I did some searching for this and couldn't seem to locate a stand-alone thread so I'm going to start one.

The Background:
When I played Morrowind, a great deal of enjoyment was had from finding a cool/rare/unique item in a dungeon and bringing it back to my house. I'd find a table or shelf to put it on, and forevermore I could walk past it and remember fondly. I might have an alchemy lab set up with all sorts of bottles and ingredients strewn about, I would have bookshelves full of strange Dwemer devices, and I'd candles down on railings. I certainly doubt I'm alone in this mindset, many of us loved doing this and many of us experienced the horrors of the "overflow loot bag" due to excessive item placement..
That annoyance aside, Morrowind had a brilliantly simple way of dropping items in that you could just place it, free of physics, wherever you had aimed your cross-hairs positioned.

Oblivion gave birth to "realistic physics", and we all loved that. Especially when it took ten minutes to place a bottle on a nightstand. I remember there being a mod that summoned an item placement shrine of some kind that painstakenly allowed you to rotate items and lock them in place. It was clunky to use, but had the benefit of letting you mound swords on walls.


The Request:
I propose a mod that will allow players greater control over item placement. Players who want to decorate their domecile with various treasures should be able to do it quickly and effeciently so they can get back out and adventure more. Players shouldn't have to quicksave before each placement for fear of the physics engine and how it might cause a catastrophic domino effect at any moment. Players shouldn't have to plan out ahead of time, on a graphing calculator, what order they put items down on a shelf.

Unfortunatly, I am not a modder, so I can't make this happen on my own. I don't know exactly how this would be gone about, but I have a few thoughts.

1) How did the game designers place items in the game to begin with? What placement options are there when decorating a house in the Creation Kit? Can this be tapped into and converted into a mod for the every day joe gamer?

2)Is there a way to turn off the realistic physics of items being dropped from inventory, have them dropped at cross-hairs, and then resume their physics properties? I'm sure Joe gamer would even settle for a new "drop item" button that just plain shut off physics when used. EG: press [R] to drop at your feet with normal physics, press [Y] to drop on cross-hairs without physics. items dropped this way can't be interacted with except to pick back up.

yea i liked being able to place candles and light sources in morrowind in particular. I also like knowing my items will stay where they are without the physics blowin up all over the room.

I second this, even though I think both of the things you are asking about are impossible. But maybe something closer to Morrowinds item placement could be implemented... I just wish I could rotate the item in air, seeing how I now must shove it against things to get it with the right side up.

I third this... This made so much success in Morrowind that its to wonder why it wasnt adopted by the company.

I have no idea how this is possible without serious OBSE style hacking, but fourth-ed.

I use a friggen game pad and I have no issue placing objects, ive laid skulls neatly allover my house, and potions on the shelves, weapons on the tables.

If you cant do it with a mouse there is something wrong.

I'm fairly certain that with the OBSE version available now that a reasonably similar effect could be put into place, so I'd say that, unless Bethesda has made large advancements in their proprietary language, it'll be possible after SKSE gets going.

I agree, the biggest problem is books for me. I don't WANT them to OPEN when I pick them up! Gah, makes it SO hard to place a simple book on a shelf...

Agreed. We've been too spoiled over this from Morrowind and Oblivion.

Skyrim seems to be a lot better in this respect, at least. The object collision is where you'd expect, and items actually lay flat on the table for the most part instead of float over it. Still, I remember a mod for FO3 where you could easily move things and even lock them in place so nothing knocked them over. I hope to see something similar in Skyrim eventually.

You know they have made shelves in houses where you can put a number of books and they'll be auto-placed on them for you? Just look for bookshelves .

Just something simple as being able to rotate the item in air without it flinging around and rotating by itself so much would do for me.

Not sure why they even did this anyway. When I pick something up, I have a firm grasp on it. I don't pinch it between two fingers and let it dangle and sway about as I walk through the house. Would be nice for it to basically stay the way it is when we pick it up. Stand a book up on edge on a table, pick it up, carry it to a bookshelf, and put it away with sending the rest of your library rocketing across the room.

I want Morrowind style item placement very much, you should just press r and it's dropped at your cursor with little physics involved. Also it would be great if we could rotate items without having to smash them up against things. So yes I agree, except maybe in the terms of a no physics mode.. if there was one it should be a spell or something to make it believable within the game by use of magic.

Has anyone tried the Telekinesis spell for placing items? I have no idea what it's like in Skyrim yet.

The Telekinesis seems to only have a better grip on the object. I noticed it slowly orients the object upright but it can't rotate, I'm not sure if regular pickup orients the object.

If you want to try for yourself you can do:

player.addspell 1A4CC

I suggest making a save before doing so if you don't want to cheat your Alteration because it will level quite fast while casting Telekinesis.

If there was someway to disable the physics for dropping/placing items would be nice. I don't know why Bethesda decided that everything should react like it weighs as much as a party balloon. Look at how much stuff bounces all over and the way it reacts. Reminds me of being a kid in a room full of balloons.

Why not just have a mod that disables physics inside of any player owned structure?

I would love a mod that let you turn physics off for objects you place down in your house. It takes ages to place them now and then you (or an NPC) bumps into them and they go flying everywhere. Setting up displays and customizing the look of your house was the best thing in Morrowind, now even though Oblivion and Skyrim have proper support for owning a house they've missed the point by not letting you adjust things as you like and make it feel like your own home.

i still remember kill people and stealing their houses... and then lining the shelves, bed, bookcases and anything else i could find to display my items.. i loved that in MW.
then in oblivion i stuck everything in chests because decorating was a nightmare... probably one of the reasons i never liked that game.

i so want the old MW way in SK

I'm not sure if that would be possible. I'm thinking it's not, because the physics engine is a hard-coded part of the game. I did see someone mention in another thread that it was possible to create objects that had no physics enabled however (something about Nifskope iirc). If I understand correctly, then it just may be possible to create items specifically for houses... but even then, it seems like it would be tedious, and it obviously wouldn't help for placing items that are already in the game and currently affected by physics. It would also be massive, if every mesh had to be modified to be unaffected by physics. Meshes generally take up the largest amount of space in mods, and every affected mesh would need to be included.

Of course that's assuming that you indeed cannot disable physics in-game, or that the method I mentioned is not correct and/or not the only way around it.

If the physics can't be altered, what about the setting down of items? is it at all possible to have them placed where the crosshairs meet and just set gently down?

I can place items just fine in my house, but then Lydia (god she is annoying, why the hell you in my house woman!) walks by or dog or me and then bam everything crashes to the floor... Or I walk back into the house and then random items are on the floor... :\

I would love a mod that just locks items into place at the least like mods in Oblivion did. *Crosses fingers*

Bethesda has already been able to 'freeze' objects into place, like a sword being stuck in a rock without making it glitch all over the place, and not actually moving unless you force it out with a lighting spell or equivalent... It would be nice if we could do it in game as well.

I tried putting my dragon-claw keys down on a desk in a neatly ordered fashion, and after some poking around I managed. Then I left my house for a day or so, and wouldn't you know it - when I came back, all the claws had magically exploded away from the desk, and one of them could even be found on the second floor (which means it must have been forced through the tiny cracks in the floorboards).

Yes! This is so, so annoying!

I spent some hours decorating with dwemer clutter, soulgems, random furs/gems/potions in the houses, only to find out the stuff flies all over the place from the slightest breeze when someone passes by or just enters the damn house .

Crossing my fingers for scripting folks to tackle some version of skyrim decorator assistant, eventually!