Question about a swap of sorts

[Abusive]

Ok so bear with me as it's 5:43am and I'm desperate for help and have been headdesking for the past hour trying to figure this out...

 

 

Basically, I am using the ADEC body replacer for females. It replaces the mesh for the stormcloak/guard with a better one fit to the body. Only problem now is, it's changing ALL the guard armors (even the ones that are supposed to be yellow, green, red, etc.) into the normal blue stormcloak texture. I've looked in the linked textures on the vanilla and the new mesh, both only link to the stormcloak female texture. I've checked inside the CK for what I thought it would be, an armor addon problem. Then I thought it was a texture set not linking in the armor dialog box. None of these give me a clue to be any closer to helping Acdale with his issue.

 

 

So now I turn to whoever knows how the berdip to fix this. The person who can successfully point me on the right path, gets kudos. I know it's got to be something simple I'm overlooking.

 

 

Further info: It's just a mesh replacer, no esp. Textures were not changed AT ALL. This leads me to believe it has something to do with the mesh rather then the CK. Help?

[MShoap13]

Texture paths are stored in the meshes themselves and can be viewed or altered with NifSkope.

 

However, unless you're replacing multiple armor meshes with one modified mesh you shouldn't be running into this particular issue. I'm pretty confident that you can only associate multiple textures to each individual TriShape (piece) of a mesh, and there there is no functionality for storing multiple "options" of a texture in one mesh.

 

The point: There should be a Stormcloak (red), Stormcloak (Yellow), etc. variant of each mesh. Each of these meshes would be fundamentally identical except that they would point to the different textures associated with them.

[Abusive]

Well that's the thing, there's only 1 mesh used for ALL guard armors, which happens to be classified as "stormcloak armor" in the CK. The mesh from vanilla and the mesh from ADEC are IDENTICAL in the texture paths. It's like it's not pointing to the other town textures via the CK but I don't know how that's possible if it's just a simple armor conversion to a new body...

[MShoap13]

I just did a little .bsa delving and I see that there's only one set of meshes, yet there's a set of textures for each town. I'm wondering if there may be a script running that determines what faction(s) the character wearing said armor belongs to and then applies the appropriate texture. If this is the case, I'd expect that you wouldn't be having this issue unless there's a plugin involved with the mod.

 

If there is a plugin involved, finding the relevant script, and tracking down all of it's references (in Skyrm.esm or Update.esm) then copying those unmodified references to the mod's plugin should make it work properly. I've seen similar script breakage with mods that alter Worldspaces that contain a script driven, quest related, item/NPC, but don't include references to the item/NPC, in the past.

 

Edit: I just thought of something regarding resource application order... It's also possible the right texture is being applied initially and then being overwritten once the altered mesh is applied. The game applies resources in a specific order (.bsa's included in Skyrim.ini are loaded with Skyrim.esm [default mesh, script driven texture], loose resources are loaded afterwards [altered mesh, reapplies original texture], then .bsa's incorporated through plugins are applied[irrelevant yet could be the solution to this issue]).

 

To test this, one would need to create a .bsa and a plugin. In the .bsa you would include the altered mesh, and all the texture variants. In the plugin you would simply copy vanilla entries pertaining to the armor, the script I spoke of earlier, and the required references of said script. You would also need to incorporate the .bsa into the plugin and tell it to pull it's resources from there.

 

Alternatively, (though ill-advisably) you could just unpack the entire meshes.bsa, overwrite the stormcloak mesh(es) with the altered ones and then repack the .bsa... This would probably include a lot of waiting around for the pack/unpack and it's generally best to leave the vanilla resources alone if at all possible. Be sure to remove the loose mesh(es) in the \Data\Meshes\ folder if you try this method as a test.

Edited April 4, 2012 by MShoap13

[Abusive]

I think it has something to do with armoraddon and not a script. You can see the CK shows several different texture sets, and several different armoraddon. But all of the armors point to the stormcloak female mesh. It's like it's linked in the CK to show different textures based on a template or something, and it's not showing now because it's a new mesh or something. There is no esp though, it's a simple mesh swap using the original vanilla just converted to the ADEC body.

[Acdale]

I have been trying to figure this out and fix it since lastnight..

 

I opened the altered meshes in 1 window and the vanilla meshes in another...side by side comparison changing anything that was not identical such as flags , naming , even unknown short settings....I also made sure the remappable texture box was checked in the BSlightingshaderproperty... everything that I could find is identical now.

I did this for the cuirassf_1.nif , cuirassf_0.nif and both of the cuirassfsleeves.nif.... loaded game and via console added both the soliture and riften stormcloak armors but sadly they still both show as default texture.

of course if I remove the altered nif files the color change as they should..

 

I can't figure this out either..

[Abusive]

Then if you've made it identical it has to be something with the CK I'm thinking. I'm almost 100% convinced it's something to do with the ARMO (armor addons) flags. Like they need to be linked to the original stormcloak armor to let it show the other texture sets on the other guard armors. I'm just poking around in the dark until I find some light so maybe this isn't right either.

[flobalob]

I had a look in the CK and the all of the stormcloak armours, EXCEPT the basic one have a replacement texture set specified. If you have a new .nif file then maybe the texture that is supposed to be replaced is not present in the new model or misnamed perhaps. This isn't my normal sphere of expertise but hopefully it will provide you with something to investigate.

 

using Falkreath as an example:-

In the World model the texture "StormcloakGO:0" is replaced with texture set "StormCloakFalkreath"

In the Male Biped model the texture "StormCloak"(3D Index 1) and is replaced with the texture set "StormCloakFalkreath"

In the Male First Person the testure "MaleBodyStormcloak"(3D Index 0) is replaced with the texture set "StormCloakFalkreath"

In the Female Biped model the texture "StormCloakF"(3D Index 0 and is replaced with the texture set "StormCloakFalkreathF"

In the Female First Person - Nothing is replaced ???

[MShoap13]

As flobalob pointed out, the Guard Armors are broken down into separate items. Each of these items has data pertaining to texture swaps in Skyrim.esm. The texture sets are stored under Misc>Texture Sets in Skyrim.esm.

 

As I pointed out earlier, the original texture is being reapplied on top of this texture set information due to resource application order.

 

Essentially, there is no way to keep the texture set data intact with a loose-file based mesh swap. You're going to have to create a plugin containing all of this texture swap data. It would also be best to either rename you Stormcloak meshes or move them into your own folder (\meshes\ACDale\ for example), and point your plugin to that mesh instead of the default mesh.

[Abusive]

Gave you both kudos, thank you. I'll be seeing if I can whip this up for Acdale since he's really busy.