Mod restartitis, Cross-infection from the game itself? Options

[ghastley]

I'm finding myself doing with mods what others do with their characters. I'm starting new ones, before I've finished work on the existing ones.

Bear Riders - I built Riders Lodge, added a couple of new NPC's, lots of skimpy outfits, and two or three quests. Got stuck trying to pair up recruits with their bears, and establish the patrols. I'm also having issues getting Unna to train more bears, because I don't know how to attach properties to an Actor.

Thieves Guild Continued - Created a number of new NPC's, the beginnings of the first quest, and added content to Riftweald Manor to open its doors once the Guild takes it over. Got stuck with quest conditions for executing Sibbi. I want to have him chopped by Svidi, but she may be dead, so I need Mjoll (who's essential) to step in for that situation. I just can't get the aliases to fill properly!

Orc Hearthfires - This was going nicely until it started crashing the game as soon as I created the small hut layout.

Elf Kids - I made a high-res head to generate the model-space normals, but can't get that process to work. The tutorial on it requires 3DS MAX and ZBrush, which I don't have. I figured out how to use Blender for the sculpting, but there's some subtle use of MAX that's eluding me. Stuck again.

Alik'r Dancer - still adding more content. It's released, but unfinished. I just made a modified Scimitar model, because I wasn't happy with the hilt on the vanilla one, and I'm working on a high-end one (probably ebony) for variety.

Diablita for Skyrim - She's OK apart from a kink in her tail when idle. It's a problem with one bone in the Bethesda animation, because I can see it in the Khajiit tail, too. It's just a lot more noticeable with a more slender tail. I downloaded the Havok tools to try and fix it myself, but again seem to need other software (like MAX) to use with it.

Hulk out - Actually finished that one! I just have to make myself leave it alone.

And all this is on top of multiple mods for my own use only, just to tweak things for one character. Drelka's getting a new dress like her one in Oblivion, for example.

I'm finding myself going back to my old characters and doing new quests with them. How do I get myself to go back and finish the mods I started?

[ghastley]

Now that I am not spending all my time filling the master tables in ESO, I have returned to some unfinished Skyrim mods.

The waitress at the Blue Dragon Club in Solitude is now walking around with her tray of drinks, instead of just standing in one place. The animation was already part of the game files, so just needed activation as part of her AI package to patrol the tables. I am still deciding if this deserves a tutorial write-up.

Since the "carry" part of the animation is a single-frame pose of the arms, that gets combined with the walk, it was not hard to create an arm pose for the books one. So now I have that, too. Bibliophilia reminds me that the subject of animation objects probably does need a tutorial. Getting that book into the right place was not trivial. I still want to create some different piles of books for her, so that she appears to be sorting them, not just carrying them around. That means I need my own notes to follow when I repeat the process.

And now I've started poking around, I need to investigate the book-reading animations where the book is animated so that the pages turn. There are animated books for the in-game reading dialogs, where the player opens the book, pages forward and backward, and the book closes at the end. I suspect the book animations are re-used for the animation objects, but there will be some subtleties to ferret out.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Nov 27 2024, 07:11 PM