Better Iron Armor (NBBM)

GUIDE AT BOTTOM!

This Is (In my own biased opinion) a better female iron armor! There was no specific goal here other than to undo the hunk of iron that it started as...

I made my own better body mod, "Nyyxn's Better Body Mod (NBBM)", as a personal hobby, and plan to continue making these armors for my own vision. I will also update many of them with other variants, like covering the midriff with leather and such for those who want less skin; please be patient!

Nyyxn's Better Body Mod (NBBM)

Most likely looks completely broken on female NPCs right now.

INSTALLATION:

Extract the files, then place the folder "BetterIronArmor" in your OblivionRemastered > Content > Paks > ~Mods folder. Create the folder if you don't have one.

(MAKE SURE THE "FORMS" FOLDER IN THE MOD ZIP STAYS NEXT TO THE OTHER FILES)

Texture mods for iron armor should work with this as long as they don't actually change the shape at all.

I also used Longer Hair - Elf Court Hairstyle

Guide for modders:

When modifying a mesh, you might find certain body parts are hidden, or not hidden... But how does the armor talk to the body mesh to determine what is hidden? To begin with, the body mesh is broken down in to multiple vertex color groups:

So the next question is, where does the armor "talk" to those vertex groups? The answer is in the Main .utoc file>Content>Forms>items>armor>BP_BDP_(YourArmorHere)

In this blueprint file there is typically a section called "MaleBodySectionHidden" and "FemaleBodySectionHidden" with an ID after. This ID determines what vertex color groups are hidden. So how do we generate this number? Use the bit guide below:

Open a programming calculator(you can switch the windows one to programmer mode) then switch to the bit toggling keypad, set the output to DEC and then just tick the 0 to a 1 for each bit that you want to hide. The decimal generated is your ID!

So for example, in the image above I wanted to hide the upper back, bra, sternum and mid-back/sides, so I toggled those bits to "1" creating the decimal ID 3225485412

So how do we actually extract this blueprint file, change it, and repack it? Using a program called retoc. I might do a guide on that later, but for now;

[]Use retoc to extract your forms folder

[]Get UAssetGUI and add a mapping file to it

[]Open the blueprint in UAssetGUI (The .uasset and .uexp must be in the same folder! if you get an error saying "failed to maintain binary equality!" just ignore it)

[]edit the BodySectionHidden area (for me this was under "export data>export 2> 1(6)" in UAssetGUI

[]save as the same name, but in a new location, like a "moddedversions" folder or something

[]use retoc t