Helmet Mesh Question

[DavidBudreck]

I am referring specifically to the "Imperial Watch Style Dragon Armor Helm" http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10712

 

 

When I tried this, the helm appeared at a 90 degree angle on my sholders; I had to rotate it in Nifscope to make it playable.

 

However, the mod maker obviously had no trouble with it as is because there are pictures of it.

 

 

About half the comments on the site are "Great Job!" etc., while the other half are "Why does the Helm appear sideways on my shoulder?" so I'm not the only one that had the problem.

 

 

So, my question is, why is the mesh OK for some people, but at a 90 degree angle for others?

[Vagrant0]

I would be tempted to say that it's caused by some sort of normal map issue. If the normal map is in the wrong format, it can often cause the mesh to be rotated or otherwise deformed.

[DavidBudreck]

But why would that make it work fine for most of the people that use it, but not fine for me and several others?

 

If the thing was just plain messed up, I would expect ALL the comments to say so. If nobody could use it because it was messed up, then nobody would be happy with it or endorsing it.

 

I believe the mod has Seven Endorsements. (one of them was mine because after rotating the mesh in Nifscope I can use it fine).

[David Brasher]

I once had this issue appear on a test mod I made and e-mailed to a person. The mod force-equipped a vanilla daedric helm to an NPC. On my computer the helmet was correct on the NPC. On the other person's computer, the helmet was sideways. It was distracting from what we were really testing, and we never did figure out what was wrong.

[bamspeedy]

I haven't figured out the difference between the 'head' and 'hair' flags for helmets, but I've discovered that checking both of them causes some helmets to appear sideways (and missing a head). I see some helmets are marked as 'head', and some are 'hair', and I don't know what the differences are, such as when to use head and when to use hair, except by experimenting and see what works.

 

Since this mod doesn't have an .esp, it's possible some people have mods that already changes the Imperial Dragon helmet in some way so uses a different flag (head instead of hair) and why people are seeing different results?

[Vagrant0]

I haven't figured out the difference between the 'head' and 'hair' flags for helmets, but I've discovered that checking both of them causes some helmets to appear sideways (and missing a head). I see some helmets are marked as 'head', and some are 'hair', and I don't know what the differences are, such as when to use head and when to use hair, except by experimenting and see what works.

 

Since this mod doesn't have an .esp, it's possible some people have mods that already changes the Imperial Dragon helmet in some way so uses a different flag (head instead of hair) and why people are seeing different results?

The head and hair flags for items refer to the slots that those items replace. Hair slot is used for hair, head for head. While you are right in that the choice of slot can change some parts of this, the main difference is that meshes linked to the head and hair slot are usually weighted (since they cover the entire head and face) while meshes in just the hair slot are conformed or left static since they leave the face exposed. Although technically a mesh in the hair slot can be weighted instead of conformed, this is extremely rare and usually only happens with helmets that have large dangling bits that would otherwise clip horribly with the actor's body.