Making A New Light
Do you have the billboard node blues? Does your cool new torch design fight with the CS? Have you tried to load your light into the CS only to have it crash hard on your dreams for that magical blue-flamed bug lamp? Well my brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that the Aedra have heard your pleas and they have brought you a solution!
Ahem. I think I was channeling a new-age Aedra preacher for a moment. But seriously, for this tutorial you will need:
- a .nif of your new light
- NifSkope
- Oblivion Construction Set
First, we have to place the .nif file in our \meshes folder. If you are making this light to include in your mod, I would suggest putting it in a unique subfolder of your own so that there is less likelihood of it conflicting with some other mod. After all, NewLight in the \meshes folder could get pretty ugly really quickly. Lets start with the .nif of the new light and open it up in Nifskope. We are going to expand the 0 NiNode and then left-click on the BSXFlags node (it should be #1 in the list). Then double-click on the value for Integer Data and change that to either 17 (value for Enable Animation and Flame Nodes Present) or 19 (value for Enable Collision, Enable Animation and Flame Nodes Present).
Next we want to locate a light that plays the same role as our new light and open it up in NifSkope as well. In this case, its going to be torch02.nif from the \meshes\lights directory since the basis for this tutorial was a torch I made. Once the torch02.nif is in NifSkope, you will want to expand the 0-NiNode so you can find the following:
- NiNode AttachLight
- NiNode FlameNode1
On each of these nodes, doing one at a time, you are going to:
- On the NiNode - Right-Click > Block > Copy Branch
- switch to your new light .nif file in the other NifSkope
- on the 0 NiNode - Right-Click > Block > Paste Branch
Once they are in the .nif file for your new light, you can make adjustments to the AttachLight and FlameNode NiNodes which is explained in detail here in steps 9 and 10. The only change is that you will be adjusting the AttachLight or FlameNode instead of the Billboard Node. After everything is adjusted to your liking, save your .nif file for your new light and just close the other NifSkope without saving the file you were copying from.
At this point, open up your mod in the Oblivion Construction Set. Locate the Light section in the Object window and click on it. Since we are implementing a new torch, we want to go to the left pane and find Torch02 under the Editor ID and then right-click > Edit and change the ID to that of the new light.
Then going to the button directly to the right, left click it and find your .nif file that you saved earlier. Select the file and then click on the Open button. Next, make any adjustments that are necessary to the new light here and then click the OK button.
At this point, the Construction Set will ask if you want to create a new form. Click the Yes button and then you can safely place your new light into the mod you are making.
Enjoy!