Tinesh's Hollow Lantern - A CBBE 3BA Halloween Outfit for Skyrim SE/AE

An original Halloween outfit for Skyrim Special Edition and Anniversary Edition: a lantern witch with a touch of the demon, in black leather, burnt-orange wool and brass. The set has eleven items, from a corset with attached briefs and over-knee heeled boots to a leather masquerade mask, two enchanted lantern axes and a carved pumpkin lantern that lights the way. It is made for CBBE 3BA with full BodySlide support, and an optional pack of five body presets comes with it.

Download the latest release: 2K, 4K and 8K packages and the optional body presets, see Downloads. Also on Nexus Mods and Dwemer Mods.

Features

• Eleven items: corset with attached briefs, shorts, over-knee boots with a Louis heel, opera gloves, choker with a pumpkin charm, horns, masquerade mask, tail, war axe, battleaxe and a carried jack-o'-lantern.
• Made for CBBE 3BA: every 3BA slider, a BodySlide group with one project per body piece and Build Morphs support. Bone weights come from the body, so the pieces follow the breast, butt and thigh physics.
• Checked for clipping on 13 body presets at low and high weight, and in motion poses (walking, long strides, legs apart and together, crouching, sitting, head turns and nods).
• Masquerade mask: black leather with orange stitching, brass eye frames, glowing pumpkin-vine inlays and a brass pumpkin medallion. It fits human, elf and orc faces and leaves the mouth and chin free.
• Lantern axes: a one-handed war axe and a two-handed battleaxe in blackened steel and orange, with a glowing ember edge, amber lantern windows and their own enchantment, Hollow Lantern Ember.
• Jack-o'-lantern: carried in the left hand like a torch, with a flickering flame and a warm light that never burns out.
• Tail physics: the tail swings with SMP physics and collides with the body.
• Simple crafting: every item is made at any blacksmith forge, no perk needed.
• Three texture packages: 2K, 4K and 8K, see Texture options.
• ESL-flagged plugin that only adds new records; the only master is Skyrim.esm.

Downloads

Install one outfit package. All three contain the same plugin, meshes and BodySlide files; only the texture size changes. The body presets are a separate, optional download.

Package	Textures	Download (version 1.2)
Outfit, 2K	2048 px	Hollow-Lantern-CBBE-3BA-2K-1.2.7z (58.5 MB)
Outfit, 4K	4096 px	Hollow-Lantern-CBBE-3BA-4K-1.2.7z (73.7 MB)
Outfit, 8K	8192 px	Hollow-Lantern-CBBE-3BA-8K-1.2.7z (130.1 MB)
Body presets (optional)	—	Hollow-Lantern-Body-Presets-CBBE-3BA-1.0.7z (2.3 KB)

Release notes and SHA-256 checksums: v1.2. Changes: CHANGELOG.md.

Texture options

The whole outfit shares one texture atlas: a diffuse map and a normal map with specular in the alpha channel, plus a smaller glow map (mask, axes and lantern) and reflection mask (brass and steel). The package names give the real size of the atlas:

Package	Diffuse and normal map	Glow map and reflection mask
2K	2048 × 2048 px	512 × 512 px
4K	4096 × 4096 px	1024 × 1024 px
8K	8192 × 8192 px	2048 × 2048 px

The atlas was painted at 8192 px and the 4K and 2K sets are reduced from it, so all three look the same apart from the amount of detail. All textures are BC7 with full mipmaps.

Mod pages

Page	Hollow Lantern	Hollow Lantern Body Presets
GitHub	Releases	Releases (same release)
Nexus Mods	Tinesh's Hollow Lantern	Same page (optional file)
Dwemer Mods	Tinesh's Hollow Lantern	Same page

Requirements

• Skyrim Special Edition or Anniversary Edition. Built and tested on version 1.6.1170.
• CBBE 3BA (3BBB) and its requirements (CBBE, XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended, CBPC).
• BodySlide and Outfit Studio, to build the outfit for your body preset.
• Recommended: RaceMenu for the heel height of the boots and for BodyMorph, and FSMP - Faster HDT-SMP for the tail physics (without it the tail hangs still).

No DLC is needed. The plugin itself does not need SKSE (its one script uses only vanilla functions); CBBE 3BA, RaceMenu and FSMP do.

