[LE] Missing Underwear with new NPC's Armor Outfit?

[Gorgopis]

Context: We are assembling an armor outfit for our custom NPC mod, hoping to use or modify existing armor. We are using only Skyrim, + update, and the three DLC as our .esm master data files. We have used BSA-extractor. We have used tutorials, but have not found a concise one that addresses our issues.

 

ISSUES:

 

1) Nonetheless, after we added a starting armor-outfit to the NPC, the cuirass, boots, and gauntlets DO appear on the character image, but she has no underwear, thong, or loin-covering. We tried including an armor-addon of a panty or thong to the outfit, but then the character-body disappears, likely because skin-partition nodes don't correlate? That's a guess.

 

2) Similarly, if we use instead her backup tavern-clothes outfit, as her starting outfit, she still exhibits no underwear in the CK view-window, nor in-game.

 

3) Which leads us to a question. In the vanilla game + DLC, ordinarily when using the CK, with no mods enabled, the characters show underwear in the CK and in-game. So, clearly, the CK has added the armors/bodies from our CBBE/Outfit studio, even though we did not check this in our CK data master files? And please note we do currently have CBBE-Outfit Studio enabled in our Vortex Profile.

 

4) We CAN achieve adding underwear in the CK by enabling a "vanilla"-Vortex Profile that does not have CBBE/Outfit studio enabled, simply by adding duplicating and adding the existing armor-set in the CK that we wish to use for our NPC's starting outfit.

 

5) So, does Vortex "influence" the assets available in the CK?

 

6) How can we add a thong or underwear to our character's starting armor set, so that we can publish the mod? And, defer to the user to replace the armor, etc., as the user prerfers?

 

Thanks, community!

[Hanaisse]

The game, and the CK, will display armor as per whatever you have installed.

Meaning, if you've used Bodyslide to build armor/clothing for your game, this armor/clothing is now in your Data directory, and what the CK looks at. Further, if you've built nude or skimpy armor/clothing, that is what you'll see, hence why your NPC has no underwear.
The same will go for whatever your mod user has installed, that is what they'll see.

You can bypass this by what you discovered in your point (4) above, however each mod user will see it different based on what they have installed unless you make your outfit completely standalone and unique to your mod NPC. You can add underwear to the armor you want (if you have some standalone underwear handy) but you need to add it to the armor nif, not just the armor addon. Only then will the NPC always have underwear regardless of the mod users setup.

[Gorgopis]

@Hanaisse:

 

Thank you for a concise response that solves all but a couple of remaining considerations.

 

1) So, if we wish to publish our NPC mod, one version safe for juvenile and other users; and another, the same NPC, but published for the benefit of "mature" users, we can continue to build the outfit in CK with our current Vortex (Bodyslide-enabled) Profile? (And thus not worry about missing underwear--which is how we understand your reply.)

 

2) Then, at Nexus Mods, we simply upload the mod (Twice? With Different Names?), one version of the NPC aimed to the general user with "safe" images of our NPC, and a second version of the same NPC with more risque images, for the interests of the adults-only user?

 

3) We have concern about perceived "bad" intentions to offer safe versus adult versions, if both of the NPC mod(s) are published with the same character name.

 

++++++++

 

BTW, we are now going to search for nif tutorials, to see how to add some of our standalone underwear to the armor nif. (We do have the tools for that effort.)