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3DS Max Modeling Tutorial

TallgeeseIV

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TallgeeseIV

TallgeeseIV

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Alright, First things first. I'm writing this tutorial because I’ve seen the question, "how do I make my own meshes and get them in game" waaay too many times, and considering the fact that it took me over a month of searching for different tutorials with outdated information, just to get one model in game, I think it's time for a new tutorial. This tutorial will be a beginner starting point tutorial, for now. I will cover the basics of getting a mesh in game. You must already have your "Fallout - Meshes.bsa" and "Fallout - Textures.bsa" unpacked in your "Fallout New Vegas\Data" directory. This tutorial will not cover the finer points of skinning and UVW Mapping, which are required knowledge for a modeler regardless of why you're making your model, so it is expected that you know how to do those first.

 

If not, there are hundreds of tutorials for these skills for all popular modeling programs on the internet, including video tutorials on YouTube. The key terms you're looking for, if you're trying to attach bones to a mesh are "skin modifier", "skinning" and "rigging" you'll see a lot of discussion on vertex weighting and IK Chains, etc, you'll learn, good luck. In my opinion, skinning is the hardest part, if you are a halfway decent artist, and you can get the hang of that, you'll be just fine.

 

UVW Mapping is the process of mapping out which areas of the mesh correspond to which areas on a 2 dimensional image/texture. Again, hundreds of tutorials out there, and it's way easier than skinning is, good luck.

 

So, let's begin. For this tutorial I will be using 3ds max 2010 32 bit edition WITHOUT the aid of Nifskope. You must have the import/export plug-in for .nif and .kf files installed in your max plug-ins directory. I already have them and I can't remember whether they were separate or came with Niftools, if someone posting after me could double check that for me, that would be awesome, as I have work in the morning and this is already going to kill me, haha. Now, some important information regarding the tools.

 

At the time of the writing of this tutorial, the 3ds max plug-in for 64 bit versions of max can be flaky; it doesn't work at all for me so I use the 32 bit version. However you get the plug-in installer, install both versions just in case. If the 64 bit version gives you an error when loading max, try the 32 bit version.

 

This tutorial will cover adding a new armor to Fallout New Vegas. Weapons require some effort and usage of Nifskope and are a bit more complex to get in game. Not that much harder, once you get the hang of this, the extra steps from there for weapons will be a breeze. Now, get ready for the crash course.

 

Launch 3DS Max.

 

Click import and make sure ".nif" is one of your available import file types.

 

Navigate to your "Fallout New Vegas\Data" directory. Open the meshes folder. Open the characters folder. Open the "_male" folder. Find "upperbody.nif" click it, and click import. The plug-in should open and show you a message box that looks like this:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut1.jpg

 

The animation section controls... well what aspects of the model's animation to import. Animations for .nif files are stored as .kf files. A .kf file cannot be opened without the skeleton being present in max already. It basically adds the animation to the biped so it has something to show you. .kf files aren't much other than a collection of numbers to tell each bone where, by how much, and when to move. No mesh data is in the animation file.

 

In this case though, the skeleton has the .nif mesh grafted to it, the importer is smart enough to import it automatically, with any .nif that uses it, such as armor, clothing and bodies. That’s what the checkmark next to import skeleton means.

 

In the box below that however, is the path to your skeleton... unfortunately, at the time of this tutorial anyway, the newest Niftools did not cover New Vegas, and sees all New Vegas files as Fallout 3 files. This is ok; however we have to make a quick change. Open a windows explorer window and navigate back to that "_male" directory. Copy the "skeleton.nif" file and paste it in the location the importer thinks it’s in, likely your fallout 3 directory. If the directory doesn't exist, create it, and paste it there. Now you won't have to click browse every time for the skeleton, it will grab it automatically.

 

Make sure your settings are the same as mine and you should be staring at the half-naked body of the male courier (sexy?) although with no head or hands, and weird black/red areas on his arms and neck, right? Good. On your system it may appear grey, instead of having the textures. This is ok. Because the plug-in uses Fallout 3’s directories, it’s pulling textures from the “Fallout 3\Data\Textures” directory. The male upper body texture is a common element to both games but anything new in New Vegas will not appear, and may give you “cannot find texture” errors, just ignore them, New Vegas will figure it out.

