neomonkeus

The nif format is comprised of blocks. The small number basically the "id" for that block. If you hit the "Rest Block Detail" button you will be presented with the "List View" which will show you all the unique blocks in your nif. The main "Tree VIew" presents the structure of the nif, because blocks are interconnected using links or parent-child relationship. Its a tree structure because there is a root block, the same way a tree has a root, and blocks blocks which have children have branches. The block id is to identify which block the link points to. One of the reasons these id's might be different is just down to the order they were processed, so instead of object_1 getting the written to the nif object_2 got their first, so it was given id's first. With having the "List View" open you should see 2 additional block, NiHeader & NiFooter, these contain extra information about the nif file itself. Much in the same way we can reuse block by reusing the "id" value, blocks of text, "strings" can also be reused. Here you willl see the strings and their associated id's. As @jazziparis has said, check to ensure that the block is not referencing a non-existant string id. Something else I spotted, as a general rule of thumb don't export as NiTriStrips as they provide no benefit and can in the worst case could degrade performance overall. Officially we no longer support their export.

The first thing you need to do is unpack the nifs from the .bsa archive in the /Data directory of your install. There are a few tools, offhand I think I used to use FOMM as that had built in BSA commander. Then its a case of finding and loading your nif. You should start by looking at what the the nif is (blocks), how it is structured (tree), they are connected (links & children). See what the blocks correspond to, (NiNode -> object), (NiTriShape -> mesh_object), (NiTriShapeData -> mesh_data), lighting shaders, collisions blocks, etc. see what the attributes do, i.e change material property for gloss, see where the textures are stored.

Its actually concept art from Bioshock. You can copy full roots between nifs and parts of. Good luck with that as generally unless people are interested in doing it you will be hard pressed to find someone to do it for you rather than doing their own thing. Though there are a few kind souls who take pity. You are probably better off learning for yourself as that way you can have your vision, not someone else' interpretation of it. IN which case using a 3ds modelling app is the way to go, be Blender, 3ds max or maya.

Ah I see what you mean by "they yanked down the link". Actually it wasn't us who pulled the plug. Github, the code hosting platform we use, dropped that service. They have since re-invented the service and are now offering it again but that is only recent change. We have been hosting the builds ourselves. If you want the latest version for testing you should read the Blender Nif Plug-in Developer forum for more details.- http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=13 The link is available there and encourages you to read through the various sections. If you have any other questions please ask.

See the section that say "Recommended Downloads - Blender 2.49", you should follow that section.

Don't export as .obj that will lose all the weight data, 3ds should be fine. Ensure that you haven't offset the root bone with a transform.

Recommended versions - niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender. Generally people use newer versions for modelling and the recommended version for import/export.

Looks like there is something else wrong with it. Can't really tell as you only included part of the error. I don't think that it would think that a material branch would be a skinned branch in either case though. If it loads it loads, I would export it directly and see what the differences are. Bear in mind that import -> export doesn't automagically mean a 1:1 correspondence but it should be cleaner.

I am curious by what you mean by "*Pro's shake their heads*" Also generally good idea to state which versions you are using.

If you are on windows then there is a terminal/console window which opens with blender on start up. This is what it means by "check console" If you are on another platform you will need to start blender from a command-line to catch the output.

Its helps if you put in the error. You will be waiting a while if you wait for people to download a mod just to verify this for you.

hmmm? Which link are you referring to? There is a link to the development version on our forum but is not production ready, fpr testing purposes only. As per the directions you should only try it if you have read through the documentation to know what is supported otherwise your wasting both yours and our time.

The reason I ask is that no matter what version of Blender you use to do the modelling you will need to export the data in a format that NifSkope will be able to read. Usually the concern is about ease of use i.e interchange formats export basic model data fine but don't contain nearly the same amount of data as using the official nif exporter. But in-turn the nif exporter is only compatible with Blender 2.49b. Although you haven't explicitly said it, I assume this is the version you are talking about having tried previously. LIke I said previously and alot of people have laughed at me when I say it but you should try to get the simpliest model into NifSkope. Anyone I have thought, I get them to create a basic cube. Get a material on it, get a texture on it, uv-unwrap it and export it for the next stage. If there are terms there that you do not understand then learn Blender first, then worry about getting to the export part. The main reason most people fail is that they try to do too complex a project. You have the right idea about knowing what tools are needed as part of the workflow/pipeline, but at the same time its about learning to use these tools. Learn one thing at a time, or at least enough to get you from step one in the workflow to then next. Sorry if I am not giving more specifics. I think you should have enough to work towards given the link about how to use blender as you are bound to hit some issues with learning to model. If you learn to get through these obstacles then you will have learnt the most important lesson, how to problem solve, this separates the good from the great.

