There are ant trails on the ground and on tree stumps outside Riverwood, and one outside Half-Moon Mill. They used to be movable statics. Via the power of Base Object Swapper (BOS), they'll now be a flora-type activator, that yields the ingredient "Crushed Ant Paste", from Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul (CACO).



Details - mesh switching

Most flora-type activators I've seen in Skyrim use a mesh with a NiSwitchNode. From NifSkope's documentation, this node switches between its children, with only one being visible at any point. These can get complex, like the Gleamblossom, or quite simple, like Thistle. I use this setup to swap which of the two versions of the mesh is drawn; the geometries are the same, but they use different textures, one for full, the other for the post-harvest "decimated" look. Skyrim's also present a folder wherever the mesh is located, holding simplified versions of the NiSwitchNode children, with what looks like an implied naming convention. At least for Skyrim Special Edition, these do not appear to be necessary.


Details - world placement

The plugin does not have any worldspace edits; so no compatibility issues on that front. World placement is handled by BOS at runtime.

The stump ants appear as references to FXantLinesStump [MSTT:0001DC12]. Note these only affect the ant trails themselves, not the stump. The trails use U and V offset controllers to "move" the ants. Collision geometry (so you can click them) is derived from the trails themselves (I'd say "visible" geometry, but the texture is mostly transparent lol)

The soil ants appear as references to FXantLinesFlat [MSTT:0001DC13]. This one has proven to be quite tricky to work: the object frequently appears about 240 units underground. Correct X and Y coordinates, but negative offset on Z. More Informative Console will even say which plugin was the last thing to modify the coordinates, but the coordinates will not match in-game what's declared in-record: something is modifying this at runtime. Even when it's a new FLOR record, with new references! Sometimes during the game, they'll pop where they ought to, sometimes not. In terms of reference replacement, the base record is declared as a Large Reference (LR), so "proper" replacement would have entailed an ESM file, which given CACO is not an ESM, means using the ESM to disable the LR references, and then have another plugin to add new non-LR references... instead, we'll only be using BOS for now. Given the appearance of these, and how they're FLOR now instead of MSTT, texture flickering due to the LR system should not be an issue.


Details - new textures

I tired using the unused glow map shipped with the base game, but it looked like a trail of fireflies; sounds good, looked bad.

Instead, I used a photograph of a Formica pressilabris worker, by user Lynxlynx1, via Wikimedia Commons. This was downscaled, then processed with Paint.net's NormalMapPlus filter to yield the normal map. The glow map was derived from the diffuse texture. The glow is subtle, enough to be seen once you know what you're looking for, but not enough to catch you eye if you're just running past.

Files are BC7 compressed, DX11 compatible.




Compatible out-of-the-box with iHarvest - if you want to harvest underground ants, use whisps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