LE Tattoo parlor

[ElderEklund]

Basicly what I want is a tatoo parlor. I wish to be able to go to a tatto artist and get the tattoo I want, I want to be able to remove it or replace it with another like you do in the Saints Row games.

I want it to be on the skin, meaning I don't want it as clothes. If anyone could make this, it would be awesome. Oh, one last thing It would be nice if this would be compatible with the most used body types out there, for example I who only use cbbe bodies, would be a little pouty if someone made the mod and I could not use it. At least, as I suggested it please make the mod compatible with the cbbe body.

Edited July 5, 2012 by ElderEklund

[David Brasher]

Because of how the Elder Scroll games are constructed, this is not really a practical mod idea. The game engine is not designed to do this sort of thing. If the tattoos were clothing, it would be more workable, but then, depending on how it was done, you might have the problem of clipping and a tattoo buried under the skin, or a tattoo floating above the skin. Alternately, you might have body parts with the wrong skin shade although the tattoo was neither sunken or floating.

 

Using your idea as suggested is perhaps more problematic because of how body models are handled. You might even have to be your own race. This would be like the only race that could have in-game tattoo addition. The game is designed for each actor to only have one skin texture which never changes. Your tattoos would be part of a custom texture. For each possible tattoo, that is one more texture to make. For each possible tattoo location, that is another texture to make. Suppose there were 10 possible tattoos and 10 possible locations on the body. That means 100 new textures. That could take someone a very long time to build, and the mod might be so large that it could be a little hard to download. But that is not the real problem. In vanilla Skyrim, meshes and textures are not swapped out like this. They are static and do not change while the game is running. The game would need to be stopped and modding software ran to change a tattoo. So I do not think there are any vanilla scripting commands to change meshes and textures in-game. But SKSE may have commands to do this sort of thing.

Edited July 5, 2012 by David Brasher

[FlapjacksNsyrup]

You could easily make someone who adds warpaint to your face, but that's about it. Tattoos around your body gets way too difficult.

[BrabbelKP]

It would be possible making them as clothes (sort of, you could use one of the slots that aren't used that much to allow equiping of all standard gear), as David Brasher said, with the problems of clipping and stuff. It would only be compatible to one body-mod (or the vanilla bodies) at a time, but that shouldn't be a problem. Using the skripts that auto-equipped the cursed ring of hircine during the quest would make it so you can't change the tatoo on your own.

I actually like the idea, maybe with an option that allows enchanting (or has them preenchanted).

 

For CBBE it would be cool if it was compatible to the bodyslide-tool to allow maximum compatibility.

[ElderEklund]

Thank you guys for answering.

 

I did guess that this was hard to do, I mean since noone has done this yet, hehe. There are allready tattoo mods out there, so I guess that someone would have done it allready if it was easy.

I use the cbbe body, and got the mod that replaces the vanilla armour with cbbe more sexy armours, would it be possible to add laired clothes perhaps that, or does it have to take up one of the given slots?

 

At the end of the day this was just an idea, formed on what I thought would be neat. If this inspires some mod makers to take the idea and work on it further, brilliant. If it is as it appear to hard to do, don't worry about it. It was just a suggestion :)

Quite frankly I didn't even think that anyone would reply to this, so thank you for your interest and your replies.

[BrabbelKP]

It would be possible to use one of the existing but unused slots (unused by vaniulla-skyrim). I'm not sure what slots aren't used that much by mods, but I think there are lists out there where that could be looked up.

To prevent clipping and stuff, the tatoo-meshes could probably be based on the body-meshes, completely with weighting and stuff. The tatoo could be added while the rest of the mesh is removed (or turned invisible in some way) to keep the weighting. As I have no idea of working with meshes myself, I guess it would be a lot harder to actually make them than it sounds.

It would also be cool if there were more mods that add piercings to the game, they could be created the same way and would probably fit the theme of a tatoo-mod.

 

As I'd like that kind of mod to stay more or less lore-friendly, I'll just throw in some ideas:

-piercings would obviously be crafted like rings and pendants and available at general merchants

-there could be body-piercings (belly button and perhaps more intimate ones) and face-piercings (nose, lip, earrings)

-they could be crafted and equipped seperately or combined to one set of different piercings to only use one slot (using the same slot wouldn't allow them to show ingame, as the mod that allowed that for rings made them not showing up anymore)

-they could use all sorts of materials, bones, ivory, gold, silver, gems, ebony

 

-tatoos could be crafted at a new crafting-station or bought at alchemists and mages (they make the most sense to me) or a new merchant, not sure where he/she could be placed

-probably one set of tatoos for the whole body would be the best to not overuse the available slots

-they could be equipped in a way that doesn't allow you to remove them, like the cursed ring (mentioned in my first post), but perhaps only afer equipping them once to allow followers to be equipped with them too (not sure if that's possible)

-they should be enchantable or available in enchanted versions

 

-both could be added to leveled lists, with tatoos not lootable (like the armours of DB-members that are hired to kill you)

 

everything should be available for both males and females and if possible for all body-mods

[ElderEklund]

I like the way you think. a lot of good suggestions there. I remember there was a piercing mod for Oblivion, that worked out quite nice, especially if you combined it with custom armours. If I am not totally wrong the modder put the piercings in the neclace slot. There is one thing that I do disagree somewhat on. Allthough in a perfect work this should be avalible for all bodytypes. However this mod is allready a lot of work, and would take a lot of time to a seriusly dedicated modder. Personally if someone does pick up this idea, I cross my fingers that the modders favourite body is cbb3.

[BrabbelKP]

Unsing CBBE and the bodyslide-tool, it would be possible to recreate most other bodymods (there are even presets for some of them).

Using a mesh that covers the whole body but is invisible apart from the tatoo itself could probably take away a lot of work, as adding new tatoos would only mean adding new textures. Not sure if something like that is possible.

[krisjay]

I've created a mod that allows you to choose different Tattoo designs on the character creation menu (racemenu), with unique designs based off of race, but I need a few testers to play a full play-through of the game using the different races.

 

If you're interested more info can be found out http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/952170-beta-testers-needed-character-cretaion-body-tattoo-ccbt/