Viewing Collision in the Creation Kit
Most mod authors probably know how to view collision in the CK by pressing F4 (or if yours is like mine the keyboard shortcut doesn’t work and you have to toggle it in the View menu a few times). But you may not know what all the colors are about! This list is courtesy of Robboten, author of Snappy Housekit.
blue - clutter (+no navcut)
red - static
black - navcut
pink/magenta - prop, animated static
light blue - water
light yellow - terrain
light brown - tree, weapon
light pink - transparent
white - stair helper, small/large debris, stair helper, acoustic space, invisible wall, transparent small
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Some notes on the blue clutter:
The collision type in 3ds Max 2013 official Bethesda plugin is called clutter and it allows an object to be moveable or be picked up. If the object has a low mass assigned in 3ds Max then you can kick the object around, the blue plastic bins are an example of this. A higher mass may be assigned and the object is less likely to be kicked around but can still be picked up.
In the CK objects which have a blue clutter collision may be labeled as miscellaneous objects (junk you pick up like tin cans, bottlecaps, empty bottles) or it may be labeled as a moveable static (blue plastic bins, small wood crates, traffic cones).
When making static collections (SCOL) an object which has a blue clutter collision can usually be included in a SCOL however you must first create it as a static object record first. Typically the act of including these pseudo statics into a SCOL changes their collision sufficiently that once kickable items actually do become static.
However a small number of items will continue to retain their kickability even once included in a SCOL and it’s not even always consistent with the same object. A cutting board is a good example of this. If you try to create workshop clutter with a cutting board it may not stay still with the other items. I often test building clutter made as SCOLs hanging halfway off the edge of a table to see if any objects fall to the ground. Rotate as needed to test all items in the clutter object. If you’ve created a SCOL with a still moveable object like this you’re probably better off recreating that item using Nifskope instead and removing or changing collision on that item.
