This looks interesting, but could you share some details of what exactly you have fixed? Asking because I'm not familiar with Sniff.exe, so I have no idea what it does or doesn't do. :)
Sniff is this: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/67829
It basically scans for a bunch of stuff that modern meshes already have by default (it almost never finds anything to fix in modern meshes, so it's not changing things randomly), as well as fixing texture paths along the way so they point to the Data folder rather than the C drive or something. I uh, use this feature a lot to fix my own mesh texture editing absentmindedness >.>
I honestly don't understand it well enough to do by hand, but I kept noticing my CTD rate dropping everytime I ran into a problem mesh and fixed it, so overall it seems to help.
This is an example of the log from some of the Mihail meshes:
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Hagraven\Water Hags\magic\waterfxhand01.nif 4 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 57 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 88 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 119 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 149 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 180 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 210 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 241 NiDefaultAVObjectPalette: Updated AV Objects
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\skeletonpheasant.nif 3 BSXFlags: Flags set to "Havok | Ragdoll"
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasant.nif 2 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC 10 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasantf.nif 33 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC 41 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasantfa.nif 33 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC 41 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Skeever\Skunk\poisongasexplosion.nif 4 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 3 NiMultiTargetTransformController: Updated Extra Targets
And some other random ones with different example changes:
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\HammetDungeon01.esm\006DCE7B.NIF 34 BSLightingShaderProperty: Changed Shader Type from Eye Envmap to Environment Map based on assigned textures and flags
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00041929.NIF 21 BSLightingShaderProperty: Removed Vertex_Alpha flag because vertex colors are missing
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00062128.nif 48 BSLightingShaderProperty: Removed Vertex_Alpha flag because vertex colors are missing
Uuuuurgh but there are so many files I don't wanna :P
(I've sorted out a FOMOD for the Mihail's monster and animal meshes, I may add more later - most people won't need ALL of these, so I didn't want to create one massive download full of redundant files).
Actually, following up on this; is a single AIO download helpful? The downside for a lot of these files is that they may not have an .esp to look for (or any unique filepath at all), so it doesn't really save much effort - I can't auto-suggest install for a lot of things, so they'd still require manual selecting.
Most of these mesh fixes are unlikely to change, as the mods that are still active and updating are *usually* fixing their meshes as they go, so there isn't a lot of need to re-download individual ones.
I'm shifting to the big AIO packs, but those still require some manual installation. I'm still not sure what the best way to do this is - getting everything at once can be helpful, but they shouldn't be 'mass' installed if you don't have those mods (or have improved versions already that shouldn't be overwritten, or if the update has no changes).
For any mod that I'm posting other fixes for (like the ESLified versins of Aurora Village and so on), I can move the mesh fixes over there, but many of these mods won't get that. And posting these onto 100 separate pages is *still* juggling 100 different downloads, so I don't want to do that if there isn't any other reason to split them off. I could, but it also feels a bit cheap to do, as they are very basic fixes.
blacksmithforgemarkerwr.nif from "Restarter's Basic Mesh Fixes - Embers XD Patched meshes for Light Placer -meshfix" seems to crash
Edit: confirmed it does crash its either the mesh itself or its not prepped for PG output (parallaxgen) but it comes from your mod
Last edit: With PG output disabled and just Restarter's Basic Mesh Fixes - Embers XD Patched meshes for Light Placer -meshfix whiterun (outside the guard barracks specifically) crashes. It was indeed this mod
Darn, thanks. I don't use parallax - too many crashes, and not enough computer power. But I think that's the crash I originally wanted to fix when I first patched those meshes - I'll have to go back and have a look at them to see if I broke something (they were on the redo list anyway just because my first few uploads were disorganised personal fixes), but it would definitely help if you could confirm if the original meshes do or don't crash for you.
I'm definitely not getting crashes with those meshes right now, I COC'd the Whiterun a few times and ran around a bit while testing other things, just to be sure.
Those patches should work without Light Placer or Placed Light, I don't think they have any dependency on it - but they might not play nice with whatever else is doing the lighting instead.
Yeah, I would strongly recommend running Sniff on Embers XD in general (it has closed permissions for the original mod, which is why I only shared the Light Placer edit here), Sniff finds a lot to edit.
Might not be the thing that helped, but I got that crash with the original meshes, and I never get the forgemarker crash anymore. I'm pretty sure it's a conflict with something, because I had a lot of problems with meshes, lighting, and stuff like autoparallax for awhile, and after fixing up the meshes, removing some random lighting patches, and removing everything parallax related, I stopped getting almost all light/mesh crashes (I get new crashes now, of course).
