Clothes on monsters

[SirDanest]

So there are mods that add ghouls with more clothes or armor -- there's even a deathclaw in a suit, or with a hat. Where do I need to go to learn how to do that myself? Googling "how to put glasses on a monster" is not likely the best option. ;)

[EPDGaffney]

The way that works in the vanilla game (chiefly for super mutants) is that the clothing models are added to the folders that contain the monsters. Then in the GECK, open the monster's Creature form and navigate to the Models tab, where you should see your newly added clothing with a tick box. Click that and it should add the clothing to the monster.

 

However, it has a very good chance of not fitting correctly if it wasn't designed for this. It should generally have the correct rigging and dismemberment (unless you were planning to put a shoe on the monster's face, for example), and assuming that it does, you can open up both the monster and the clothing in NifSkope. Open NifSkope in two separate windows for this. Click on your clothing accessory (if this is actual armour, this has a very low chance of working, but an accessory like glasses would be fine). It will have a wireframe shader on it to show it's selected. Right-click and select Copy Branch (not plain Copy). Then in the monster's NifSkope window, in the Block List on the left, right-click on 0 NiNode and select Paste Branch (again, not Paste, but Paste Branch). This will paste your accessory into the file. It should be situated correctly in terms of the file order hierarchy (basically, it just needs to be a child of 0 NiNode). Now, you can right-click on the mesh of the clothing accessory and use Transform to fix its position and rotation and scale. You have to right-click again and hit Apply to see your changes. And it probably already has some transform entries that aren't applied and will be applied when you hit apply, making it come out funny. Also, the rigging makes it come out funny. So it's a lot of trial and error unless there's an easier way that I don't know in NifSkope.

 

And finally, the best way is to use Blender. But that's a whole other thing that you may or may not be interested in learning if you don't know the software. I can help you with that as well if you're interested. It's a much better method, but it's a much steeper and longer (if not less frustrating) learning curve than NifSkope's arbitrary transform functions. Note that the transform stuff in NifSkope seems to work as expected when objects aren't rigged. But clothing and monsters are, so that's not relevant here.

[SirDanest]

Thanks... I'd been thinking that not all feral ghouls went feral a hundred years ago, and some might still have intact clothes, or a hat or goggles or whatever. There are a few with armor, but I'm thinking of adding more variety to my game with some feral ghouls looking a little more... er... recent. I haven't tried it yet, so I have no idea how well clothing will fit on them, but I suppose I'll find out. :smile:

[EPDGaffney]

Right, ferals are the other ones that work the way I described the mutants as working. That stuff is just modelled in Blender (or whatever the developers used, probably not Blender) and left in the folder so that it can be selected when making the Creature in the GECK. I see only ghouls that have all their clothing or armour and their bodies saved as one model. If you tried to add clothing without Blender, as in full armour, you are nearly guaranteed some serious clipping, and there's a good chance of rigging or dismemberment errors, but if the stars align, it's possible to get lucky.

 

At least there's this:

https://prnt.sc/j9kzc8

[SirDanest]

Or.... maybe it would be easier to make "normal" ghouls look and act like ferals for the purposes of a "gang" of ferals with their clothes intact?

[EPDGaffney]

Are you trying to use feral ghoul animations on non-feral ghouls? You could try that. Not sure it would work, but I frankly don't know why they would have taken the time to give ferals a different skeleton, which would mean that just the animations are different (if what I suspect is accurate).

 

Basically, copy the relevant ghoul NPC model parts (and any clothing you want to use) into the feral ghoul folder where the rest of the models are, duplicate whatever feral ghoul you want, and then change the model in the models tab in the Creature form. Make sure it doesn't do anything mental in-game.

 

If it works, then you will still need to go into NifSkope unless every inch of the ghoul is covered, with the exception of the hands and head. NifSkope sets exposed flesh on NPC armours to have its texture modified based on the race of the NPC that wears the outfits. Because this is not an NPC, it will revert to the normal map, which will look like candy floss. You can instead in NifSkope set this to use the ghoul skin texture all the time and that should sort it out.

 

If none of this works, you can make aggressive ghoul NPCs that are in the faction(s) that ferals are in. Check the CampSearchlightGhoul NPC form for an example of this in the vanilla game. Then you can just give them any outfits you wish.

[SirDanest]

The feral ghouls seem to have a different texture than the normals, and seem to animate differently.

[EPDGaffney]

Just tried it myself. I'm honestly not sure why the skeleton's different. Even the super mutants use the same one as the humans. Well, if you're dedicated, it's time to learn a bit of Blender:

https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Rigging_skinning_and_dismemberment

 

You can just open up some ghouls and some vanilla outfits and start editing and rigging. It'll take you a bit to get to that point, but if this is something you really want to do, you should have a lot of fun with it. Let me know if you run into problems.

[EPDGaffney]

So, from what I'm seeing, the bones that are used for the ferals but not in humans are LUpArmTwist, RUpArmTwist, and Head2. I don't really know why they felt the need to use these extra bones but they did. If there's a way to alter the rigging in NifSkope, I don't know it but you could pursue an approach that uses NifSkope to rig some verts to these bones. I kind of think you should go the Blender route, especially if you want to keep doing this, but there probably is a way to do it in NifSkope if you want to.

[SirDanest]

Looks like it's a lot of work for a fairly trivial thing. I'll take a look at it but we'll see.
It looks like someone (for fallout 3 only) had some success in tinkering with the ferals.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/7201/?
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/15573