I'm not sure where this topic goes, I was thinking of putting it in mods but the construction set might be more fitting.

Some inane banter before I get on with the question...

For the past few days I've been entertaining the thought that it might be possible to create my character Kaikuro's mask in Oblivion.

Here's a drawing of him: http://btcomics.com/Ailevian/portraits/kai_full.jpg

As part of his artistic design, I gave him a VERRRY tight-fitting green crescent-shaped mask. This choice was mostly to preserve his expressions as I draw him in my comic.

Anyway. I like to roleplay as Kaikuro so I made him in Oblivion, and I easily modified a facial texture to get... well, what he looks like without the mask in there. But now I kind of want his mask on. It's just not in his character to walk around town unmasked. The mask has a lot of significance and he's got a very good reason for wearing it, plus it's got a bit of a metaphorical symbol. So him being unmasked kind of hinders the experience for me.

So. After lots of headaches and some help from Drake the Dragon, I created the mask mesh and was helped out with getting a green texture on there. Basically it was just a copy of the headhuman.nif with the areas that I wanted gone, deleted. So now it's a working mesh, and now comes the hard part.

I'm thinking of trying to use Scanti's conformulator to get the mask to bend to fit the shape of my characters' face as it was altered in the in-game chargen. Since it's so tight-fitting. But of course, I also have to figure out how to get the mask in-game and actually go in the head area. Also, Drake the Dragon said that he's not entirely sure if the conformulator would work properly as it might conflict with his hair. I don't really know the details, a lot of this goes over my head, but I'm willing to put effort in learning if people could direct me in the right direction.

So basically I'm asking if you guys could give me a few thoughts or pointers that could get me going.

The next part after I do his mask is getting his medallion on there. I was sure it would conflict with conformulating if I put it on top of the mask mesh itself, so I have to do it separately, but that also would eat up a slot, and I've only got so many slots to work with. >.<

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Wow, great artworks! Where would someone be able to enjoy this and other characters designed by your hand, if he were so inclined?

Anyway, yes it is possible to use the conformulator for these purposes. However, I have to tell you right from the start: The only way for you to enjoy the facial expressions of your character with the mask on is to make the mask part of his head, and make him a unique new race (if you haven't done so anyway).
In that sense, it'll be like Sheogorath's beard, or the beards from http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30140.

Positive side-effects: No problems with disappearing hair or anything like that. And, of course, the fact that it will move with your character's face when he talks or stuff like that.
Negative side-effect: You won't be able to take it off.

First off, some thoughts about the model itself:
1. It would be great if you could combine your mask mesh with the tongue mesh, the mesh for the upper teeth or the mesh for lower teeth; that'll save you some troubles.
2. Also, you'll have to move the model in your nif file a little bit relative to where the original head model was (in the... direction where the nose points ), otherwise it will be at exactly the same spot where the skin of your character is, resulting in nasty clipping. You've probably done this already, but I thought I should mention it anyway.
3. It should be fine to put the medaillon onto the mesh. I think. Just try it out and have a look. You might have to move it a little bit away from the mask so that it won't start clipping.

Now, what you do is this: You open the Oblivion - Meshes.bsa and find any files in the characters\imperial folder that are called headhuman (it should be a .nif, a .tri and an .egm, I think), and you extract them to some location. You open the conformulator, select your mesh and then select these files where appropriate (you might not need them all, I'm not quite sure now). Use the best options available and conformulate. The program will create .tri and .egm files for your mask. Put your .tri, .egm and .nif file of your mask into the data\meshes\characters folder, preferably in their own folder: data\meshes\characters\Kaikuro.
Then you open the CS and go to your character's race. There you go to the tab where you can select various meshes - among them upper teeth, lower teeth and tongue. If you combined your mesh with one of the three, then simply select that one and replace it with your mask's .nif file.

If you haven't combined your mask's mesh with one of these three (because you didn't know how or because you didn't see the point in it), then you need to use a certain modder's resource: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10674
You can replace either the upper or the lower teeth mesh with this one; the other slot is now free and you can put your mask's .nif file there. (If you didn't use merged teeth, the corresponding teeth would become invisible).

