. Female argonians' body suits may have the smallest cup size chest to imply flat chests, Nord males and females may be given body suits to make them look bulkier, fighters' guild members have body suits ranging from muscular to bulky while mages' guild members would have skinnier and less to non-muscular bodies, etc.)

 

2) Each body suit has a set of alternate suits with pieces of the body not included. These suits would be switched in and out depending on whether an NPC is wearing something on certain parts of the body, so for each body suit, there would be the following 16 meshes:

Full nude: All pieces of the suit are included

Chest Equipped: All pieces but upper body

Legs Equipped: All pieces but lower body

Gloves Equipped: All pieces but hands

Shoes Equipped: All pieces but feet

Chest + Legs: Hands and feet only

Chest + Hands: Legs and feet only

Chest + Feet: Legs and hands only

Legs + Hands: Chest and feet

Legs + Feet: Chest and hands

Hands + Feet: Chest and legs

Chest + Legs + Hands: Feet only

Chest + Legs + Feet: Hands only

Chest + Hands + Feet: Legs only

Legs + Hands + Feet: Chest only

Full Equip: None (or tail only)

 

I may be off by a few meshes, but long story short, there will be a mesh for each possible equip slot combination.

 

3) The meshes are scripted to switch out for a corresponding mesh depending on what the NPC equips.

 

 

Concerns: Step 3 is where my problem is since I'm not sure if this can be scripted. I know I can get a swap script together, but the problem is figuring out how to activate it and make it work. I'm not really that good with scripting, but I figured I may be able to adapt the script I used for my Dragon Broadswords to some degree. But since the original script was entirely player activates and this one wouldn't be, I'm not totally sure if I could do this. Plus if these body suits were distributed to all NPCs as I had planned, would it take a too large of a toll on system resources for them all to work? Any thoughts are appreciated.

[mcole254]

The problem is that you would have to change all the cloths and armor for this to work, otherwise you would only notice this when nothing is equiped on that characher

[Eshenaleros]

There is one attempt to do something like this. it appears to have crashed into Beta Limbo, but it's still usable in it's current form.

 

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21451

 

not exactly what your looking for, but it does have the concept down

[talion]

The problem is that you would have to change all the cloths and armor for this to work, otherwise you would only notice this when nothing is equiped on that characher

 

I was aware of this issue, which for the scope of the project I'll refer to as "Phase 2." I'll figure out the clothing situation once I've figured out the current problem with getting the bodies to work. I figure I would go one of two ways with it: Fit every outfit for every possible body type or just fit each outfit only to the body type wearing it. I think the latter would be good for an initial release while the former presents the ideal "final release" version.

 

 

There is one attempt to do something like this. it appears to have crashed into Beta Limbo, but it's still usable in it's current form.

 

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21451

 

not exactly what your looking for, but it does have the concept down

 

I wasn't aware of this mod. It's a great concept that if anything would be a great complement to my idea. It's still player oriented, but I'll take a look at it to see if there's anything in it that I could use to apply to NPCs. Thanks for the link!

[Vagrant0]

There are three main issues why something like this isn't practical, even from a scripted (fake body) standpoint, and even if you could figure out a way of scripting every piece of equipment without slowing the game to a crawl and vastly increasing the filesize of saved games (since nearly every worn piece of equipment would need scripting, and scripts on scripted items are never cleared from a game).

 

First, every body standard; BaB, Exnem, TFF, ect uses different textures and different ways of applying that texture. There was one project which was aimed at creating a single group of textures which could be used by any body mod, but don't think anything came from it since it required re-working of equipment meshes. Even if you were willing to track down every clothing and armor mod and make the necessary changes, you wouldn't have permission to share most of those changes.

 

Second, for every body type, there is not always an equivalent mesh to use. Surprisingly, not every piece of standard armor and clothing has been adapted for every body type, and certainly, not every piece of new armor or clothing comes in every body type. Even if you had a good system for swapping things out, there would be too many gaps, and a mod like this would never work with any new equipment since the equipment would need to be built in (cause doubling, with 1 working version and 1 non-working version if both mods are active).

 

Third, even if you were only concerned about making this apply to the player, you would need to define a new object for each body/clothing/armor mesh you would want to use. Although OBSE does support changing mesh paths, this has always worked on the base object (changing all instances of that object to have the same shape) instead of the instance (changing just the mesh for that one worn by a given character). What this means is lots and lots of object entries, and lots and lots of equip/unequip spam (even with suppressing messages, you still get the action of things being added/removed).

