I'm trying to add tail armor to NPCs with the CS where it basically just replaces the tail with a mesh of one + the armor. How would I go about adding this though to them? I tried placing it on the NPC via a separate armor item and then placing it in the inventory, but it did nothing. Any suggestions?

I'm not sure, but I think the NPC need to actually have a tail first, e.g. argonians. I am unsure of this, but I do recall not being able to use tail-slot items in the game on any of my PC's except the argonians and khajiits.

Nope, tail slot items work for any character. Khajiit and Argonians have their tail removed/replaced when they wear it, other races just get it added.

Check the current AI package for the NPC to see how "armor unequipped" is set (assuming it's an armor piece, you'd want that off, but if you made it clothing, the reverse is true). Also this could be a texture issue making the new item invisible, because its normals are inward, or the normal map is missing, or ...

I could be wrong but if it is a non tailed race IIRC the tail slot item will not be shown (since the non tailed races use a skeleton.nif without a tail slot) -- In order to make them show up you need to use an alternate skeleton.nif (ie. skeletonbeast.nif) that has the tail slot - sort of the same as Slof does with her robes to add some movement to them. (unless you already have a modified skeleton.nif perhaps from one of her mods)

I probably should have stated this but the NPC is an argonian. I'm going to assume its the problem Ghastly said, but I'm unsure of where to check that at. Shouldn't be the maps though because this was an already existing model that I just editted.

I should have qualified "work". If the item is weighted to any tail bone, it won't behave properly, and most likely will collapse to an infinitesimal dot at the scene root. But a lot of headgear items intended to be worn with visible hair use the tail slot, even if they are weighted entirely to the head bone, just so they don't displace the hair. Those items displace the tails, of course.

And that reminds me of another possibility here. If the added parts of the mesh were not weighted to the skeleton/armature then the "collapse to a point" effect might account for the disappearance. The original tail mesh would have weights, and still show, but the additional parts could disappear.

If you follow the Gweden Brothel link in my sig, and look at Dark-eyes' outfit, she's wearing a tail bow. I had that problem the first time I tried it, and forgot about it completely! :facepalm:

Don't think that is it either. I didn't really add anything to the already existing mesh. The only thing I did was delete half the armor mesh and move one of the pieces in Nifscope. The problem seems to be that the NPC just won't equip it in the CS. It's as if he just ignores the armor piece.

If you just used NifSkope and nothing else, then what I described is exactly what's happening. The piece of armor you pasted in would not have any weighting to tail bones, and the tail mesh does not include the full skeleton, only the tail bones and the bone it attaches to (and in particular not the ones for the armor). You'll have to use a modelling tool to do this - nothing else can assign the bone weights.

I think the tail armor is weighted to the bones though. I actually didn't do any pasting. This is a tail armor mesh that has already been done by someone else and works. It basically covers the entire tail. I wanted part of the tail to be exposed so I deleted half the tail armor on Blender and then just saved the mesh. The end of the tail had a different section of the armor then the rest and I just moved it up some.

I meant to say Blender and not Nifscope in the previous posts. Sorry about the confusion there.

I might be mistaken but I think to remember that NPCs will never "equip" tail items on their own. You need to force-equip them by the means of scripts. :shrug:
I have to do that for my wings and tails. When the tokens on actors died but they have the proper items in their inventories, they won't equip them on their own regardless of how high their value or armor rating is or anything. So it seems to figure.

I was just thinking that, what would happen if you forse equipped the item. As long as the item isnt actually rigged to the tail bones it should work just fine (else you get stretchy mesh syndrome).

wouldnt be hard, put this script on a tail item and NPC should be forced to equip it once in their inventories:

ref containerref containerNewref selfbegin gamemodeset containerNew to getcontainerset self to getselfif (containerNew != container)	set container to containerNew	if (container != player) && (container.isactor == 1)		if (container.getequipped self == 0)			container.equipitem self		endif	endifendifend

You know the really strange thing is that I was able to put the "armor" mesh from your dragon form Drake onto an argonian NPC, but if you recall I had put the dragon tail and wings in with the chest mesh.

Let me try doing something like that tonight and see what happens. I'll report back here and see if that works.

Thanks da mage for the script work. I'll give that a go too if this mesh melding doesn't work.

Hmm. I just read that argonian and khajit NPCs are unable to activate items that affect tails alone.

I'm still going to see if the mesh melding won't work though like it did for Drake's dragon form mod.

I finally got this done and am happy to say that melding the meshes together worked and now NPCs will put the tail armor on.