[LE] Removing Certain Parts from a mesh?

[Zorlin3321]

Hey, so I've been on the consumer end for modding for 6 years since I got my pc, and I have perfected my modpack for skyrim after 5 years of troubleshooting.

Now I want to get a little more into the production side of things.

I've been making rough patches for simple things for Roland113's Predators - the Lost Tribes mod for personal consumption- such as allowing my pc to use unusable haircuts/eyes/horns/whatever that aren't normally available. For whatever reason, Roland made a lot of cool customization options just not available to all Yautja races. I also removed the somewhat ugly Neck Ring roland added to hide the neckseam of the preds, as I thought the necklaces did a better job of hiding it. Furthermore, I made a cross-patch for the Naruto Overhaul from the Steam Workshop because I really loved the eyes from those mods- and felt that Orochimaru's eye textures fit the preds.

Alright, all that backstory aside-

there's a piece of armor in the mod I've always liked, but thought could have been done better. There's a half-mask called the Savage Rebreather that's perfect for more casual situations, but they have these cumbersome and unsightly horns on the front sides of the rebreather-

simple matter, I thought, to open up the mod and morph the armor's textures so that the horns are just poofed outta existence (even if the horn's coloring's were left over I didn't care) but I'm finding this to be exceedingly more complex than I thought. In retrospect, I would reckon the two hardest parts of modding is Scripting and Texture/Mesh creation.

TL:DR

Simple question for more experienced modders probably, but any idea how I can open this .dds/.nif file and get rid of these ugly horns on a facemask?I thought I'd start off with worded descriptions beforehand, but here's a simple pic of it ingame.

 

[thumbincubation]

My experience here is limited. Take this with a grain of salt.

 

If the mesh creator added the horns as extra pieces, it can be as simple as opening the mesh in nifskope, selecting each horn, going to whichever BSTriShape is highlighted when you select, right-click > remove branch, for each, then save. Save a uniquely-named copy after optimizing/sanitizing, in case that does funny things. Unfortunately, in my experience, few meshes are so convenient, and some are inconsistent. (ie: Miraak's fugly pauldrons can be removed for both males and females with this method. The giant dinner plate, on the left shoulder of scaled armor, can only be done this way for males. The female version, it is not a separate part.) Judging only by this picture, it does not look as though it is going to be so cooperative.

 

Another method for removing certain parts of armor, for instance when creating mashups or removing items that have some of the main body visible under them, is to add a NiAlphaProperty to that particular branch of the mesh, set the flags to allow it to hide portions of the texture, and then use photoshop, gimp, paint.net, or something to cut out those portions of the diffuse map. In this case, since the affected portion of the mesh is not "removable," you may have a hole in the remainder of the mesh, through which can be seen nothing at all. This is good for removing maybe a satchel, or a strap, but its uses are limited. (elianora has a tutorial on youtube about making parts of armor meshes invisible, in which she explains the addition of the alpha property, how to set the flags, etc. It is made for FO4 but works here as well.)

 

If this mask is, as it appears from the picture, all one piece, the only thing I could suggest would be to take an existing helmet which covers that part of the cheek/jaw, mash it up with the mask (armor mashup tutorials on youtube as well...I think Hoth made one, if it's still around) and then use the alpha property and texture method on both the horns and almost all of the helmet, except where it would cover the holes left by the horns. I would like to say you could stick the BSTriShape from a coin or something over the holes, but I tried a few things with adding clutter to armor, and it failed miserably. My understanding is it would have to be "weighted," to move with the body. I know that can be done, but it is beyond my skill level and I believe requires blender or 3dsmax. Using another helmet means you're dealing with parts that are already weighted. It make take some experimentation to find something that will fit, but look for something tight to the face, like the standard guard helmet. Once you get something that effectively plugs the holes, you can retexture it to match the mask easily.