If you want to do it this way, but my description of the steps involved is too confusing, then you could also send me your mesh and the plugin file for your character's race, and I'll see what I can do.
However, I'm not very good at mesh editing and have absolutely zero skills at modeling, so it would be great if you could make the necessary steps for that (adding the medaillon, moving the mask so that it'll be in front of the face, merging the mesh with the tongue mesh).

First off, thanks for your compliments. Most of my art really isn't that great though, but you can find more on my deviantArt account at http://aeolianmode.deviantart.com and you can read the comic Kaikuro is in at http://www.btcomics.com/Ailevian/index.htm .

Thanks very much for the in-depth post. A lot of it is going over my head a bit. I already created a mask mesh and it's textured as well. But are you saying I have to insert another mesh into it such as the teeth mesh and attach it somehow? I'm a little confused for why this matters in modifying the model itself.

On a side note. hm. Is it possible to create 2 different races of the same character, one unmasked and one without? While a bit immersion-breaking, if I ever wanted to remove it, instead of making it an inventory item I could simply open the console and force the chargen race screen so I can swap him out with his unmasked counterpart. Would this be possible, would I lose any stats or some such?

Anyway, I currently moved the mask up a bit in the direction of the nose like you said, but I'm still unsure about adding the medallion to it because of the texturing. Drake helped me with the texture and all it needed was a green block of texture to cover the entirety of the mesh. Is there a way to add the medallion and tell it to be textured differently? I'm no good at this texturing business. And I'm still a bit stumped on why he needs the tongue or teeth in there as well, though. I appreciate the offer to help me out a bit, so I think I'll ask you if this turns out to be a colossal epic fail.

Yay a comic! :>
"Mom, there's a WEIRD MAN at the door!!!"


It doesn't matter in modifying the model itself. By attaching the teeth, you can later tell the game that this mesh you've created is in fact your character's race's upper teeth mesh without losing the teeth. It is like... dunno, you have a head made of clay, and it doesn't have any teeth, but there's a hole where you can put some. Now you have three clay models that fit perfectly into that hole: One which is a mask with teeth attached, one model that is just a mask, and one model that is just teeth. If you take the first model and attach it, you'll get both, teeth and mask. If you take one of the latter, you'll only get either mask OR teeth.


That would be possible, but I think I've read that it's not advised to change the race during the game, because things might get wonky.
I could imagine that with today's modding possibilities (NifScript comes to mind), it would be possible to change the mesh of that part of the body on-the-fly during the game. You'd just need an experienced scripting guru to make a mod like that for you.


Yes, there is a way to add the medaillon and tell it to be textured differently, that's why I'm even suggesting it.
Well anyway. The beards mod I linked to above is made by me, in case you haven't noticed. The meshes involved aren't made by me, but I've conformulated them, repositioned some parts of them a bit, and added them to new races. So I do have a bit of experience with the issue, and I can understand if it's confusing, and my offer stands. I'd need the medaillon mesh, the mask mesh, and the plugin file of your character's race.

Hey! Thanks for reading a bit of my comic. Chapter 1 is old with bad art and confusing pacing, I'm currently redoing it. XP Anyway.

I worked a bit more with it and I came to a bit of a problem X.x I messaged Drake the Dragon about it to get his thoughts, and maybe you can help as well.

I got the merged teeth resource and I conformulated the mask and have the files required. But I don't know how to associate these files to the mask in the construction set to get them to conformulate. Secondly, when I just tested it out and stuck it in the Race menus (used scanti's merged teeth resource and put the mask.nif and dds files in the free teeth slot) in the facegen data menu it is now floating upside-down in the distance, as you can see in the http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/7407/blehct.jpg, and I don't know what I did to get that to happen. I was certain it was in the same position as the headhuman.nif was in Blender... I don't know what I did. O.o Do you think you could help me?

If you've conformulated the mask, all you need to do is to drop the files all in the same folder, and then select the .nif file in the CS. You don't have to associate them or anything, the game will automatically use the created files.