 

So, because you can create your own face in the game, the face is a separate mesh from the body. hands are also separate, otherwise all armors would overlap the Pipboy glove... to be honest I know how they could have done that better, but whatever, it's Bethesda, I’ll never understand how their programmer's think, and their offices are like 10 miles from here... maybe were all crazy out here... whatever...

 

Anyway! The red/black areas that you may notice are named "meatcap" "bodycap" and "limbcap" etc. etc. are what the game will display when that limb get's shot off. The game needs a mesh to be there so it can unhide it in game. Gotta have chucks of torn flesh on a blown off leg right? Right.

 

I’m going to teach you how to put a big cube on the body mesh's left leg and call it armor, haha. After that you'll know the basics well enough to do more complex shapes with the same techniques.

 

Now, do this first. Press "m" on your keyboard or bring up your material editor however you feel like doing it. You should know how to use it but it's not very important right now. Click the first material slot. Click the sphere with an arrow pointing to it on the toolbar just under the spheres. Click the circle next to "scene" in the browse from section of the box that opens. Then double click the material associated with "[Arms:0]" you've just copied the material the game uses for the clothing to your materials. You’ll need to use this before exporting. You can play with materials later, but doing this guarantee’s you have a working material that will not fail exporting. If you tweak something from here and it fails because of it, don't blame me.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut2.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut3.jpg

 

Ok, go back to the mesh itself. On the right in max, create a cube about the size of the mesh's left shin (if the model is facing you, it's the shin on YOUR right).

 

Move the cube to be overlapping his leg, as if he was wearing a cardboard box as a leg guard, haha. oh hey... that would be a pretty funny mod... I’ll have to remember that...

 

Anyway... uuuuh, yeah, click the second tab on the right toolbar, it looks like a box with a rainbow or something in it, haha. You should see a box that says "+ Editable Mesh" click the drop down box called "modifier list" and click "UVW Mapping" this is just so you know textures will work in game. Click the circle next to "box" in the mapping section, now right click your mesh and click "convert to -> editable mesh" again. I don't think you HAVE to do this, but it's a habit I got into from another game I modded that had issues with the UV Mapping modifiers still being in the modifier stack when you export.

 

So, now it just says editable mesh again. Click the modifier list again and this time, click "skin". From this point on, do not change the mesh to an editable mesh again. UV Mapping is saved to the mesh, with or without the modifier in the stack, skin modifiers are not. Changing to an editable mesh will erase your skinning.

 

Now, there's a box on the right in the skin parameters that says "Bones:" and a button that says "add" click add, then find "Bip01 L Calf" and double click it, when skinning more complex shapes like clothing, you can add multiple bones, that's where it gets complicated, we'll keep it easy and work with one bone.

 

Click the "edit envelope" button, just to see if it applied correctly. If you're using default rigging settings, the mesh should light up red and show a weird pill looking thing in the center called an "envelope" I’m not teaching you about that, mainly because I still suck at it, hahaha.

 

Click "edit envelopes" again to disable it. The mesh is now attached to the left calf of the skeleton, moving that bone will move the cube.

 

Next, click the skin modifier list again, and add "BSDismemberSkin Modifier".

 

This is a relatively simple modifier to use. The drop down has a list of every possible body part that could be shot off, although the game doesn't actually use all of them. The primary ones are "Torso, head, body | left leg, body | right leg, body | left arm, body | right arm, left leg, right leg, left arm, and right arm. They use hands and a few others sometimes as well; we just need "left leg" for now, so select that from the drop down list. Now click one of the selection tools, either by triangle, my poly or by element, doesn't matter. Select the entire cube. That’s it. It will now remove the cube from you if you get your left leg blown off in game. Unclick the selection method button again to stop editing this modifier.

 

Remember that material I had you save? Apply it to the cube now.

 

Now, you're ready to export. Click the export button, wherever that's located in your version of max. Navigate to the "meshes" director in your "Fallout New Vegas\Data" directory. Make sure “.nif” is selected as your export-to file type. Save it in one of the folders there, make a new one, or just save it in meshes, doesn't matter. give it a filename and the export window should appear, use these settings, they work for me 100% of the time, but to be honest I only understand what half of them do, haha:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut8.jpg

 

ok, if you did everything right, it should have exported just now without crashing. If it did crash... check your work, make sure it looks like mine:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut6.jpg

 

If it's still crashing post here and someone will try to help. I’m sorry but I don't know how every version of max's importer/exporter works, or if some of them have a certain bug, or if your settings weren't default, etc. etc. there's a million and one options in this program and I didn't watch what you did! Haha.