I think I also removed a few things touching forge meshes and forge lighting or water.
It was horrible to troubleshoot though, and I'm still not actually certain which mod caused the forgemarker crash, because it was showing up among so many other problems. These meshes are very likely involved somehow. I just don't think the Sniff changes are related.
(I've reloaded in Whiterun for other things about 60 times since the first comment in this thread, if I'd gotten that crash even once I'd have rushed over here to remove the download)
Ah, actually, I was using gg’s Impoverished Whiterun at the time, I had some parallax files in there that got removed - it ended up being behind quite a few crashes. No issues running the Vanilla/non parallax version since though.
I'm using Community Shaders, Embers XD and Impoverished Whiterun.
I just stick with Universal Fixer for things I upload - I leave the experimenting to my personal data folder because I know enough to edit stuff, but not enough to actually make a mesh from scratch or anything like that (I have definitely broken things a few times by experimenting :D ).
If it pops out a filepath error ending in /NOR then I might go through and fix them manually in nifskope (as that error means a NORmal map has a broken name), but I've only uploaded the Interesting NPC Children fixes for that, because it's painful to do and more annoying than a crash risk.
The sniff log 6 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 88 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 132 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index 5 NiMultiTargetTransformController: Updated Extra Targetsand any messages like that aren't actually fixing anything - it will re-sort those even if they're already correct (it sorts without checking first, for efficiency's sake). You can check by re-running Sniff unifixer on those meshes repeatedly, you'll get those log messages every time. The blocks in beyond reach were all already sorted with sniff, so the BR patch here doesn't make any change.
And that's why I included the changelogs, because I figured some of the changes weren't important! Beyond Reach specifically only has about three tiny meshes that I figured just had tiny organisational tweaks that got missed or something - none of the other meshes in the entire mod had any changes made.
Good to know, when I have the brain space I'll go through and start removing the fixes that only have minor changes like that - initially I was just making sure I was only uploading actual changes to the original mods, and sorting out my data folder (when Sniff edits dozens or hundreds of meshes from a single mod that I then have to go through and match to the logs, that's.... a lot. And I'm still tracking down all the BSA packed ones).
I'll note that everytime I re-run Sniff lately, I don't actually get new messages - probably just the mods I tested on, but I'm currently running it at least twice to generate the separate meshes, and then to overwrite my installed ones cleanly, and sometimes I accidentally do step 2 twice and get an empty log back. Or I run it on a folder just to be sure and it comes back empty, so it's not making automatic changes every time.
edit: yep, doing some random spot checks it looks like Beyond Reach is the only one so far that is making those redundant changes. Almost everything else is actually changing something real (which makes sense, I was surprise BR4.8 had anything at all as it was newly updated, most of these fixes are for very old mods). I can probably cull a few meshes in future at least, thanks for the tip!
22 comments
Sniff is this: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/67829
It basically scans for a bunch of stuff that modern meshes already have by default (it almost never finds anything to fix in modern meshes, so it's not changing things randomly), as well as fixing texture paths along the way so they point to the Data folder rather than the C drive or something. I uh, use this feature a lot to fix my own mesh texture editing absentmindedness >.>
I honestly don't understand it well enough to do by hand, but I kept noticing my CTD rate dropping everytime I ran into a problem mesh and fixed it, so overall it seems to help.
This is an example of the log from some of the Mihail meshes:
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Hagraven\Water Hags\magic\waterfxhand01.nif
4 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
57 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
88 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
119 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
149 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
180 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
210 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
241 NiDefaultAVObjectPalette: Updated AV Objects
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\skeletonpheasant.nif
3 BSXFlags: Flags set to "Havok | Ragdoll"
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasant.nif
2 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
10 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasantf.nif
33 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
41 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Ring-necked Pheasant\mihailpheasantfa.nif
33 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
41 NiTriShapeData: Consistency Flags changed from CT_MUTABLE to CT_STATIC
Mihail Monsters and Animals\Skeever\Skunk\poisongasexplosion.nif
4 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
3 NiMultiTargetTransformController: Updated Extra Targets
And some other random ones with different example changes:
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\HammetDungeon01.esm\006DCE7B.NIF
34 BSLightingShaderProperty: Changed Shader Type from Eye Envmap to Environment Map based on assigned textures and flags
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00041929.NIF
21 BSLightingShaderProperty: Removed Vertex_Alpha flag because vertex colors are missing
actors\character\facegendata\facegeom\Skyrim.esm\00062128.nif
48 BSLightingShaderProperty: Removed Vertex_Alpha flag because vertex colors are missing
(I've sorted out a FOMOD for the Mihail's monster and animal meshes, I may add more later - most people won't need ALL of these, so I didn't want to create one massive download full of redundant files).
