Creating .tri and .egm files

[yinami]

I've created high-res versions of all of the head meshes in the game - however, I've tried to use the conformulator from oblivion to create the .tri and .egm files but it doesn't do it correctly (the .egm file is probably okay but the .tri, which is responsible for morphs, is messed up - the first thing I noticed is that when the character talks with the conformulator-made .tri file being used, the mouth doesn't even open (the lips move, but the innermost part of the lips remain static - it's quite strange).

 

So how is the creation of these files done? How did people like throttlekitty, idkrrrr and Ren code them/create them?

 

Is throttlekitty still around? I know she made head06 for oblivion so she'd probably know this like the back of her hand.

[Skree000]

I've created high-res versions of all of the head meshes in the game - however, I've tried to use the conformulator from oblivion to create the .tri and .egm files but it doesn't do it correctly (the .egm file is probably okay but the .tri, which is responsible for morphs, is messed up - the first thing I noticed is that when the character talks with the conformulator-made .tri file being used, the mouth doesn't even open (the lips move, but the innermost part of the lips remain static - it's quite strange).

 

So how is the creation of these files done? How did people like throttlekitty, idkrrrr and Ren code them/create them?

 

Is throttlekitty still around? I know she made head06 for oblivion so she'd probably know this like the back of her hand.

 

 

its been forever but theres a certain simple magic to making these...

fairly certain the best way is to export it as a simple .nif for OBLIVION then import that into Conformulator... there was something about that process that was totally bugged up, so the Oblivion export type was required to circumvent it... Its really reaching back to the archives of my mind, and im sure ill be dealing with this again soon, but if you really have a crap ton of time on your hands, look through the BF2142 mod thread, do a search for 'conformulator', and i guarantee i documented my adventures and successes (and how i did it) in that there thread.

[Ghogiel]

I think I answered this on the esf forums a while ago. basically you have to pry the lips open a little bit.

 

but to answer the bugged thing about creating egms- once you have your fallout nif. just export from nifkope to obj. and use that in the conformulator instead of trying to use a nif as imput.

I've experimented with using stuff like, a simple primitive box, make a tri from the head onto that, then use that tri to bake the egms onto final helmets- the theory is, the helmet mesh(or whatever) will deform much more uniformly in all directions- as an atempt to try to get around odd deformations on some headwear... I should write this stuff down somewhere.

[rainrtw]

Uggh lol I just found this and was sooo hoping there was anything other then the conformulator that could do it, since even following several different guides including the convert to oblivion nif first one, I've never had it turn out a working egm yet. Hmmm well back to digging around.

 

Still it is nice to know that someone at least managed to get working files out of the conformulator. Myself I was looking at http://www.fallout3n...ticle.php?id=32 and no matter what I used as imput or how I converted it it always came up corrupt somehow, most commonly turning every head/helm into a jagged mess lol.

 

Don't get me wrong, its great that someone made it... its just never worked for me is all, and all I was trying is to get something to distort with the facegen sliders, no anims.

 

And I found your thread Skree so I am reading back through that to see what I missed in the process. Hopefully I can get this awesome tool working smoothly for me. Would be awesome to be able to make reliable egm's at least. Functional tri's would rock too but right now I'd be happy with just having meshes distort with the head sliders :tongue:

[Ghogiel]

its rather easy to use the conformulator. I've used it for years since it was very first released.

 

So you have your final F3 nif ( try not to do anything else to this nif- nothing that will reorder the vertex numbering index!)

 

open it in nifskope- export as obj- open conforumlator- imput that obj- in the tri file imput, select the humanhead.tri. hit conformulate.

 

Most of the time the quality is set to vertice. you only need to get more fiddly, if your headware deforms oddly- ie the brim of a hat bending a bit. where using the box method I mentioned above was developed for. Or trying to copy the face morphs from one tri to a new one. and hair morphs. otherwise i can't see how you can mess up.

[rainrtw]

Holy crap you're right, not sure quite how I messed it up so many times before. I know for a while I kept trying to convert my FO3 nif's back to oblivion format first, except I didn't want to bother re-installing oblivion at the moment so I never checked if they were working conversions lol. I I know I tried it many many other ways too... and I think my downfall was assuming the editor would find the egms own. Sort of like how if you specify a texture for a body in teh race forms, it just naturally finds the associated _n's and such. It completely escaped me to search for an update facegen availability button in the menus.

Well thanks a lot to both of you for getting me to try this again. I knew I must have been missing something simple. I will definitely remember the box trick if I find things distorting oddly too.

Now I see what you mean, couldn't be easier... unless perhaps it remembered the last file path used instead of starting in MyDocuments, but hey I am not complaining. Thanks again

[Ghogiel]

Now I see what you mean, couldn't be easier... unless perhaps it remembered the last file path used instead of starting in MyDocuments, but hey I am not complaining. Thanks again

totally.

[Geonox]

I stumbled upon this thread wile trying to figure out the same thing. I've been trying to get the tri file to work as well and so far it seems to work ingame. However the amount the sliders actually deform the head ingame is almost nothing. Some sliders do seem to affect it a little, for example the "face width" slider does seem to affect the face but you can barely see it. Besides that some of the sliders seem to affect wrong parts of the head. For example when I move the nose slider it affects the mouth. My head is a new head mesh and the locations of the eyes, mouth and nose shouldn't be to different from the vanilla meshes. So I was wondering is there a way to set the "sensitivity" or whatever you want to call it of the sliders in the tri file? I tried messing around with the falloff in the conformulator but so far I haven't had any luck. However it does seem to work, only not in the correct way. Or is there another way to create tri files without the conformulator?

 

I was thinking about facegen for example?

[throttlekitty]

Geo, if your head resembles the input for conformulation, you shouldn't be running into this issue. Either it doesn't match up well, or you forgot to freeze/apply transforms first. As an aside, I never experimented much with this idea, but one should be able to make a duplicate of a finalized mesh, reshape that to fit the input mesh, and conformulate that version instead, and taking the egm/tri back to the original final model. It should give you a mostly working head; I think that's how the beast races in Oblivion were done. (reading through online FG documents seemed to hint at this, but didn't go into detail.)

 

Falloff wouldn't really help you if you're already having troubles getting the mesh to react well to the sliders. It sets a linear distance at which a vertex would be 'too far away' to be considered for conformulation, or half-affected by. (think of a soft round brush in a 2d editor)

 

Sure, FaceGen works fine, since all the original assets were created with it. I never wanted to spend money on it, so I used Conformulator and Scanti's other scripts. :)

[Geonox]

I actually decided to leave this topic alone but since I recently got NV i would really like to get into this again. I just did some test rounds in the editor and it seems like everything is working, at least I am able to change the head mesh the way I want. The only thing that I noticed, and what I noticed ingame as well is that the face mesh reacts differently to the sliders than the eyes and teeth do. The face mesh seems to be reacting a lot less to the sliders than the eyes do. Which causes the eyes to dramatically change as well instead of changing along with the head. So the sliders do work, only not the way they are supposed to.

 

How do I freeze/apply the transforms exactly? It seems to be something I didn't do, or at least I am not aware of? Btw I also tried to rescale the head mesh in max so it fits the vanilla head better but I had no luck since. I also read about the Facegen update in the editor, I know where it is it only didn't really seemed to make any difference to the head file. I'm so lost here lol. I would love to have this new face working so I can have npc's can also use it...