 

Anyway, add this as the male or female mesh for armor in the GECK and boom, you have a working cube shin guard... useless, yes, but at least you know how to do it, right?

 

Ok, a few notes you may be interested in:

 

1. If you look at the texture paths in the material editor for the base clothing’s material that we copied. You’ll notice, instead of it looking in “C:\Program Files\blah blah blah” it just says “textures\blah blah blah” This is for good reason. The game does not care where you installed it. It will look to directories within the “Data” folder automatically. This same exported model could be placed in Fallout 3 or New Vegas and it will work either way, as long as the textures are present in the texture directory for each game. I think there is a way to change them from within 3DS Max without including the rest of your directory tree (The “C:\Program Files\...” part) but I don’t know how, or even need to use it. The game gives several different options for changing the texture paths. If you want the model to have the right textures immediately in game, you can change the texture paths in Nifskope. If you want to have multiple texture options for one model, such as making a t-shirt model and having 3 different colors for it. Let it use any working material from the game. Then create “texturesets” for it in the GECK. That’s my preferred method, as it gives me the ability to change textures in Photoshop and view them in the GECK without re-importing the model. I’ll probably cover that process in detail in a future tutorial.

 

I will probably write a tutorial on changing elements of the material within Nifskope as well, as that’s where I do it. I use Nifskope to do it after using a base, working material from an imported model from the vanilla game because occasionally, I’ve had some element of the material get corrupted in 3DS Max. I have NOOO idea why. But occasionally, for some reason, 3DS Max will start crashing on export, when it was working just fine before that, even if I didn’t change anything. To fix this, I typically just re-import a vanilla game model, copy its material, delete its mesh from the scene again, and apply it overtop the old material. This usually fixes it.

 

2. The game isn’t picky about what you name each mesh. You’ll notice in the upperbody.nif mesh, the clothing part is named “Arms:0” and the body is named “Arms:1” Anything that’s not going to be visible in first person, such as your legs, can be named whatever you want, the game doesn’t care. But it does look at the name for keywords to display certain things. For instance using the keyword “Arms:#” means it will display in first person. If you name it otherwise, it will disappear in first person and you’ll have floating hands, or a floating gun. You could name your legs, or torso “poopstick71A” and it will still work in 3rd person, haha. The “meatcap” meaty chunk, named parts are also required to be named appropriately, as the game sees those names and will automatically hide them until you get a limb blown off. If you name them differently, they’ll show all the time, and we don’t need your bloody stump sticking through your armor. Keep in mind that none of these parts are actually required, if you want floating arms or no meatcaps at all, delete them from your mesh, the game will not crash without them.

 

The game is also not picky about the order your meshes are in, within the exported nif. If you open the selection box in 3DS Max and see all the biped bones, and a few of your mesh parts at the top and a few at the bottom, it won’t make a difference, as long as they all have skin modifiers and dismemberment modifiers, and a valid material.

 

3. About animations… At this time, from what I understand, you cannot export animations from 3DS Max. I’ve tried; it doesn’t crash 3DS MAX or Nifskope, but the animation isn’t in Nifskope either. I will update this if I ever figure out how to do it, or if they update the plug-in to allow it, but for now, I can’t write a tutorial on that. The good news is that within 3DS Max, when you export your model, as long as it has a working skin modifier, you can test it and move the bones around to see how joints bend, etc. without worrying about losing its pose. The game will force it into whatever animation is being applied, so it doesn’t care what pose it’s in when you export.

 

Ok, I may add to this, revise it, etc. feel free to post this anywhere, if it's even worthy of that, I wrote it in an hour, haha. Just put my name "by TallgeeseIV" somewhere and I’ll be satisfied.

 

Revision A:

1.) Added interesting notes about what the exporter and game will and will not accept.

2.) Various spelling and grammar corrections, I was in a rush the first time.

 

Revision B:

1.) Added the revised export settings. +1 to TallgeeseIV Intelligence.

2.) Removed the unnecessary section about changing the pivot point.

