Creating Harvestable Plant Mesh

[chaospearl]

One last thing... AnkhAscendant, exactly which kelp were you trying to harvest when you attempted this? What's the file name of the non-harvestable nif? There's more than one kelp in the game.

 

When I finally get my f'ing fiddleheads to work -- and I WILL -- I'd like to give it a try with your kelp, unless you planned on giving it another shot yourself. The fact that you posted in my thread and were interested is what kept me from giving up entirely when I couldn't figure it out myself and found nothing by searching. Besides, kelp's edible, so it'll fit right into my food mod.

 

Edit: IT WORKS OMG IT WORKS FINALLY

[steve40]

What I'm worried about is the fact that the activatable area of the mesh is very, very small, and located down at the bottom of the plant.

 

Enlargen the size of the collision object a little. I can't remember exactly how off the top of my head but it is like 1 minute's work just to increase the X,Y,Z dimensions of the collision box (or it might be a sphere or some other shape).

Edited October 19, 2012 by steve40

[steve40]

No, what steve40 suggested is correct. You can copy the fern's TriShape branch into a harvestable plant's nif and turn it into a harvestable plant that way:

 

:cool:

[AnkhAscendant]

One last thing... AnkhAscendant, exactly which kelp were you trying to harvest when you attempted this? What's the file name of the non-harvestable nif? There's more than one kelp in the game.

 

When I finally get my f'ing fiddleheads to work -- and I WILL -- I'd like to give it a try with your kelp, unless you planned on giving it another shot yourself. The fact that you posted in my thread and were interested is what kept me from giving up entirely when I couldn't figure it out myself and found nothing by searching. Besides, kelp's edible, so it'll fit right into my food mod.

 

Edit: IT WORKS OMG IT WORKS FINALLY

 

I'm glad you got it working ^-^ I was trying to edit the tall kelp - I think it's kelptall.nif, but that might have been the name of the texture ^^; I'm not at my computer right now to check. I was hoping that I could make tall kelp turn into small kelp after you harvested part of it, since that would be reasonable (and use the same small kelp as the inventory/ingredient part). Honestly at the moment I'm a CK-only kinda gal, so I'd have to stare at Nifskope and muddle my way through the answers you got... doesn't sound like fun ^^;

[steve40]

@AnkhAscendant: I've thought of a way that you might be able to do this. If you look at the slaughterfisheggcluster01.nif for example, you will see that it is actually two meshes: the full cluster of eggs, and a partial cluster that you see after you have harvested it. They are switched via a NiSwitchNode when harvested. So, if you use a mesh like that as the base, paste the NiTriShapeData of your tall kelp over the NiTriShapeData branch of the first NiNode's data block in the NiSwitchNode. Then paste the NiTriShapeData branch of the small kelp over the second NiNode's NiTriShapeData block. That way it should automatically switch from tall kelp to small kelp when harvested.

[chaospearl]

Heh, I was CK-only (and not very good at it, either) until approximately two days ago when I got it into my head to enter Fiddlehead Hell. I wouldn't have tried it if I'd known it'd take me two 13-hour days of pure frustration, but I'm glad I know how to do it now. I think a lot of the problem was that I didn't know my way around NifSkope at all; I was confusing Copy Branch and regular Copy, then someone's suggestions threw the Export Object function into the mix too.

 

But the main thing is that I didn't know how to associate the branches I was copying with the parents. That's why I originally replied to Steve and said it wasn't as easy as just copying the NiTriShapeData into a harvestable mesh. It turns out we were both sorta right. You CAN copy it over just as he said, but it isn't a matter of simply copying and pasting and poof you're done. You have to click on the parent NiTriShape, then tell NifSkope to show you the Block Details, scroll down to where it says Data and change the number from the old NiTriShapeData to the number of the one you just pasted, then go back to the tree and remove the old block. I didn't know that, and that's why it wasn't working for me.

