Question about modding resources / tools

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Seneca37
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Question about modding resources / tools

Post by Seneca37 »

I'm a new interior modder and have been looking around this site for some helpful resources/tools, but haven't been able to find anything yet.

At the least, would there happen to be an index somewhere with images of all the various misc/static/etc.. items? Its easy to miss things when one is hunting-and-pecking through the item lists.

Thanks
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Rats
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Post by Rats »

Such catalogue would indeed be useful, though maybe a bit burdening to compile and keep updated.

As a temporary remedy I'd suggest the search function of the CS ("Edit" -> "Find Text"), which I personally find is a handy way to find things that I'd suspect are in the Data but can't quite remember where.
Seneca37
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Post by Seneca37 »

I have found an Index (.chm) of the Morrowind/BM/Tribunal items on the Nexus site. Its mostly text, in a nice format, and there are a few images of rocks. At least its a start.
[url]http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/6845/?[/url]
rot
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Post by rot »

Nice find.

Typically additions in _Data follow the naming conventions of the items they're related with (in_furn_...), but with TR_ added before the ID.
Last edited by rot on Mon Feb 24, 2014 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Rats
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Post by Rats »

Wow, that thing really rocks. (Do forgive me; I'm not a native English speaker so I really gotta cherish a pun when I get to make one)

Good find.
Seneca37
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Post by Seneca37 »

Modder Resources
In order to make interior modding a bit easier, I have modified the RootCollisionNode (RCN) of several MW meshes (nif files). The RCN is used by the game engine to determine if the player has collided with an object. This has no effect on the item placement. However, the Construction Set (CS) does use this information when it generates the selection box (red/green/blue lines around an object). If the RCN extends beyond the object, then the selection box will too. This is why you sometimes have to press “Fâ€Â￾ twice in order to make an item sit flat on a surface. I have gone through the m, f, and o directories and corrected the RCNs so that they do not extend beyond the object. The following zip file has all the corrected nif files in their proper directory. Extract these directories to your Morrowind\Data Files\Meshes directory. If you are using a pure vanilla install, you should not be overwriting any files.
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MW_meshes.zip
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Seneca37
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Post by Seneca37 »

I am doing the same for TR items - however there is more than just RCN issues so it will take a bit more time.
Seneca37
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Post by Seneca37 »

Modder Resources

TR\f FIXES

In an effort to make interior modding easier, I have gone through the tr\f directory and fixed several issues that have an effect on the selection box (red/green/blue lines around an object) shown in the CS. In addition, I've cleaned up some additional issues that were just a waste of space. Below is the file that contains the fixed TR\f models (.nif). I'd appreciate it if some people would test these out before I go ahead and fix the rest of the models. In particular, if there are any nif experts around – I'd appreciate your comments on the changes I have made.

To use the files – simply extract them to the “Data Files\Meshesâ€Â￾ directory. Anything in this directory will override the information in the .bsa files. All these files should be in “Data Files\Meshes\tr\fâ€Â￾.

These changes will NOT effect the placement of anything already in our .esm files. I have made sure that all vertices are within 0.0001 of the original.

In addition, I have removed the collision boxes from the following models:
Hornlilys, bluefoot, banners and the tr_furn_com_tapest_map.

I have not added a rootcollisionnode the following models:
Player should be able to move around these
tr_furn_scafford, tr_flora_root(s), tr_f_root(s), tr_flora_ac(s)
Someone needs to make RCNs to fit these
tr_flora_acshroom(s), tr_flora_acbranch(s)

I have not done the water containing meshes yet – these require special treatment, but will be fixed.

Additional NOTEs
To the keeper of the bsa file:tr\f\tr_act_ind_mark_othrensis.nif => FILE NAME IS TOO LONG
I did not fix any of the xtr_ files. They have kf files associated with them and I do not know how to work with them yet.
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tr.zip
TR\f fixed nif files
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Seneca37
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Post by Seneca37 »

The Problems.txt file lists all the corrected nif files, along with all the corrections made to each. Change the name to .csv to use a spreadsheet. Below explains all the various corrections I made to the files.

Corrections made to nif files
1. Hidden Data – I can find no good use for anything that is hidden inside a nif file. All it does is waste space. Anything hidden has been removed. The exception is RootCollisionNode NiTriShapes. Some people thought that these needed to be hidden – but they don't. All rootcollisionnode element flags have been changed to a value of 2.
2. RootCollisionNode (RCN) is too large – self-explanatory – RCN has been set to the extent of the object. This is the major cause for items needing to be “Fâ€Â￾d twice.
3. KeyFrames – Somehow, a whole bunch of models got Keyframes added to them. These models do not move. The Keyframe information has been removed. Items with functioning Keyframe data have been left alone.
4. NO RCN – Almost all models should have an RCN. The RCN makes the collision detection process faster, and possibly may be causing lagging if not present.
5. Scale Not Equal to 1 – TESCS has a serious bug when it comes to the scaling feature – it is NOT implemented. Therefore ALL .nif files MUST have a scale of 1.
6. Bounding Box – several .nif files had a NiNode labeled “Bounding Boxâ€Â￾. At the start of this project, no one could tell me what they were for. I therefore removed them. Since then, I have determined that these can be useful, if used the proper way. However most implementations of the “Bounding Boxâ€Â￾ were incorrect and were removed.
7. Rotation Removed – similar to the scale feature, rotation of models can cause the TESCS to not calculate the selection box properly. Rotation should be applied to an NiNode not a NiTrishape. If a model has rotation on a NiTriShape element then I removed all rotations from the file. The one exception to this is when the same NiTriShapeData is used more than once. Rotation can not be removed from them, and hence left alone.
8. Remove Properties – The NiTexturingProperty should not be attached to the root node. This has the undesired effect of changing the color of the selection box. Anyone who has used tr_ex_ind_s_wall01 will know what I'm talking about.
9. Tx Path – Texture filepaths only need the “textures\â€Â￾ directory pre-fix if the texture is in a subdirectory off of textures.
10. Rug Fix – I made the RCN for rugs to be .05 larger than the rug (in the -Z dir). This way, when you “Fâ€Â￾ a rug, it will sit at a good height off of a floor.
11. Added NCO – I have converted several of the flora to not have collisions.
12. NiPointLight – This should not be in our files and has been removed.

Unreported corrections:
Made sure that the Bytes remaining in NiStringExtraData, for NCO/NCC is equal to 7.
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Problems.txt
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Mwgek
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Post by Mwgek »


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