 

To all the beginners out there, truly, good luck to you, and we can't wait to see some amazing work. However, there is a condition that all beginners, as well as veterans must adhere to. You HAVE to play with the tools! Try things. Try to teach yourself. Test the limits of the software, figure out what every button does, if you don't need it now, chances are you might later, may as well rule it out if you're trying to do something else. That’s how you master the software. I must have crashed 3ds max like 200+ times and the GECK (including FO3's GECK) like 700+ times by now. I’m a GECK-destroyer, haha.

 

Don’t hesitate to ask any questions or for greater clarification on something. I’m not going to tutor you, but if you can’t find a button or something, I can explain in greater detail.

 

 

To all the pros out there reading this, PLEASE correct me if I didn't explain something properly, or added a needless step. This is just my process, but I’m more interested in putting accurate information out there than being right.

Edited by TallgeeseIV
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TallgeeseIV

TallgeeseIV

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Haha, no problem. I updated the tutorial, just posting to let people Know.

 

PS: damn you scruples. your midwestern brotherhood armor has inspired me to actually model something original... although i'm not as skilled as you are. your armor is gorgeous!

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Ghogiel Grand Master

Ghogiel

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Anyway... uuuuh, yeah, all clothing meshes in the game have a center of X:0.0 Y:0.0 Z:0.0, this means the pivot point is the very center of the 3 dimensional grid, always, and NOT the center of the model. Now you have to change your box into a mesh, and then change its pivot point. To do this, right click the cube and click "convert to -> editable mesh" then on the right side toolbar, click the tab at the tab at the top that looks like a box with smaller boxes below it connected together. While your cube mesh is selected, click "affect pivot point only" this allows you to move the pivot point without moving the mesh itself. At the bottom of the screen, click in the box that says "X: #.###" and highlight the entire number, and press 0 on your keyboard. Do this for "Y:" and "Z:" as well. Now your pivot point for your cube should be the very center of the grid. unclick "affect pivot only" it's VERY important to make sure your mesh is at zero before putting a skin modifier on it, not doing so can cause all kinds of problems.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut4.jpg

 

See where my axis/pivot point is?

 

this makes no difference what so ever, the exporter will always zero mesh objects for all rigged meshes with your export settings. the meshes pivot is pretty much irrelevant once you skin it. but I suppose, as this is not always the case with all engines.

 

also your export settings.

for rigged meshes with an external skelton file, just turn off collision, all you are doing is exporting a BSX flag node, and this is useless in an outfit, as all havok collision is stored in the skeleton.

 

Why export hidden nodes? do you have anything hidden you want as hidden objects in your nif?

 

Why are you not updating tangent space?- this will calculate necessary vertex tangents and binormals, which you need for normal map shaders to work correctly. You should also update tangent space in nifskope in post, as those don't always get exported correctly.

 

You may as well have remove extra bones ticked as well. This basically removes any bone ref nodes that your mesh is not skinned to. It's an optimization feature. There really is no sense having bone ref nodes for the entire skeleton, when your mesh is a left glove, you can do this optimisation in nifskope, i believe its the spell- Remove Bogus Nodes.

 

I always have flatten hierarchy ticked when exporting rigged meshes. This will solve any parent child linking errors you have at export, and this flatten the bone ref nodes used in the skin partition< like vanilla nifs

 

as for your issue with materials, perhaps niftools shader related. i stopped using the niftools material, the standard max materials work fine for exporting. The niftools material is only partially functional, and gives you no real reason to use it- you still can't animate any of it in max or anything.

Edited by Ghogiel
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TallgeeseIV

TallgeeseIV

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Anyway... uuuuh, yeah, all clothing meshes in the game have a center of X:0.0 Y:0.0 Z:0.0, this means the pivot point is the very center of the 3 dimensional grid, always, and NOT the center of the model. Now you have to change your box into a mesh, and then change its pivot point. To do this, right click the cube and click "convert to -> editable mesh" then on the right side toolbar, click the tab at the tab at the top that looks like a box with smaller boxes below it connected together. While your cube mesh is selected, click "affect pivot point only" this allows you to move the pivot point without moving the mesh itself. At the bottom of the screen, click in the box that says "X: #.###" and highlight the entire number, and press 0 on your keyboard. Do this for "Y:" and "Z:" as well. Now your pivot point for your cube should be the very center of the grid. unclick "affect pivot only" it's VERY important to make sure your mesh is at zero before putting a skin modifier on it, not doing so can cause all kinds of problems.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/TallgeeseIIII/tut4.jpg

 

See where my axis/pivot point is?

