Troubleshooting

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Creation Kit

Audio

My custom audio will not play in Creation Kit

If you create a new Sound Descriptor form and find that your custom sounds do not play when you click the play button, here are a few things you should know:

• Sound files should be saved as WAV, uncompressed. While many will tell you that they must have a sample rate of 22050, I have found that 44100 works for me. Shoot for 16 bit as well.
• Make sure your sounds are in a sub-directory of where the editor points you when you select a new file. This often means your file should be in the FX folder, and possibly in a sub-folder of that. It is good practice to keep all your sound files in a sub-folder named after your mod.
• Some users have reported that CK adds a backslash to the location of their file. Using TESVsnip to edit the form's path corrects this. This is not always the case.
• Often times your sound will not play in CK, but will work in Skyrim. Test it before moving on to more drastic measures.

Different audio editors save WAV files in different ways. To check a sound file and see exactly how it was saved, you can use a program called Gspot[1]. Opening any audio or video file with this program will list exactly what codec or compression is used, the sampling rate, channels and more. Remember that PCM is essentially the same as uncompressed. If your wav file has something other than PCM listed, Skyrim might not be able to read it properly. You can use a program like GoldWave[2] to re-save it in a new format.

My NPC will not use custom audio

There are several factors that can contribute to this problem. Try the following:

• Adding Voice Intermediate Tutorial
• Some users report that new voice types must have all default greetings recorded as well (Unconfirmed)

LODs, Heightmaps and WorldSpaces

Creation Kit crashes when generating new LODs

This is a known bug, and may be addressed in future updates. For the time being, here are some options:

• Tutorial for creating new worldspaces with working LODs[3].

Creation Kit crashes when importing or saving a new heightmap

See section above.

Low Level Height Map Painting

Creation Kit also includes a low level heightmap editor that can be accessed by pressing H while editing a cell.

My Brush quits working in some instances

The height brush can only work in the top loaded cell (The cell the camera is actually in). Try looking straight down and moving your camera to where you would like to paint.

Painting sometimes creates black areas

Modifying the effected cell's height information (painting height) can sometimes correct this.

Nif files and NifSkope

Clothing or Armor that as exposed flesh

• Armor that exposes underlying bodyparts (such as bare arms, feet, ect) require that the original mesh also contain the exposed portion of the character's body. In other words, you must start by importing the default body and build on top of it. Make sure to delete any faces that will be covered by your new mesh. It is best to leave the original body mesh with it's own skin-modifier.
• The best method is to find armor or clothing that exposes the same areas your new model will. For example: The female beggar's clothes expose the shoulders and neck. Thus, one would import this mesh into 3D Studio Max or Blender and remove the beggar's clothing before exporting. Then the beggar's clothing Nif would be used as a reference to build your new Nif. This will make sure that your new nif will have all the correct settings to allow Skyrim to use the underlying flesh (setting the skin-tone / texture).

New Bow meshes

Currently you can find a Dragon Bone Weapon's pack on the Steam Workshop which includes a new bow mesh. This indicates that it is possible to make new meshes for bows and have them function in game with animation and collision. As of this writing, the author has not responded to inquiries as to what his or her process was.

Writer's Note:I have worked at this problem for some time, and have managed to get a new mesh into a Nif file with the proper node order and settings, but my Nif will not appear in game. I imported a bow into Max, modeled my own and skinned it to the original bones. I then reconstructed the node order found in the original bow's nif file, including all of the extra data. Once you get the node order correct, your bow mesh should go from looking distorted to looking the way it was when you exported it. I'm not sure what step I'm missing, but I feel I'm close. --AurelTristen 16:37, 1 March 2012 (EST)