Understanding how Skyrim uses meshes, textures in relation to bodyslide.

[Thairat]

I'm a noobie so this is the basics of the interaction of meshes, texture and Bodyslide, or my understanding of it.

 

Character Meshes, Textures use with Bodyslide

All Skyrim characters displayed consist of a mesh (3D model Nif file) and a texture (a image painted in a graphicss program a dds file) that covers the plain mesh, to add color and details. In addition there maybe be a skeleton mesh with is used to allow the static mesh to move defining joints and range of motion of the character mesh.


How Skyrim handles characters bodies.

When creating a character the user selects a weight setting choosing either slim (low weight) or larger frame or (high weight) this corresponds to 2 diiferent meshes. In the case of the female these correspond to femalebody_0 (light wt) and femalebody_1 (high wt).

Editing the body shape can make a light wt heavier, or the high wt lighter, but the character uses only one mesh either the light or heavy depending on the choice made on character creation or subsequent racemenu editing


Skrim does not layer armor over the body mesh, the Armor has its own mesh and texture, when in the game the user puts on armor, the game replaces the body (mesh and associated texture) presently in use, with another mesh that includes the original body mesh, wearing the armor its own mesh nif file.

Enter Bodyslide

When creating or building a body (mesh and texture) bodyslide creates both the (light wt version) femalebody_0 and (high wt version) femalebody_1 at the same time, so two characters are created. Which one is displayed in the game is determine by the setting you made when you created the character.

If your character is based on the light wt version, but you intended to use a high wt version created by bodyslide, you need to use racemenu to change the character weight setting and save changes to a new character name, otherwise the character in the game will not display the changes you just built.


Recent edits not displayed in the game.

Probably most bodyslide issues are associated this incorrect mesh file paths, or another mod over writing your recent edit.
If not sure about the path, search drive for .nif file and sort by recently modified to put the most recent .nif at top of the list, check the date to see if it corresponds to what you might expect.
If you have Nifskope installed, you can double click the most recent .nif file to view it, and see if it reflects your most recent edit.

 

 

Animation

 

In order to expect an animated body when using bodyslide, you must select or be using a body type that supports animation and have the associated physics and scripting mods and FNIS to create the animation.

With all the necessary mods installed, you wont see animation if your body type doesn't support it.

 

Nexus Mod Manager (NMM)

 

NMM always shows conflicts that must be resolved in order to get bodyslide and/or animation to work together, but even when they do work together, NMM flags them as potential problems, so don't expect NMM to

display no no problems, try and see for yourself!

 

FNIS

 

Since FNIS creates the animations, after any changes in bodyslide FNIS must rebuild to reflect or show those changes.

When running FNIS it displays a progress report including errors, don't ignore it! It knows what it expects, its up to you to resolve any problem until it no longer reports any warnings!

I recently installed a mod that was designed for I searched for a FNIS mod and found Fores New Idles in Skyrim SE - FNIS SE, I didn't notice the SE installed it, and it ran but had many errors

duh! Skeleton not found et al. No wonder!, this mod for SE version of Skyrim, pay attention to the errors, just because you don't understand them google it!

 

Remember computers/software cant read your mind, if it's not working like you expect then:

1. read the documentation of the mods you are using, yes it get complicated while using multiple mods (the creator of every mod must consider the interactions of many factors)
2. there's a bug (possible but more likely the user doesn't fully understand what they are doing! Especially true with popular mods)
3. something you didn't realize is significant!
4. everything is significant in regards to how computer/software behave
5. your hardware, available memory, video RAM, operating system, processor can all have an influence if what you are expecting is realistic.
6. computer/software is not magic

 

 

A work in progress, in lieu of doing multiple posts, its more useful to edit the initial post to add new content.

 

Any corrections appreciated.

Edited June 7, 2019 by thai_rat