 

this makes no difference what so ever, the exporter will always zero mesh objects for all rigged meshes with your export settings. the meshes pivot is pretty much irrelevant once you skin it. but I suppose, as this is not always the case with all engines.

 

also your export settings.

for rigged meshes with an external skelton file, just turn off collision, all you are doing is exporting a BSX flag node, and this is useless in an outfit, as all havok collision is stored in the skeleton.

 

Why export hidden nodes? do you have anything hidden you want as hidden objects in your nif?

 

Why are you not updating tangent space?- this will calculate necessary vertex tangents and binormals, which you need for normal map shaders to work correctly. You should also update tangent space in nifskope in post, as those don't always get exported correctly.

 

You may as well have remove extra bones ticked as well. This basically removes any bone ref nodes that your mesh is not skinned to. It's an optimization feature. There really is no sense having bone ref nodes for the entire skeleton, when your mesh is a left glove

 

I always have flatten hierarchy ticked when exporting rigged meshes. This will solve any parent child linking errors you have at export, and this flatten the bone ref nodes used in the skin partition< like vanilla nifs

 

as for your issue with materials, perhaps niftools shader related. i stopped using the niftools material, the standard max materials work fine for exporting. The niftools material is only partially functional, and gives you no real reason to use it- you still can't animate any of it in max or anything.

 

Oh wow... ok, i'll make those changes. like i said, i don't know what most of those settings are for, i just know they've been working, haha.

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Ghogiel Grand Master

Ghogiel

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2. The game isn’t picky about what you name each mesh. You’ll notice in the upperbody.nif mesh, the clothing part is named “Arms:0” and the body is named “Arms:1” Anything that’s not going to be visible in first person, such as your legs, can be named whatever you want, the game doesn’t care. But it does look at the name for keywords to display certain things. For instance using the keyword “Arms:#” means it will display in first person. If you name it otherwise, it will disappear in first person and you’ll have floating hands, or a floating gun. You could name your legs, or torso “poopstick71A” and it will still work in 3rd person, haha. The “meatcap” meaty chunk, named parts are also required to be named appropriately, as the game sees those names and will automatically hide them until you get a limb blown off. If you name them differently, they’ll show all the time, and we don’t need your bloody stump sticking through your armor. Keep in mind that none of these parts are actually required, if you want floating arms or no meatcaps at all, delete them from your mesh, the game will not crash without them.

 

the naming convention to the Meatcaps do not specifically disable rendering it..at least not in 3rd person. That is a hardcoded function in a dismember partiton flag setting> PF_editor_ something or other. either way the name is probably hardcoded as well.

 

I do believe what particular biped slot the outfit item is assigned to in the GECK matters for 1st person rendering. For example hats and eyeglasses will never render in 1st person..no matter what the mesh object is called. they'd only obscure the camera anyway, probably why those slots have that hardcoded feature.

 

iirc, for oblivion, everything rendered in 1st person. The node name Upperbody, Lowbody, Foot, and a few others, were flagged to be disabled in 1st person. Which is the opposite to what you suggest how it works in Fallout.

 

A while back i tested this knowledge in Fallout3 when i did my cyberman suit. Notice nothing in that outfit is named Arms. and everything renders in 1st person.

Basically, I should have split the outfit up into a couple extra mesh objects to give some optimizing to 1st person. But whatever hey.

 

in short, Upperbody seems to be flagged for disabled rendering in 1st person, rather than Arms being the flag that forces 1st person rendering. < doesn't matter so much as to how this really works, just stick to vanilla conventions and it'll be aight.

 

The game is also not picky about the order your meshes are in, within the exported nif. If you open the selection box in 3DS Max and see all the biped bones, and a few of your mesh parts at the top and a few at the bottom, it won’t make a difference, as long as they all have skin modifiers and dismemberment modifiers, and a valid material.

I believe Sort Nodes on the export dialog will arrange the block list correctly when you export. Nifskope will also auto

arrange/organize the block list when you save the nif from there as well.

