Weapons change size when sheathed. Any way to change this?

[AmazingThew]

I noticed this while making a standalone weapon mod, but the vanilla weapons do it too. Basically, at least with 1H swords, your weapon is smaller when it's drawn than when it's sheathed.

It's not terribly noticeable on the vanilla weapons unless you're looking for it, but the sword I'm adding is already pretty big for a 1-hander, and when it's sheathed the additional size just makes it look ridiculous.

 

I'm still getting the hang of TESsnip and SkyEdit, but as far as I can tell, all the vanilla weapons have two models: A .nif file referenced by by the WEAP record's MODL field, and a .nif file (usually named 1stPerson[...].nif) referenced by a STAT record, which is in turn referenced by the WEAP's WNAM field.

The model referenced by WEAP>MODL is displayed when the weapon is dropped on the ground and (I think) when it is sheathed. The model referenced by the STAT record is displayed in the inventory and when the player is holding it.

The vanilla weapons use two separate models for MODL and STAT, but both models are the same size. The scale difference between sheathed and wielded is applied in-game. In the case of my mod, both MODL and STAT point to the same .nif file, and the model still becomes larger when sheathed.

 

UESPWiki's entry on STAT is pretty useless, but SkyEdit interprets STAT's DNAM field as "Scale." Within SkyEdit, all of the vanilla STAT models have a Scale of 90. This would seem to suggest that the WEAP>MODL model is displayed at 100% size, while the STAT model is scaled to 90%. Simply looking at the change in size when a weapon is sheathed, it seems like about a 10% difference.

 

HOWEVER, changing the Scale/DNAM value for my modded weapon has no effect whatsoever. The scale difference between the sheathed and unsheathed weapon is exactly the same, completely regardless of STAT>DNAM's value.

 

So, I'm pretty well stumped. Does anyone else know anything about STAT's fields, or what else might be causing this?

[AmazingThew]

Well, I've done some further testing. It seems I was mistaken about the roles of the two models; even when the weapon is sheathed the STAT model is still the one being displayed. Only time I've found that the WEAP model is visible is when you drop it.

 

This means that the game actually resizes the weapon model when it is sheathed. Since STAT's Scale field doesn't affect anything I can find, I have no idea what governs this behavior.