Modding Beginner

[Hektus]

Hi everyone. I recently became interested in Skyrim mods and started tinkering with Nifskope and the CK as I found problems with mods I had downloaded or just wanted to change something. I feel like I've learned a lot but I've run in to a brick wall with one thing and of course have run in to several other things that have confounded me. So, I'll jump right in to my main problem and probably mention off-hand a few other things. Any insight is appreciated!

 

My main problem is with the BSLightingShaderProperty in NifSkope. I got a clothing mesh that caused BSLightingShaderProperty errors in the CK; I remembered this property from NifSkope so I loaded up NifSkope and started investigating. While researching I found that most guides (even the ones linked in the stickies at the top of this board) say that the BSLSP for any working armor NiTriShape can be copied and pasted in to your armor NiTriShape and I tried that but it doesn't work for this piece (I relinked everything and reentered the texture paths). I was able to find only one article that actually goes in to detail about what the properties of the BSLSP for armor should be and I followed that to no avail. The errors in the CK when pulling up the .nif continued (also crashes the game when you equip the armor).

 

A little later I was looking at the armor forms for another mod in the CK and noticed that, while this armor mod had always been working perfectly, it also generated BSLSP errors when pulling up the .nif. So, I guess it's possible that there is actually nothing wrong with the BSLSP in either, or both are wrong, and BSLSP might not be causing the crash in the game. It's probably worth noting though that I did compare the BSLSP of the non-working armor with several other BSLSPs of working armors and didn't find any difference, but did find that the NiTriShapeData > BS Num UV Sets was different (4097 in working armors, 1 in the broken armor).

 

With regard to the other armor that worked in game but caused the BSLSP errors in the CK, I also noticed that it referenced the vanilla body mesh texture (femalebody_1.dds) rather than the CBBE AstridBody.dds (is this a custom texture or just a different vanilla texture?), although it does reference AstridBody_s.dds. I don't understand anything about textures yet, but I guess the texture is changing when I equip it (I never noticed)? I can see that the femalebody_1.dds does have the redeeming quality of making the body not look like a burn victim in NifSkope, though. That's a plus.

 

Another quick question: BSLSP > Glossiness. I know that if I set this for the femalebody_x.nif's, it applies to the body in game when you aren't wearing clothes, but how is it applied when you are wearing clothes? Is it actually necessary to set the Glossiness in every single body mesh NiTriShape for every single armor that I equip?

 

Anyways, that's all the info I have on the BSLSP problem, That's all I can think of at the moment, if I remember anything else or think of other things that I noticed I'll post replies. I'll be monitoring this thread so I should reply quickly if you ask me for any info...speaking of info.

 

I'm using the CHSBHC body meshes with BB physics, which I think uses the CBBE body textures (AstridBody.dds). I'm trying to get to the point where I can adapt armors to the 0 and 100 weight body meshes as explained in CherryHotaling's tutorial.

 

I attached the broken body mesh. As you can see, it is SSH only, which I really don't like but it's very common; it's one of my motivations for learning how to adapt the meshes myself.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Edit: Can't attach the file, too big.