neomonkeus

Search for the SoMuchMorpher tool developed by SoMuchMonsters. This allows creation of the morphed variant. The reason you are probably getting the errors is that the vertex ordering or count has been increased possibly through your modifier stack.

As general advice, when referring to programs for help, please state which version you are working. NifUtils has been accepted into the Niftools banner. Here is current tutorial for the latest stable version - http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Skyrim/Adding_Collision_Mesh_using_ChunkMerge The Blender-to-Skyrim Tutorial on TESA has a section about NifUtils - http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/5541-3d-craftworks-from-blender-to-skyrim/?p=83874 Again without know which version you are using, somewhat limited in being able to help. There is also a version in beta, renamed to NifUtilSuite as it will contain various tools, model viewer, etc. - http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4128 The tutorial on the niftools wiki will be updated soon to reflect the changes introduced in this new version.

You should check out the TES Alliance, they have a large section on voice acting, tutorials, projects, requests to get people into it right away. Check it out here - http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/forum/74-voice-actors-project/

I tend to agree with the lady on this one, though that could be from all the cookies she giefs meh. Being a native speaker, you still seem to be going on random tangents. Well the transition between to Skyrim from previous versions has not been easy as it has been for its predecessors. It is along the lines of transition from Morrowind to Oblivion. Although the format only changed in a few areas, these were both large scale and have a large impact on how things work. The problem is that people expect this to be much more like the OB -> Fo3 -> F:NV transitions where the changes were much more incremental. a lot of newer modder did not endure the 3 year transition required to develop during the MW -> Ob transition. I am still amazed at some of the stuff they came up with, like decoding mopp code and developing their own algorithm used by oblivion collisions. That alone took a year of experimentation. Well can't say much about the CK nothing to do with us "NIftools" but not really sure where you are going with the NifSkope comment. It has all the same functionality as it had before, more so with Skyrim support and various bug fixes. We are aware of the .obj import problem and will explain that in the next paragraph. Other than that you haven't really given any specifics. Well you seem to know the limitations of using .obj, however few people do. The problem we have is not with the format itself, but rather its mis-use/misunderstood usage. Several topics are always opened by users who assume there is a problem with one of the tools, wherein fact the .obj format does not support the necessary features. You seem to have figured out a good workflow and I commend you as such. We are aware of the problem with the current version of NifSkope with regard .obj import support. A discrepancy in .obj file produced by other tools allows .obj support for one version but broken the other. Unfortunately there is no active developer for NifSkope at the moment. Even when this is fixed, it still does not solve the root problem and I will aim to push better support for .3ds which would allow phased deprecation of .obj support. Although we aim to increase awareness about .obj usage, by the time most users reach us its usually too late. We accept that we have a large part still to play in educating people in areas by providing resources/documations etc. We are pro-actively tackling this; but things take time which for our small team is severely limited. Hopefully a visible presence in the wider community affirms that commitment :wink: Oblivion had a terribly rigid texture system. The engine has moved to more shader based system. It is a more modern and flexible approach. I presume you are referring to a parallax map which used the diffuse map alpha + the normal map, it wasn't a proper implementation and had poor performance. Things like the "ice shader" which has multi-refractive index layers allow for some cool glacial objects. Could it be more user friendly, probably, but we are exposed to the information, not the systems that made them. Hopefully we can build tools that make it easier for users to (re)create such effects, but that needs time and people, which is not an easy task either. Well i would suggest checking out www.tesalliance.org as this is a great community and have a lot of tutorial resources. More importantly they are kept up to date. Most users there use Blender, though 3ds Max also gets attention. As Tam already said, your other option is to use the NifSkope version linked. A number of tools in the pipeline, but unfortunately time, patience and cookies are needed; this monkey can only do so much, should never have let the minions join that union. If there is anything I missed or you want more information just shout.

Could you specify which versions you are using. Are you exporting as .obj or nif. I would generally avoid using .obj.

What are these properties you mentioned you are using.

Yes, no problem. Just remember it is a development build, pre-alpha. Read the documentation before playing with it. If you need help just give us a shout unless your using feature which are yet to be supported.

