General product display resources

Resources and guides for the Universal Project Display module. Custom monitors offer significant improvements in performance and resource usage compared to vanilla monitors. Designed to be fully customizable, giving Mod Author complete autonomy over the display of their monitor!

General product display resources

Originally provided by AmethystDeceiver as a modder resource on the old BethSoft forums. I'll paste most of the post for posterity.

The main advantage of these displays, and the reason I decided to turn them into a resource and guide, is that you can make them look anything you want, and they can be adapted to display any project in any position you like. A single display can even support different locations for different item types.

resource:

This mod comes with everything you need to get started. You can incorporate it into a plugin, copy/paste from it, or use it as reference material. It's completely up to you. All records in this mod are prefixed with "AD_". A sample cell ("AD_Template") with some template display is also provided.

Should be fully compatible with LE. I will backport it soon, but in the near future if you wish to use this resource in LE you will have to port it yourself.

Tour guide:

These displays are made for the following purposes:

Provides an easy way to adapt scripts to be used as a regular display system for almost anything.

Performance and resource usage. If there are too many weapons in a unit, vanilla weapon racks start to consume unnecessary resources, and they tend to become difficult or unusable if crowded or too close to other objects. In comparison, these monitors offer significant improvements in performance and resource consumption.

Design freedom. Your display can look like anything you imagine.

The user interface has greater consistency, as the system uses the familiar inventory screen for placing items, rather than requiring the weapon to be equipped before mounting it to the display.

First, I will introduce the basic structure of the system:

• "Trigger" - This is a simple trigger box that counts the number of items currently displayed. If the count is zero, new items will be allowed to be placed. If the number is one or more, no more items will be allowed to be placed.

• "Containers" - Containers simultaneously replace the need for "virtual markers" (so that placed items know exactly where to go) and provide a visual interface for placing items (display inventory built into the screen).

• "Activator" - an object used by the player to interact with the display system. It runs a script to open the container, which triggers the rest of the placement scripts. An activator can be anything from a simple player-activated trigger box or physical grid.

How it works:

Reference pictures:

Spoilers: Show

The player activates a display (the "Activator" mentioned above) which will open the "Inventory" menu, from there the player can place any script-defined valid item into a "Container". Once the item is placed into the container, the script will run and automatically "drag and drop" the object outside the container so that it is in the same position and rotation as the container or the specified marker. The player can now retrieve items directly from the display without opening any containers or the Inventory menu.

part:

• Create a container: In the Object window, create a new container and assign it an editor ID. You may also want to give it a visible name, such as "Weapon Display". This name is what players see in the Inventory menu.

• Choose a model for your container: DummyGreatSword01.nif is used in the reference image provided. Bethesda has created a number of virtual markers that will be invisible and unselectable in the game. This is ideal, you don't want to use a physical 3d mesh for the container because that's not good if the player can access or see the container itself in game. With Nifskope you can convert almost any mesh into a virtual marker.

• Create an a …