I would first get a working workflow and just get a really basic model ingame, something as simple as a box. I know it sounds simple but getting that far is a good goal to work towards. A lot of modders pick things because they look cool or they perceive them as easy such as tweaking armour. This has several additional requirements that something like modelling a weapon does not require. The optional tools are dependant on how detailed you want to focus on each "sub-area" i.e Gimp -> texturing, Scupting -> detailed models. You actually need things like Sculptri if you are using one of the latest versions of Blender as the sculpting system is on par with it. Either way, sculpting is something that you should think about further down the line as an advanced topic. Like Ghosu said, the basic workflow is Blender for modelling, NifSkope to clean up/prepare the nif -> CK for in-game logic. You will need to decide how to get between Blender and NIfSkope. You have a few options, interchange format or niftools nifscripts for Blender. The first relies on picking a format such as .3ds or .fbx The second is using the 2.49 version of Blender and exporting to a supported format and tweaking it. This option is more robust but has more steps involved. Just out of curiousity, what is the nature of the impairment as that would also have a bearing on what workflow may suit you better as you said you had previous difficulty with blender?

Materials & textures are fine AFAIK. Animation data is definitely lost but not sure abou using legacy mode, think it only goes so far and there will be a point soon where back-comparability may reduced further as Blender moves to 2.7x. In that case you still have the inter-change formats so you should be fine. Another thing to keep an eye out for is additional data that gets imported, e.g StringProperties for collision, is either pull back and forth or replicated on export. Off-hand I am not sure if it is.

You need to use the mirror modifier. Choose whatever axis' you want to mirror across, which which will be mirror through using the object centre. Enable clipping which will join vertices which lie on or near the axis of symmetry.

I have! .....mainly because I introduced most of them. A necessary evil to get things into better shape. Just to clarify, the open source group is called Niftools, NifSkope is the model viewer/editor. Not too sure what you are asking though. If you are talking about using the new Blender Nif Plugin for production work, then no its not recommended. If you want to try out the development version you should but first read the documentation as only a small subset of the features are currently supported. The current version is targeted to 2.62 only and will only work with that version due to BMesh integration comparability issues it will probably not even load with 2.69. There is nothing stopping you using 2.69 for doing all your production work with a good interchange format and using the recommended 2.49 version for import/export only. It is what most people are doing at this stage.

What version of the tools are you using. What cleaning process have you done to the nif prior to import.

You can do all your modelling in 2.6+ and just use 2.49 for import/export only. Normally I would be against using .obj but for what you are doing currently it should be fine as the.obj should have all the data required for doing that work. However I generally recommend .3ds or fbx as this allows storage of information that .obj can't. i.e vertex weights. which you may want to do down the road. Better to start with good habits. Using a good interchange format is better than using the .blend file as there is potential for compatibility issues, mainly due to BMesh and the newer animation system. But 99% of the time it should not be a problem. The other things is some data just might not carry across, so you may need to do touch up work in NifSkope. The main piece of advice is to keep saving copies so that if something goes wrong you will have something to start clean from.

For the latest recommended versions - www.niftools.org/wiki/Blender

You can install multiple versions of Blender if you so please, currently my machine has too many due to having to verify compatibility.

There is nothing stopping you using the latest version of Blender, and only use v2.49 for import/export. This is what most people do as is. Generally you will do your work in the 2.6+ version and export the scene to an interchange format. Avoid .obj as it has limitations, .3ds or fbx have much better support for modern features that you will probably use, animation, vertex weight, etc. As for using zBrush v's Blender, it really depends on what you want to accomplish, whatever about Blender 2.49 ui I hear zbrush is just as unorthodox, but in both cases, once you put in the work, it just clicks. That said ZBrush is more geared toward sculpting whereas Blender has a much broader feature set. In alot of cases many artists use both, but it in the end it all boils down to a workflow which suits you. Back to the original question about skyrim support, either way you are probably going to run into the same amount of workarounds. Just with the blender nifscripts, you would have less work.

Your nif contains blocks which are unsupported by the version of the plugin you are running. i,e any Skryim specific blocks. They have to be removed pre-import and can be put back in post-export.

You can also use the .3ds format to export between a newer version of blender and the older one. It is not advised to use the blend direct between version as there are compatibility issues.

You are trying to import a nif version which is not supported by pyffi, ie a skyrim nif. You will need to follow the tutorials that are linked in order to a:) change the version to f03/NV and b:) need to remove any Skyrim specific blocks as they won't be recognised by that version of the pyffi, not would they be handled by the scripts.