[WIPz] CMR - Custom Mesh Races

[DaMage]

I know i seems to have alot of WIPS at the moment, but this one is almost done now as i started it back during october, its in a heavy testing stage now as I refine the scripts. I started it after realising how to do it in my halloween entry (remember the tombs with NPC skeletons?)

Authors:

Da Mage

Helpers:

Drake the Dragon - Teaching me string/array functions and writing parts for my script

Showler - Teaching me string/array functions and writing parts for my script

TheNiceOne - Helping to teach me string/array functions and writing parts for my script

QQuix - Telling me a way to get the Player's race name into a string

CMR is my attempt at allowing modders to make races that have custom body meshes, it does this by using alot of the new OBSE v17 string functions and alot of mesh editing on my part. The idea behind it comes from morrowind where armors did not contain body data with skin, which allowed the body parts of the races to be custom (as long as they could fit the armor/clothing). I have paintakingly edited out the arms/legs/chests of over 200 hundred items from oblivion, SI and OOO. The paths of all these items are recorded and when an item using one of these meshes is equipped, the item is swapped out with a duplicate that points to the edited mesh. It is all very complex, but it does work quite well.

One of the big points is that I am not developing this for a NPC race, I would have no idea how to get ti to that stage, so unless someone takes it up after release, the races will be player only.

At the moment I only have a skeleton race which I've been testing with, but once the intial script is set up finally finished, it wont take all that long to add other new races and meshes to the mod. The mod has been designed as a modder's resource that will come with a guide to putting your own races into the mod, soon we may be playing as zomibes, liches, spriggians, fire daedra etc etc...

Limitations:

1. To make the mod work I have to heavily use the tail slot, so if you want to play one of these races you wont be able to use tail slot items.

2. If you plan on making a race, you race will have to fit into the oringinal body (same as morrowind) else there will be clipping. wanna make a big character? downsize them to fit and use the hieght/weight race setting to put them back.

Pictures:

Skeleton:

Known Bugs left:

You cannot equip and armor into the same slot if you are wearing a clothing item there, you must first unequip the clothing to make the armor equip.

Dummy items can be dropped which makes making duplicates (as the proper item is added to your inventory)

Script does not detect multiple slot items yet

Hand slot items are not being re-pathed

Hands dont reappear after equipping a hand slot item

[InsanitySorrow]

This sounds interesting to me, mainly becuase I was thinking about how nice it would be to have a new companion that was not a normal race, though it would still required edited meshes but this seems to take care of the other parts

[DaMage]

had a small issue of getting the hands to show up in first person, a few more meshs edits later, now another mesh repathing and it should be all good.

Makes it a bit harder to make new races now, but still not that bad.

[PacificMorrowind]

Looks very cool!

I have paintakingly edited out the arms/legs/chests of over 200 hundred items from oblivion, SI and OOO. The paths of all these items are recorded and when an item using one of these meshes is equipped, the item is swapped out with a duplicate that points to the edited mesh. It is all very complex, but it does work quite well.

So I guess that means there has to be a patch of meshes for every (at least significant ones)armour/clothing adding mod?

Pacific Morrowind

[DaMage]

Looks very cool!

So I guess that means there has to be a patch of meshes for every (at least significant ones)armour/clothing adding mod?

Pacific Morrowind

Yeah, I hopeing as Nifscript gets better I might be able to make and edit these meshes on the fly. But at the moment I need to edit the meshes.

[PacificMorrowind]

Yeah, I hopeing as Nifscript gets better I might be able to make and edit these meshes on the fly. But at the moment I need to edit the meshes.

or possible that I can make a batch script for PYFFI/nifscripts... suddenly I understand what DW was saying about his bad naming choice for confusion with nifscripts... I'd just need to know a bit of what you are doing to the meshes; then I could probably (at least I think so) make such as script up.

Pacific Morrowind

[DaMage]

the mesh edits for the armor and clothing are pretty easy. (thoguh i dont know hard they would be for PYFFI)

Any nitristrip (or nitrishape) that has a 'skin' material name need to be deleted. All the other nitristrip need to have a Nistencilproperty added to them. That all i did for them.

For the hand items (which need to be custom for every race), i need to do the same as above, but then I also need to paste all the nitristrips from my hand_arms nif for the race.

If you can write a pyffi script for this it would be amazing and save me serious amount of work.

EXTRA: Is there anyway for a script to check all the nifs in my oblivion folders to find ones that need editing, then when it finds one it is copied to a new path? Also have the orginal path copied to a txt file or something? if so that would be amazing. I dont expect you to do this though, cause I have no idea how hard that would be. It would save me the trouble of checking a large amount of armor/clothing from big mods, and the typing out of the paths, which takes ages to do.

PS: Personal congrate on becoming a mod

[myrmaad]

Is it possible to post a pic of one of these you've been experimenting on? Like a Skeleton race I suppose?

[DaMage]

Is it possible to post a pic of one of these you've been experimenting on? Like a Skeleton race I suppose?

Thats what Im working towards, though i keep getting sidetracked when i go to take a picture to fix a bug. As soon as all important bugs are squashed ill grab one.

If you want an idea of what the skeletons will look like, just look at my skeleton NPC in my halloween entry, it will look the same as that (but it wont work they they did).

[DaMage]

Pictures are up now for the skeleton race, also a bug and authors list.

Any word back from you PM about a batch script? It would certainly earn you a co-author status if you can

Onto some game mechcanics, what abilities should the three undead races have?

Skeleton: Thief Undead. Low health, but agilie and quick

Zombie: Fighter, heaps of health, very low magkica (maybe stunted?)

Lich: Mage type, low health, high magic

The game abilities for these creatures are way to powerful for a player to have, so what should i give them instead? I think they should have disease and posion immunities for a base, but what else?

[Uglulyx]

Those screens look awesome!

[nottlong]

Being the undead should they not have some weakness to fire. I am not sure how the game covers this I am not that much of a magic user, like swords better. For the Zombie a little increase in strength,5-10 above what the normal races would have. To offset the increase in strength reduce the speed a like amount, how many fast Zombies have you seen in the game or movies. That is the best that I can think of right now. Nice screenies and good luck with your project.