Can you edit existing buildings?

[Amarch89]

Hello again everyone Killakeebs here with more questions lol. So basically i am trying to make a mod editing all the sanctuary hills houses so they look like they did pre war, however i am running into a couple issues.

 

First i tried just taking the houses from the prewar sanctuary hills and replacing which did work.. however these houses are just big models and you cant use their doors or go inside them at all.. which is not going to work for me.

 

So then i tried to edit the post war house textures and swap them with the pre war ones. This also worked...kind of. It replaced the textures so the buildings look shiny new..but they still all have holes in them lol ... not exactly what i had in mind either.

 

So my question is.. could i edit the prewar houses to make the doors functional and create interiors for them ? Or would i pretty much have to re-build all the houses myself and then drag and drop them into the world? Also looking on any advice anyone has on the best way to go about doing this without my game or my head exploding. Thanks again and have a great day!

[VIitS]

The collision mesh for the prewar meshes are just one big block. You might be able to use Bethesda's plugin to make a new collision.

 

You could instead take the collision mesh from the post-war versions and use that (probably better to use nifskope for that). For the most part (for the non-destroyed houses, at least), there is a nif for the walls, one for the foundation, and one for the roof. Just copy them into the pre-war nif and line those up so they match orientation/position. Then use wall nifs to patch up the holes in the post-war nifs*. Once you have the collision properly outlined, delete everything but the bhkNPCollisionObject from the post-war/patch nifs**, and make sure all the NiNodes with the post-war collision are set as children to the base NiNode, or it will cause CTD when you try to load it in game.

 

*I suggest moving the main pre-war NiNode down 1000 units so you can see it more easily, and moving it back up after you finish setting the collision pieces. And if you want to put in windows, BldGlassTrans01.nif and BldGlassPodTrans03.nif have glass collision and can be placed where needed. You want to make sure you position the pieces whose collision you are using by setting the translation and roatation values of the NiNode the collision is connected to.

**If you put in windows rather than leaving them open, leave the BSTrishapes for those, although you can get rid of the bars if you want (and you might want to see about changing it to a non-cracked texture if you want a properly pre-war look)

 

One thing to note: when changing the textures, you want to make new material files and point to those. You do so by setting the "name" of the BSLightingShaderProperty to the path for your new material file, making sure to format it the same way the ones already in the mesh are (i.e. start at "materials", make sure to use "\" instead of "/", and make sure there is no space at the end). Alternatively, you can use a material swap record (MSWP) to change the textures from within the esp instead of the nif.

 

If you want an example of a vanilla nif (that is used directly in-game) with multiple collisions, look at the ones with construction at the end in the Meshes\Architecture\Buildings\Residential folder. They have 100+ collisions each.

 

As for the doors, I would recommend making them separate from the main house nif. You could make it part of it, but it would likely be a pain to get it working properly (and you could only have one working door attached to the nif).

[Amarch89]

nifskope? im guessing that is another editing tool that i apparently need and had no idea exists? lol. thank you for trying to explain this to me i think i may need to learn a bit more to even understand this though as i have no idea what you mean by nif, how to mess with collision, and no concept of ninode. if you have any material i could read about this it would be a great help. Or any other suggestions on other editing tools and where to get/how to use them would also be appreciated! Thank you very much for taking some time to educate me!

[VIitS]

You don't strictly need it, but it is the only way to do what you want short of using Bethesda's plugin and 3ds Max 2013. It won't let you create new meshes/collisions, but you can manipulate them.

Nifskope:

Download

Tutorials

 

Also, if you want to create a new material file, you might want to try Material Editor.

To directly access the nifs (the model files), you might want to get Bethesda Archive Extractor to let you edit Bethesda's assets (meshes, textures, etc...).

[Amarch89]

Oh ok gotcha thank you!!!

[PittbullII]

Hi Amarch 89! I just had an idea for the prewar housing issue...

 

What about using the Protagonist's home as a template for the building pieces?

Use the color palate of the rest of the prewar homes for sampling purposes and transfer the colors onto the Protagonist home building pieces.

Then make a complete set of building pieces of each color.

What do you think?

[Perraine]

You could also use the pieces from this mod to re-create the buildings. It's not perfect, and is missing one or two pieces, but it does have the advantage of already being navmeshed and it's also made around the standard workshop construction framework, so you (and players) can "mix n match" other build sets.