Need LOTS of help modding Heljarchen Hall

[Dr CannonFodr Emeritus]

Is there a good tutorial on modding an existing Hearthfire house? I am totally new to modding and admit I am having trouble even getting started. Have spent a couple weeks studying tutorials but none have prepared me for what I want to do.

I basically want to add custom furnishing and storage to the interior of Heljarchen Hall. I have built the house, with the desired three wings. Furnished the main hall with vanilla furnishing in game with the exception of a kitchen mod for the small back room. Want to mod the entryway as well as the greenhouse, storage room, and armory wings. Loaded Heljarchen Hall in creation kit (specifically BYOHHouse3Pale) and WOW did I get hit with modding reality.

Every item that the vanilla game can add to the house is there. What is best way to proceed? Do I move or delete vanilla items I know I won’t be using? As all three options for each of the three wings are present, how do I even know that I am adding items to the wings I have built in game?

Not even sure that the file I am loading is the one I should be using in the first place. Also, do changes I would make get saved to original file?

Well I am old dog trying to learn new tricks. So if some of you experienced modders could take pity and point me in right direction I would be grateful! Any reference or tutorial on modding an existing Hearthfire house would help me a lot.

And have I learned appreciation for you modders out there!!!

[NH_]

The houses use special markers; that when turned on or off, enable or disable the visibility of an object inside the house depending upon certain scripts or quest activators. Aside from scripting a markers activation, the problem can be solved simply by 'parenting' an object to the marker (or another piece of furniture) you already see in your house. To clarify, The marker or furniture must be the parent, and your custom furniture is the 'child.' This is a short but simple guide that shows you how to parent objects. Essentialy an invisible switch is flipped making certain objects appear in a house. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfx8hEl7KEw

I can look more into this if you are still stuck or my explanation is too vague.

[Dr CannonFodr Emeritus]

Thanks so much for your reply. You were the only person to reply to this post which I also placed on two other forums. This is good info and I thank you for the help it provides. Really though, this is not what I am looking for. This tutorial, like every other one I have seen, starts with a newly created or nearly vacant cell and adds items. I am trying to work with a cell (Haljarchen Hall) that has a massive amount of items present. I have not seen one tutorial that shows how to start and then create a mod which adds items to a Hearthfire house interior cell. I have Shezries kitchen mods in all three of my Heartfire homes. I am trying to go for something along the line of that, except I can not figure out the best way to do it. Thanks again for caring enough to reply.

[NH_]

When you 'build' your hearthfire home in the game at the workbench, behind the scenes a script 'enables' the furniture in the house based on what you decided to build. This works exactly like your player hitting the switch in the above tutorial, except the 'switch' is turned on when you craft at the workbench. In the creation kit you see every possible piece of geometry from walls to lights to barrels to mannequins. All of these items are disabled by default and connected to some kind of marker. You should be able to move a barrels position or replace the barrel with another static object. As long as the static object is parented to the correct marker, it should appear in game when the parent craft-able house part is made using the workbench.

I hope this clarifies why I sent you to a tutorial that explains how to parent objects in the CK. If you need some more help friend me, and we can walk through exactly what you want to do together.

[Dr CannonFodr Emeritus]

I think the parenting of items will be a valuable tool to use. Given the amount of items I want to add to various rooms, don't think I can use it all the time though. Will need to place items in the chaos that exists in the hearthfire homes. For instance, I hope to have about 30 mannequins in the entire house and cellar. Going to make this my armory house.

Did find the way to conceal objects in a cell. Select item to conceal, then hit 1 twice. That allows clear space to place objects and to see what I am doing. Helps to remove all the clutter in view on a temporary basis. But you probably know about that function. Anything I should be aware of using conceal objects? Hope it can work to conceal the house wing options that appear (haven't tried it on large scale yet). Anyway, I think a combination of concealing along with parenting will be what I need to mod this space.

What do you think is best way to start this mod? Open BYOHHouse3Pale and then do a save right away, naming the resulting .esp file something logical? Then make the newly named file active and start modding process? Sorry I am this new to process.

Many thanks again for your replys. I am grateful for your help.

[NH_]

Yeah, pushing '1' to conceal items is a nice feature, and all concealed items are listed with baby blue text in the Editor ID pane of the Cell View window. I'm unfamiliar with BYOHHouse3Pale. If it's a Steam mod, I'm pretty sure there is no Save As in the CK, so duplicate the .esp and rename it beforehand; although, I wouldn't upload a mod created that way without the original authors permission. If it's the questline from the DLC and you want to edit the default Hearthfire home you will need to enable the CK to open multiple master files, read on for more info. IIRC mannequins need to be nav-meshed or they appear in game with random odd poses, and Hearthfire weapon racks, plaques, and cases are buggy for some reason causing weapons to mount incorrectly and fall behind walls/floors or becoming unable to activate and remove.

Make the following changes to SkyrimEditor.ini to load multiple master files (assuming you have all DLCs). The DLC names need to be listed as they are in your mod load order.

Under [General] add:
sLanguage=ENGLISH
bAllowMultipleMasterLoads=1

Under [Archive] replace:
SArchiveList=Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Update.bsa, Dawnguard.bsa, HearthFires.bsa, Dragonborn.bsa
SResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa
SResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Update.bsa, Dawnguard.bsa, HearthFires.bsa, Dragonborn.bsa

[Dr CannonFodr Emeritus]

The above mentioned file is the vanilla interior cell for Heljarhen Hall from Hearthfires dlc. I had already made the changes to my SkyrimEditor.ini to allow for loading of the dlc content.

Wish selecting an object and pressing 1 worked with things like collision markers. They are always in the way when trying to select existing objects to copy and paste. Tried to select a mannequin that is provided in the cell by the game, including its base, trigger and marker. Had a hard time because it clips into existing room collision marker. Finally got to where I could select the mannequin setup and not the collision marker, and right clicked and hit copy. But when I went to spot I wanted to paste the mannequin, the paste didnt work. Could click paste and paste to location in right click menue so I have something copied; however, nothing showed up when I hit paste. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Well still learning, finding it very hard to use the software in a space like a Hearthfire house. Thanks again for your reply.

[NH_]

View>Show/Hide Window can hide all that crap easily.

[NH_]

You can also copy a mannequin from another cell, thats easier to click on what you need, then paste into the cell your working on. Oh, and the 'm' key toggles the visibility of all markers.

[PixelTraveller]

Originally posted by nh_:

The houses use special markers; that when turned on or off, enable or disable the visibility of an object inside the house depending upon certain scripts or quest activators. Aside from scripting a markers activation, the problem can be solved simply by 'parenting' an object to the marker (or another piece of furniture) you already see in your house. To clarify, The marker or furniture must be the parent, and your custom furniture is the 'child.' This is a short but simple guide that shows you how to parent objects. Essentialy an invisible switch is flipped making certain objects appear in a house. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfx8hEl7KEw

I can look more into this if you are still stuck or my explanation is too vague.

This is really good info which I'll apply to my own modding project - thank you for sharing and DrCannonFodr, good luck!