 

In short, something like this is only practical within very specific, rigid usage, such as a single NPC with a single set of equipment that can't be removed. And even then, you would still need to handle the re-texturing of the equipment parts that show any skin.

[talion]

I wasn't aware of this mod. It's a great concept that if anything would be a great complement to my idea. It's still player oriented, but I'll take a look at it to see if there's anything in it that I could use to apply to NPCs. Thanks for the link!

 

It seems I spoke too soon, as it appears the the modder did apply these to NPCs as well. That's what I get for not reading the entire description.

[talion]

My answers/replies are in red (will change if not readable):

 

There are three main issues why something like this isn't practical, even from a scripted (fake body) standpoint, and even if you could figure out a way of scripting every piece of equipment without slowing the game to a crawl and vastly increasing the filesize of saved games (since nearly every worn piece of equipment would need scripting, and scripts on scripted items are never cleared from a game).

 

Save game bloating and game slowdown are major concerns of mine in regards to this project. If I ever get the body swaps figured out, I would test these particular aspects rigorously before even thinking about releasing the mod.

 

First, every body standard; BaB, Exnem, TFF, ect uses different textures and different ways of applying that texture. There was one project which was aimed at creating a single group of textures which could be used by any body mod, but don't think anything came from it since it required re-working of equipment meshes. Even if you were willing to track down every clothing and armor mod and make the necessary changes, you wouldn't have permission to share most of those changes.

 

Due to the UV mapping of the various body mods out there, I don't see it being practical in include them all, which is why I would be using a single mod with the variations that were made for that mod. It was a toss up between HGEC or Robert's Female Body and while HGEC does offer more options, I chose to work with Robert's due mostly to personal preference. It also doesn't offer as many variances, which in some ways hurts my concept but in the interest of practicality it also helps it (not as many body shapes to fit equipment to). As for using armor and clothing mods, my intention is to start the project using exclusively vanilla content until I have things figured out, and then maybe branch out to gathering permissions to use modded armors later.

 

Second, for every body type, there is not always an equivalent mesh to use. Surprisingly, not every piece of standard armor and clothing has been adapted for every body type, and certainly, not every piece of new armor or clothing comes in every body type. Even if you had a good system for swapping things out, there would be too many gaps, and a mod like this would never work with any new equipment since the equipment would need to be built in (cause doubling, with 1 working version and 1 non-working version if both mods are active).

 

I'm not saying there wouldn't be a lot of work involved making sure all vanilla outfits are converted to each body type. In fact, it will be a huge undertaking in its own right. Again, I'm not concerned in converting player-made items right now, since the idea is to use the body suits on NPCs exclusively. Players decide what body type they want to use when they install their chosen body mod, so I see no real reason to worry about how it would apply to player use (although the Different Body Shapes mod does provide a great argument for how they could apply to players, it goes beyond the planned scope for this project). The only way this would affect new equipment is if the modder of a new item wanted to equip it on an existing vanilla NPC, which is rarely the case.

 

Third, even if you were only concerned about making this apply to the player, you would need to define a new object for each body/clothing/armor mesh you would want to use. Although OBSE does support changing mesh paths, this has always worked on the base object (changing all instances of that object to have the same shape) instead of the instance (changing just the mesh for that one worn by a given character). What this means is lots and lots of object entries, and lots and lots of equip/unequip spam (even with suppressing messages, you still get the action of things being added/removed).

 

Again, this is not something intended to be used by the player character. As for the scripting, my idea was to do something along the lines of what I did with my Dragon Broadswords mod, which originally came from Adonnay's Classical Weaponry mod. It works by having an object of each item in the script. An activator (in the sword swap script's case, a power) is then used to swap out one object for another. The sword swapping script is player activated though, while the script I have in mind should be game activated. I just now tested it to see if it would change all instances of an item (Dragon Broadswords only has one instance of each sword, so I never tested the script on multiple instances) and can now say that it only changes the item to be changed without changing other instances of the same base.

 

In short, something like this is only practical within very specific, rigid usage, such as a single NPC with a single set of equipment that can't be removed. And even then, you would still need to handle the re-texturing of the equipment parts that show any skin.

 

I hope my comments helped clear up some of the things I don't think I was so clear on when I initially posted my concept. I'm totally able to accept if this is not possible, but before I do I want to make absolutely sure that it isn't.

[jatneosen]

Well, anything is possible. But, it would either mean you'd have to work your ass off to change all the current equipment, or do a crapload of scripting.