 

If you want another go at the kelp yourself, PM me and I'll walk you through exactly how I did it from the point of view of someone who's never opened NifSkope before in her life. I'm going to give it a shot myself and see how big of a mess I can make trying to create a harvestable kelp that changes shape when harvested. Heh.

 

Incidentally, turns out it actually does work to simply replace the vanilla mesh with the new one. In one fell swoop every plant in the game is harvestable and you don't have to do anything else. I don't know why I figured it wouldn't work, it seems simple enough. I guess by that point I was just assuming nothing is ever as simple as it looks.

[AnkhAscendant]

That is a terrifying series of strange names and jargon, but I'm gonna open up NifSkope and try to follow along. *dives in*

 

...Don't hold your breaths :P

[chaospearl]

What I'm worried about is the fact that the activatable area of the mesh is very, very small, and located down at the bottom of the plant.

 

Enlargen the size of the collision object a little. I can't remember exactly how off the top of my head but it is like 1 minute's work just to increase the X,Y,Z dimensions of the collision box (or it might be a sphere or some other shape).

 

Figured it out after some trial and error. It's even easier than you thought. If you start with a mesh that's reasonably close to the right shape, all you have to do is scale the collision box larger by clicking the NiNode and using Transform.

 

I'm finally done. I did it. I have a clean esp that changes every fiddlehead fern in Skyrim to be easily harvestable. So, uh, now what? I've never released a mod in my life, I'd really rather have someone test it out in their game first in case I've done something incredibly stupid. Any volunteers?

 

Now, onto the kelp!

[steve40]

That's why I originally replied to Steve and said it wasn't as easy as just copying the NiTriShapeData into a harvestable mesh. It turns out we were both sorta right. You CAN copy it over just as he said, but it isn't a matter of simply copying and pasting and poof you're done. You have to click on the parent NiTriShape, then tell NifSkope to show you the Block Details, scroll down to where it says Data and change the number from the old NiTriShapeData to the number of the one you just pasted, then go back to the tree and remove the old block.

 

There's an easier way. Right-click on your NiTriShapeData block in the Block List window and select "block->copy". Then open your target mesh in a new instance of Nifskope, select the target NiTriShapeData block in the Block List window, right-click on it and choose "block->Paste Over". Then select the NiTriShape of the block that you just pasted. In the Block Details window, the first field is "Name". Right-click on the "value" field to the right of this (the actual name of the block) and choose "Edit String Text". Then name it the same as block from the original mesh. Done. Alternatively you can do a copy/paste-over on the NiTriShape block if you want but it usually isn't necessary. Poof, you're done :)

 

So I've just done a test using the slaughterfisheggcluster01.nif as a base, then I copied over the 4 NiTriShape branches from one of the ant tiles in my AIMP mod and added them to the first NiSwitchNode. Then I only added the EditorMarker shape to the second NiSwitchNode. The trick here is that in the NiNode block I had to edit "num children" from 1 to 4 and right-click the green arrows and update the array, then I could link the 4 new NiTriShapes that I copied over. Ok, so what happened in game? The ants were harvestable (YAY!) but the editor marker was visible as a large white quadrangle and the ants weren't animating. Then I found out that I had to change the Flags on the BSXFlags block to have Havok enabled and "has editor markers" enabled. So then I went back in game and the ants were animating (yay!) but the editor marker was still visible. So that's when I tried renaming the Editor Marker's NiTriShape to "EditorMarker" (duh) as I had called it "EditorMarker:0". Anyway, that fixed it :dance: So, it appears that sometimes the name of the NiTriShape block must be a certain exact name for certain features to work properly. So in a nutshell, I can now start work on adding harvestable ants to my AIMP mod :)

Edited October 19, 2012 by steve40

[chaospearl]

LOL harvestable ants. Now we just need a way to make chocolate.

 

The method you described... does that only apply to animated objects, or will I have to go through the same process to do a kelp that changes meshes when harvested? I can certainly give it a try, but considering how long it took me to get a simple copy-paste working, you just know I'll screw it up somehow.