Seems like a good idea. I dont like plantigrade cats and lizards, it doesnt seem right, and there are a few mods that help, but i would prefer one that didnt use HGEC, i like the roberts more, and KATS does use roberts (i might be wrong), and also supplies clothes. not sure if the argonian feet by DraketheDragon has clothes though. i have been looking for any good ones, not clothing feet.l
The trouble with this is, no other solution exists. The game engine is hardcoded to use 1 single set of body meshes for all races, and this can't be changed, not even with OBSE. And even if there "was" a way to change it, you'd still have to take care of the issue that in Oblivion your body comes with your clothes. No matter what body mod you're using, once you equip an item you get the body contained inside it.
That's why Stock Replacers are so vital for body mods. There'd be no use in even having a body mod to begin with, if everybody you encounter, including yourself, still had a Vanilla body, as that's what's coming from the Vanilla clothing items he's wearing. And who's gonna run around naked all time in a world full of naked NPCs?... No, don't answer, please!
If you change the skeleton, like making the "skeletonbeast.nif" actually digitigrade, this would come with several repercussions. For one the still-human foot meshes would look ridiculously deshaped, and for two there's no guarantee the skeleton is even used by all beasts. Skeletons are assigned on a per-actor basis (anybody remember MAO?), only the player is limited to "skeleton.nif" and "skeletonbeast.nif", and which one of them is used by him is controlled through a yet-to-be-determined selection process based on race somehow. Still couldn't figure out what tells the difference. There's no setting with a race telling it's a beast race or something. Yet, when you copy a beast race, the new race is a beast race, too. If you copy a human one, there's no way to make it a beast race afterwards. Just weird. Oh, and let's not forget #3, certain animations are capable of "reverting" the changes you made to the skeleton while playing, as if you never elongated the bones to begin with. So unless you also redo "all" animations, there's no guarantee it'll even work. And if you "do" redo all animations, don't forget they're affecting "all" races again, making all others digitigrade as well. Ok, that last one can be overcome nowadays, as the set of animations used is determined by the location of the skeleton file used. So in theory you can have a completely unique set of animations for certain races, or actors, but changing the skeleton used by a race doesn't work, like I said, as it's bound to the individual actors, not the race, and changing the skeleton used by the player can only be done during runtime via advanced OBSE scripting, and this one can't even change the 1st person skeleton, yet. ...Drawbacks and repercussions a plenty, and it's that far away from being a mainstream solution...
So the only way to get custom-shaped bodyparts on certain races is this "wearable bodyparts" approach, turning the body meshes into wearable items and having them equipped via scripts. "clothing feet"... there simply is no other way!
And for the records, I did make "a few" adapted clothing and armor items for SAF, but back then I was a scripter, primarily, and didn't know my way around in Blender as sufficiently as I do today. If there hadn't been this real life hiatus which killed all my free time 2 years ago until now, and for years to come, I would have definitely created and/or released full sets of adapted items for Vanilla, DLCs, overhauls and most likely also for most, if not all, bodies supported by my mods. Back then those meshes were only a proof of concept, something to see how it's intended to work with everything else later on. But sadly it never left that state of "unfinished'ness" so far then. Today those few files are hard to come by, as I redesigned my package layout, seperated everything into body-dependant archives, provide base body meshes seperately from adapted clothing/armor items, and most disappointingly of all, never got around to release the first of those seperate adapted clothing/armor packages so far. The only way to obtain them nowadays is via the old and outdated v0.5b complete package for only Robert's Male and TFF. There was much more to come, but it never happened.
I also already thought about altering my folder structure for those adapted NIF files so it's the same as with True Body Shapes/KATS, then everybody could decide for themselves whether they want my scripts to do the job or True Body Shapes', me only providing the meshes anymore, but again, this did never happen then.
As for the "get from container" remark there in the OP, this was just jdayT's first attempt to go about adding them into the game. He created really nice and decent beast feet for Argonians and searched a simple way to put them into the game. Without any complex scripting, equipping them yourself was the only other option left. The beast feet "are" footwear, as there simply is no other way.
So, one can very well blame "me" for not making much progress and leaving my mods in an awefully unfinished state, but nobody can blame "us" beast feet modders for choosing a cheap approach to go about it, when it's the "only" approach to go about it. :sleep: Love it or hate it, you won't get anything else.
Edited by DrakeTheDragon