Installation

1. Install one outfit package with your mod manager:
   • Mod Organizer 2: Install a new mod from an archive and pick the package.
   • Vortex: drag the package onto the Mods page (or use Install From File), then enable and deploy.
   • Manual: extract the package into the game's Data folder.
2. In BodySlide, pick the group Hollow Lantern, choose your CBBE 3BA preset, tick Build Morphs and run Batch Build. Without this step the pieces keep the default CBBE 3BA shape. The mask, horns, axes and lantern do not need BodySlide.
3. Enable [Tinesh] Hollow Lantern.esp. It is ESL-flagged and only adds new records, so its place in the load order does not matter.

The archive holds the Data folder's contents (plugin, meshes, textures, CalienteTools, Scripts and the script source in Source), so mod managers install it without asking for a data folder. To switch texture packages, uninstall one and install the other, then run Batch Build again.

Getting the items

Item	Slot / type	Armor / damage	Weight	Value	Forge recipe (no perk)
Hollow Lantern Corset	32 (body), light armor	20	3	180	3 Leather, 2 Leather Strips, 1 Iron Ingot
Hollow Lantern Shorts	49, clothing	—	1	55	1 Leather, 2 Linen Wrap, 1 Iron Ingot
Hollow Lantern Boots	37 (feet), light armor	7	1.5	70	2 Leather, 2 Leather Strips, 1 Iron Ingot
Hollow Lantern Gloves	33 (hands), light armor	6	0.5	45	1 Leather, 1 Leather Strips
Hollow Lantern Choker	45 (necklace), clothing	—	0.2	40	1 Leather Strips, 1 Iron Ingot
Hollow Lantern Horns	42 (circlet), clothing	—	0.5	55	2 Bone Meal, 1 Leather Strips, 1 Iron Ingot
Hollow Lantern Mask	44 (face), clothing	—	0.5	75	1 Leather, 1 Leather Strips, 1 Gold Ingot
Hollow Lantern Tail	40 (tail), clothing	—	0.5	40	1 Leather, 1 Leather Strips
Hollow Lantern War Axe	one-handed axe	14	13	650	3 Steel Ingot, 1 Gold Ingot, 2 Leather Strips, 1 Fire Salts, 1 Common Soul Gem
Hollow Lantern Battleaxe	two-handed axe	24	22	980	5 Steel Ingot, 1 Gold Ingot, 3 Leather Strips, 2 Fire Salts, 1 Common Soul Gem
Hollow Lantern	carried light	—	1.5	35	1 Gourd, 1 Torchbug Thorax, 1 Iron Ingot

Base values; the inventory shows them with your perks applied. The corset, boots and gloves are tempered at a workbench with 1 Leather Strips and the axes at a grindstone with 1 Steel Ingot (enchanted items need the Arcane Blacksmith perk, as usual). The choker takes necklace enchantments and the horns circlet enchantments. Console: help "hollow lantern" 4, then player.additem <ID> 1.

Crafting menus cannot list light sources, so the forge makes the Hollow Lantern as an item that turns into the carried light as soon as it reaches your inventory (or any container). Item spawners that list only regular items show this version too.

Enchantment: Hollow Lantern Ember

Both axes carry it, stronger on the battleaxe. While it has charge, the blade glows with a pulsing ember shader; recharge it with soul gems. It cannot be learned by disenchanting.

Effect	War Axe	Battleaxe
Lantern Ember: fire damage on hit	18	26
Lantern Burn: fire damage per second for 4 seconds, does not stack	4	6
Lantern's Hunger: soul trap	10 s	10 s
Lantern's Dread: targets below 35% health flee, up to level	35, for 8 s	45, for 10 s
Charge / cost per hit	2500 / 60	3000 / 85

Fire resistance reduces both fire effects. Lantern's Dread only works on wounded targets, so it ends fights instead of scattering fresh enemies.

Body presets

Hollow Lantern Body Presets is a separate, optional package with five CBBE 3BA BodySlide presets made to wear this outfit. They work with any CBBE 3BA outfit, and the outfit does not need them.

Preset	Shape
Hollow Lantern - Harvest Queen	Voluptuous: very full bust, soft waist, wide hips, heavy thighs and a round butt
Hollow Lantern - Tavern Witch	Soft curves: full bust that grows with weight, rounded belly and hips
Hollow Lantern - Night Huntress	Athletic: defined abs, high round butt, strong thighs and calves
Hollow Lantern - Wisp Dancer	Full bust over a narrow waist, wide hips and toned legs
Hollow Lantern - Ember Warden	Strong and muscular: broad shoulders, defined abs and arms; lean at low weight

Curvy presets often push the body through itself at the cleavage and between the thighs, and garments copy that. In these presets the breasts never cross the middle of the cleavage and the inner thighs never overlap, at both weights, so outfits clip less there.