Most of these mesh fixes are unlikely to change, as the mods that are still active and updating are *usually* fixing their meshes as they go, so there isn't a lot of need to re-download individual ones.
I'm shifting to the big AIO packs, but those still require some manual installation. I'm still not sure what the best way to do this is - getting everything at once can be helpful, but they shouldn't be 'mass' installed if you don't have those mods (or have improved versions already that shouldn't be overwritten, or if the update has no changes).
For any mod that I'm posting other fixes for (like the ESLified versins of Aurora Village and so on), I can move the mesh fixes over there, but many of these mods won't get that. And posting these onto 100 separate pages is *still* juggling 100 different downloads, so I don't want to do that if there isn't any other reason to split them off. I could, but it also feels a bit cheap to do, as they are very basic fixes.
Edit: confirmed it does crash its either the mesh itself or its not prepped for PG output (parallaxgen) but it comes from your mod
Last edit: With PG output disabled and just Restarter's Basic Mesh Fixes - Embers XD Patched meshes for Light Placer -meshfix whiterun (outside the guard barracks specifically) crashes. It was indeed this mod
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/135488?tab=files&file_id=597373&nmm=1
I'm definitely not getting crashes with those meshes right now, I COC'd the Whiterun a few times and ran around a bit while testing other things, just to be sure.
Those patches should work without Light Placer or Placed Light, I don't think they have any dependency on it - but they might not play nice with whatever else is doing the lighting instead.
Might not be the thing that helped, but I got that crash with the original meshes, and I never get the forgemarker crash anymore. I'm pretty sure it's a conflict with something, because I had a lot of problems with meshes, lighting, and stuff like autoparallax for awhile, and after fixing up the meshes, removing some random lighting patches, and removing everything parallax related, I stopped getting almost all light/mesh crashes (I get new crashes now, of course).
I think I also removed a few things touching forge meshes and forge lighting or water.
It was horrible to troubleshoot though, and I'm still not actually certain which mod caused the forgemarker crash, because it was showing up among so many other problems. These meshes are very likely involved somehow. I just don't think the Sniff changes are related.
(I've reloaded in Whiterun for other things about 60 times since the first comment in this thread, if I'd gotten that crash even once I'd have rushed over here to remove the download)
Ah, actually, I was using gg’s Impoverished Whiterun at the time, I had some parallax files in there that got removed - it ended up being behind quite a few crashes. No issues running the Vanilla/non parallax version since though.
I'm using Community Shaders, Embers XD and Impoverished Whiterun.
If it pops out a filepath error ending in /NOR then I might go through and fix them manually in nifskope (as that error means a NORmal map has a broken name), but I've only uploaded the Interesting NPC Children fixes for that, because it's painful to do and more annoying than a crash risk.
6 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node indexand any messages like that aren't actually fixing anything - it will re-sort those even if they're already correct (it sorts without checking first, for efficiency's sake). You can check by re-running Sniff unifixer on those meshes repeatedly, you'll get those log messages every time. The blocks in beyond reach were all already sorted with sniff, so the BR patch here doesn't make any change.88 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
132 NiControllerSequence: Sorted Controlled Blocks by target node index
5 NiMultiTargetTransformController: Updated Extra Targets
Good to know, when I have the brain space I'll go through and start removing the fixes that only have minor changes like that - initially I was just making sure I was only uploading actual changes to the original mods, and sorting out my data folder (when Sniff edits dozens or hundreds of meshes from a single mod that I then have to go through and match to the logs, that's.... a lot. And I'm still tracking down all the BSA packed ones).
I'll note that everytime I re-run Sniff lately, I don't actually get new messages - probably just the mods I tested on, but I'm currently running it at least twice to generate the separate meshes, and then to overwrite my installed ones cleanly, and sometimes I accidentally do step 2 twice and get an empty log back. Or I run it on a folder just to be sure and it comes back empty, so it's not making automatic changes every time.
edit: yep, doing some random spot checks it looks like Beyond Reach is the only one so far that is making those redundant changes. Almost everything else is actually changing something real (which makes sense, I was surprise BR4.8 had anything at all as it was newly updated, most of these fixes are for very old mods). I can probably cull a few meshes in future at least, thanks for the tip!