Ah. I just checked, and it turns out that the head mesh is completely differently aligned than the teeth mesh. You'll need to rotate and translate your mesh. In NifSkope, there's that "Edit" function where you can do that... the rotation axes are Y, P and R. Set the P value to 90. The translation axes are X, Y, Z - set X to -112, and Y to 1. You may need to do some trial and error testing for the X and Y values, -112 and 1 are only estimated.
(Actually, I hope these values are correct - maybe they aren't at all, but you will see that then. Basically, you need to rotate and translate until it looks right in the CS. )

(Once you've achieved the perfect result, you'll need to conformulate the mesh again.)

Well, it wasn't "conflicting with hair" what I was aiming at. It was intended to use this mask as an equippable item and I said the only "equipment" slots I know of capable to support conformulated meshes are "head" and "hair" (used for closed and open helmets respectively), so whichever one you choose you'd loose either your face or your hair.
But now you're going the "part of the race"-route instead, so there are much more "slots" which will support conformulated meshes.

This weird offset/dislocation you're now experiencing in the CS was what I meant when I said "depending on the intended way of application (which way you equip/mount it, which slot) you might need to move it to a different location/orientation in the scene, especially as it wasn't in a head or helmet location to begin with".
I don't think you need much messing around with trial and error in NifSkope though. The way those face part meshes are oriented in their local scene might look weird and not make any sense, but I can't remember ever having stumbled upon one with "arbitrary" rotation angles. Especially "teeth" seemed to be straight forward, as I was always able to import the teeth meshes into the head mesh scene and they were already at the proper location and properly oriented.

It shouldn't be too hard to get the mask into its proper location and orientation to be useable in one of the teeth slots. I could do that as well, if you want.
Adding in the medallion or whatever it is above the eye and a band shouldn't be much trouble either. Granted, the current texture is just a giant patch of green something, but due to my unwrapping there's still enough area left to include textures for the medallion and a band or something as well. When intending to conformulate something it must be 1 single part, thus it must also only be 1 texture, but here I don't see any problems as the eye patch and its textures can easily be included/added from my point of view.

As you were told already, the game engine will take up and use those EGM and TRI files automatically already, given they have the same filename (minus extension) as the NIF. It's the same thing as with normalmaps ("..._n.DDS") and glowmaps ("..._g.DDS"), no need to mention them anywhere.

As for changing your race while already playing, that's not causing much trouble nowadays either. Just don't ever click the "done" button, but instead open the console, then go to main menu (ESC), and due to the console being open you can now click on "save". Once you did this and then load this savegame you'll get your exact same character with no changes whatsoever in the actual game or skills but with its new appearance, race, etc. I myself switched race countless times in my game already and never encountered an issue yet.

Thanks for your comments. Getting the mesh properly oriented is going over my head, so if you could get it in the right place for me that would be great. I'll go ahead and add the medallion on it too if you feel like helping out with that as well.

I'm so excited, I didn't know that I'd get so much support for this little mod. Thanks so much for helping me out. Wish I could do something in return.

You two have helped me tremendously, thanks so much.

An update- I added the medallion and the band that's holding the medallion together directly to the mesh. Hopefully it won't get too messed up when I conformulate it. Drake offered to help out, so I sent him the file. (Unimportant side note: The medallion is a critical part of Kaikuro's character design; because he's missing a right eye, the Medallion acts as a magical replacement to his vision. It has the power to see beyond the physical and perceive things beyond regular vision. This is difficult to explain though, and the major element of it all is that the medallion cannot be controlled- it's magic has a mind of it's own and the wearer CANNOT have any power over it. So it's pretty unpredictable. However, it almost always provides some passive vision replacement without all the metaphysical stuff going on. He keeps it tied level to his natural eye to avoid having distorted perspective. Anyway, with that in mind, another idea for a mod that I had was to have unpredictable effects such as Detect Life or other 'visual' magic effects suddenly kick in, IDK. The thing is, in the comic the medallion always has a reason for having it's magic kick in so maybe... hm. Maybe I could make a mod that adds a Detect Life or something spell whenever he's in a dungeon or something. I have no clue. XD Just a thought. I might expand later. ANywhoo)

If I have any further issues I'll post here.