Install the package with your mod manager (it only adds CalienteTools\BodySlide\SliderPresets\Hollow Lantern Presets.xml), pick the preset in BodySlide (groups CBBE, 3BA, 3BBB, CBBE Bodies and Hollow Lantern), build the body and run Batch Build for your outfits. There is no plugin. More in presets/README.md.

Compatibility

• Adds new records only and changes no vanilla record.
• Female characters only: on male characters the pieces show nothing.
• Pieces that share a slot with other items replace them (see the table above for the slots).
• The mask is made for human, elf and orc heads, vanilla and High Poly Head; Khajiit and Argonian heads are not supported. Long bangs can cover it, and the horns can intersect voluminous hairstyles.
• On beast races the tail replaces the character's own tail (both use slot 40).
• The shorts are not cloth-simulated: they bend with the hips and thighs, and deep sitting poses crease them at the hips.
• The orange stitching on the boots, mostly along the back, can look curved on some body presets.
• The meshes are detailed (about 300,000 triangles for the worn set, 39,000 and 60,000 for the axes): fine for the player and followers, heavy for crowds of NPCs.

How it was made

Everything was modelled, rigged and textured from scratch with scripts: Blender with PyNifly for the meshes, Python for the fitting and the texture painting, and Mutagen for the plugin. No mesh or texture comes from another mod; the corset carries the CBBE 3BA body, as body-slot outfits do.

• Fitting: the close-fitting pieces are draped over a smoothed copy of the CBBE 3BA body, cut along curves and given thickness, an inner lining and rounded edges. Bone weights and every 3BA slider are transferred from the body.
• Clipping: the skin under the corset and briefs is trimmed, and the skin left near the corset edges was checked against 108 BodySlide presets so it stays under the leather.
• Mask: shaped over eight head variants (vanilla and High Poly Head; Nord, Orc and High Elf race shapes; face sliders and expressions) with clearance to spare.
• Textures: painted procedurally in the atlas (leather grain, wool, stitching along every seam, brass, blackened steel and glowing inlays) with ambient occlusion baked from the meshes.

Building from source

The repository holds the build pipeline; the release packages are built from it. build.ps1 builds the three outfit packages and presets\build.ps1 the body presets.

1. Install the mods the build reads its references from in a Mod Organizer 2 mods folder: CBBE, CBBE 3BA (3BBB), XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended, and the heads used to shape the mask (Expressive Facegen Morphs and High Poly Head). Their folder names are set at the top of tools/extract_refs.py, tools/hl_face.py and tools/piece_horns.py.

2. Install the tools: Blender 4.3 with PyNifly, Python 3 with NumPy, OpenCV and lz4, texconv (DirectXTex), the .NET 9 SDK, 7-Zip and the Creation Kit (for the Papyrus compiler).

3. Run the builds from PowerShell:

   .\build.ps1                     # the 2K, 4K and 8K packages in dist\
   .\build.ps1 -Install            # also installs the 8K package into the Mod Organizer 2 mod folder (MO2 closed)
   .\presets\build.ps1             # the body presets package in dist\

   Tool and folder locations are parameters (-Mods, -Game, -Blender, -SevenZip, -ModFolder). Reference data and texture sources are kept in cache\ and reused.

Path	Contents
build.ps1	One-command build: references, meshes, textures, script, plugin and packages
tools/build_meshes.py	Meshes, BodySlide projects, tail physics and ground models (Blender + PyNifly)
tools/piece_*.py	One script per item
tools/hl_*.py	Shared helpers: fitting, slider data, BodySlide files, NIF export, texture atlas, head morphs
tools/make_textures.py	Texture atlas painting and the three BC7 texture sets
tools/extract_refs.py	Reads the CBBE 3BA reference body, hands, feet, sliders and skeleton
tools/lib/	NIF helpers for static meshes and collision, BSA reader, .pex cleanup
plugin/	Plugin generator (C#, Mutagen)
scripts/	Papyrus source of the lantern crafting script
presets/	Body presets: fitting script, build and README
docs/	Screenshot and the release checklist

Credits and permissions

• Tinesh: design, meshes, textures, plugin and body presets.
• CBBE by Ousnius, Caliente and Jeir, and CBBE 3BA by Acro: the corset carries the CBBE 3BA body mesh and its BodySlide sliders.
• Bethesda Game Studios: the vanilla effects, cubemaps, first-person body and soul trap script the items use (referenced, not included).
• Tools: Blender, PyNifly, Mutagen, DirectXTex, the Papyrus Compiler from the Creation Kit, 7-Zip.

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