 

however... there is 1 circumstance where manual mesh object ordering is needed (you can use the arrow keys to change block list order in nifskope)

The block list order in regards to mesh objects only becomes important, when you require 2 or more mesh objects with transparency in the same nif. The mesh objects are drawn in the order they are encountered in the nif. This poses an issue if you use blended alpha transparency settings, for example the lava lamps I made- the container part is composed of 2 cylindrical mesh objects, one nested inside the other. the outer one being the glass, the inner one being the liquid. If you know what a zbuffer is and how and in what order things are drawn on screen in games, you know there can be alpha glitches. Basically in the scenario i outlined above, I want the inner liquid mesh to be drawn first and be a lower block number than the outer glass mesh. If the glass mesh is rendered first with alpha transparency, then the inner mesh is not going to render behind it correctly.

 

3. About animations… At this time, from what I understand, you cannot export animations from 3DS Max. I’ve tried; it doesn’t crash 3DS MAX or Nifskope, but the animation isn’t in Nifskope either. I will update this if I ever figure out how to do it, or if they update the plug-in to allow it, but for now, I can’t write a tutorial on that.

You are just doing it wrong.

 

The niftools plugin will export near working nifs with transform animations and near working kfs. to get the sequences to work in game, you have to fiddle with what max outputs in nifskope. And what to change in the sequence isn't hard actually, might take few mins, but you need to know your stuff... or you'll be an hour in there comparing every entry. :pinch:

 

Not all animation types are supported. You will not get any animated materials, textures, or funky stuff like particles or anything.

 

It will export morphs.

 

For Kfs to work properly you have to run them through the kfupdater app. There will also be a redundant node in the file as well. Nistringpalette, these are no longer used in KFs fallout version and later. and if you leave it in the file, nifskope will throw an error about unexpexted block type or something if you try to import the sequence.

 

Um yeah, animation works the same as oblivion. Only the post nifskope work to fix the sequences are different. So asumming you have correctly set up the scene, animated it, and used the right export setting:

in the NiControllerSequence, add the NiMultiTargetTransformController as the Controller for each of the controlled blocks, in the NiControllerSequence block details, expand the controlled blocks array, in each of the controlled blocks, the Controller and the Controller Type will be blank. You have to add the NiMultiTargetTransformController as the Controller and NiTransformController in the Controller Type.

 

If you were completely assembling an animation in nifskope, like you may find yourself doing for many things, ie everything the exporter can't export, or for whatever reason, the controller type would not always be a nitranformcontroller. for example this controlled block might be a NiMaterialController Or NialphaController, or any controller supported by the engine. But then if you are animating in nifskope you'd know what everything does pretty much, and I don't have to explain it.

 

after the sequence, the nif will work with the usual nifskope changes, like converting the root NiNode to a BSFadeNode, removing the shadow map Shader, etc

 

The good news is that within 3DS Max, when you export your model, as long as it has a working skin modifier, you can test it and move the bones around to see how joints bend, etc. without worrying about losing its pose. The game will force it into whatever animation is being applied, so it doesn’t care what pose it’s in when you export.

select all the bones>animation> make skin pose.

now you can mess with the pse all you want. even importing animations.

then you can delete the animation, and load the skin pose.

it should be back in the T pose

 

this is handy when you are skinning, so now you can test you rigging and make tweaks to the skin judging to how it deforms under animation.

 

I totally wouldn't mess with the tpose before exporting. you are braver than I. :laugh:

 

edit: oh yeah, no point importing the camera in the skeleton pretty much ever in the import. Definitely don't be exporting it in to an outfit nif. I would remove that option all together from import and export.

 

Also note- when you import the fallout skeleton.nif, you will get a proxy mesh for the morph controller- this is how you can call facial morphs during animations. anyway, this imports as a single tri mesh object, Headanims:01 i think it's called. If you are just skinning to the skeleton, you can delete this mesh object from the scene- it is not a parent of anything and the heirarchy of the skeleton will remain intact etc. I have seen modders export this random mesh object into their outfits lol.

so either hide or delete it.

Edited by Ghogiel
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TrickyVein Mentor

TrickyVein

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A fine, understandable tutorial. I could go through everything you describe in my head and should be ready to skin something when next I open up Max.

 

Curious: I've never bothered with applying materials to my meshes in Max. I handle all of that wizardry in Nifskope, by copying an existing 'bshaderproperty' from a vanilla-NIF into my project, etc. Why should it, or shouldn't it matter that you set this (a material) before exporting (besides the fact that it *could* save you time)?

 

My thinking is that this is actually a non-essential step for exporting a model correctly from Max and *could* be extraneous...I should know, because I've exported 100s of models without caring about it. :tongue:

Edited by TrickyVein
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