Eliminated seams in Blender but they return on export

[dreamCloud]

Been working on a huge tileset for Oblivion for quite some time. I followed some guides on how to completely eliminate seams in Blender by using the Data Transfer modifier to copy vertex normals from one tileset piece to the next. It worked great and looks amazing in Blender (the same way that one modder did for solving the neck seam issue). However, my problem comes when I have to export.

 

Since I have been modelling in 2.9 I tried the new 2.9 nif tools export. However, it must still have a lot of work to do to be reliable because every time I try an Oblivion export I get so many errors and I tried to parse through and troubleshoot them all but it's become beyond tedious. So I then tried to do the old export way of exporting to an .obj and importing into 2.49b and re-exporting as a .nif from there. That works, but I notice that I lose all of my vertex normal information I worked so hard on upon doing that. In-game the models no longer have the same vertex normal positions and the seams are back. I verified it by re-importing the .nif files back into 2.49b and looking at the vertex normals in there and they were split. I thought I could try fixing it in 2.49b but it doesn't have the tools to do so.

 

I then tried the copy/paste method into Blender 2.7 and importing into Blender 2.62 and saving it as a legacy save then exporting from 2.49b again but I lose a ton of geometry data (lots of missing faces) when I do this.

 

I know that there is a way to get .nif files with the correct vertex normals in-game since another modder did it to fix neck seams, but I am at a complete loss as to how and I am unable to contact them to ask how they did it.

 

I've troubleshot the files quite a bit already. They have the same material, they are lined up perfectly where the seams are vertex to vertex and I also flattened the area around the seams so they are parallel to prevent any light bouncing causing it, and I double checked the textures are perfectly aligned at the seams and I updated the tangent space in Nifskope as well (this only changed some stray reflections, the seams are there before and after).

 

Example attached showing 4 separate tiles looking awesome next to each other in Blender and in-game showing huge nasty seam.

 

Notes:
- I do have 3DSMax 2010 (one of their free versions offered to students back when) and the nif scripts for that, but I never caught on to 3DS Max and it's very alien territory for me. If there is a way of getting my model from Blender 2.9 to 3DS Max 2010 without losing the vertex normal data that might be worth it to me to learn... but scouring the web hasn't found anything for that for me (again it seems to be exporting to a 3rd format that is losing the info).

- Are there nif scripts for 2.79 maybe?

[dreamCloud]

So it seems for sure where the vertex normals break is exporting from Blender 2.9 as an .obj. I double-verified this by exporting one tile piece as an .obj, deleting the piece and re-importing the .obj I just made. The .obj had broken vertex normals that did not match the tile next to it (ie, the ones I made in Blender before the export are now gone).

Edited January 31, 2022 by dreamCloud

[dreamCloud]

Looks like Autodesk finally revoked my license for my educational 2010 version of 3DS Max. So that's off the table. I am encouraged that some of the screenshots from the one user show Blender's UI though, so they must have found a solution in Blender.

 

I ended up finding the relevant mod in question where they solved the issue for neck seams, so I know it can be done for my cave model... just... how?

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/44360

Edited January 31, 2022 by dreamCloud