This is something that I miss with modding these days, the expectation that there is always a right answer available if I google enough rather than getting stuck in. I miss the modders curiosity to question everything. I will be following this intently as it is invaluable information for me, as I currently working on the texture code. What would be interesting is any specific settings for things to work like you mentioned above with emissive colour. Another example I am thinking of atm is parallax mapping. The opening sequence for instance instance had them and from the code APPLY_HILIGHT2 needs to be enabled. Any of these sort of things that you find would be great to know, as specific setting for each game is invaluable. Also seeing as you are familiar with Morrowind map types, it would be great to pick your brains on some additional stuff. Do you think it would be beneficial to add a rules system that would add the values to the textureslot, even though they are not used, more as a hint to the user, or would that cause additional confusion.

The links provided on the wiki page, you have to install each of them. The listed order of the links is also the install order.

Sorry about that, nexus seems to have made junk of the link. I fixed it so that should help.

Oblivion has a convoluted system where it checks the name. So given a base diffuse texture texture.dds it would assume there is a file texture_n.dds as a normal map is a requirement. It will then search for any additional suffux'd textures i.e _g, etc. assuming that they have been enabled in the NiTexturingproperty. On the Blender side of things, when a file is exported the only requirement is that the diffuse texture path is added to the list. This also makes it harder to detect on import any files which have not added any additional texture paths directly.

For the latest recommended install see - niftools.org/wiki/blender

We have always aimed for rolling support, ie. adding features one at a time. Its just that it has taken a lot of time to take of the things that don't appear to do much but allow things to get rolling much quicker when they do. a lot of work goes in and there doesn't seem to be anything happening, then when those few things come together lots of things come along at once. That said I would not like to estimate a timeframe for anything :wink: For the latest news remember to check out the niftools forums blender development section.

Just to let you know that the broken link has been fixed to point to a new development build. Fixes for some major crashes relating to collisions, though a few known issues are still on-going. In other news, parallel development is now underway by our other Blender Nif Plug-in developer Ghostwaker71, starting into some features for the next milestone. To keep things on topic, he has made a lot of progress on getting armature & skinned meshes importing and will be working on exporting soon. Very promising. Once the last few features for the current milestone are completed we will also prioritize getting BMesh integration running, so we can run on 2.63+ versions.

Yeah I am aware of the broken links, its is only temporary. I am currently making a new dev build as there was a large issue with the collision export, which seems to have crept in, which we are still tracking down. Nasty little bugger. Its actually my dropbox and its also getting some rearrangement, which is why the link itself is broken. Once the new build is ready a new link will be made available. Also I am a clone. It has become a lot easier to do with the advent of 3d printers. :wink:

Eh actually I was on about the blender nifscripts and their general state when I started into the project..... the above is unlikely to happen for lots of reasons. I doubt they are clueless but they run are a buisness and exposing stuff like that involves alot of risk.

Eh slight misquote there, its pre-alpha, large difference though. Same goes for suggesting to use the .obj format, that will cause lots of problems for people who do not know the limitations.

bhkcompressedMeshShapeData is the Skyrim specific collision type, which the nifscripts 2.5.9 does not know about. Ususally the last line of the error gives you the information you are looking for. Remove this and see how things go.

What you need to do is remove any Skyrim specific information so that you can import it as if it was a different version. People usually change this to be F03 or F:NV version numbers. The first things you need to do is alter the header block, this is where the version information is stored. Userversion -> 11 userversion 2 -> 34 The next thing is remove Skyrim specific blocks, i.e lighting shaders as you said above. Depending on what you are importing then you might need to do additional step.

Well there was alot of functionality in the scripts, animation, materials, texturing, rigging, collisions etc. Some got broken along the line, lack of documentation, limitiations with blender scripting etc, the usual software project problems. From that standpoint the work I am doing at the moment is not about simply porting to blender 2.5+ and tacking on skyrim support but overhauling the entire project, an arduous task to say the least. Well the exported nif will have the same transformations as it has in the blender scene, relative to the origin (0,0,0)

The only thing is that the animation system is not forward compatible. You might still have to do some specific stuff, like setting up collisions in 2.49 but for general "stuff" like modelling, rigging etc. you should be fine. Usual disclaimer :P

You can open your scene in Blender 2.49 so only really need to use it when you are ready to export/import. You can use Blender 2.5+ if that is what you find more comfortable. Also avoid .obj like the plague if you do not know its limitations.

Here is the official recommended versions to use - http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/blender The download are direct links. The list also is the order in which they should be installed. Let us know after the reinstall if things are still not working.

My sig contains the links you are looking for. The "latest news" link, links to the blender development sub-forum with several stickied topics including a Roadmap. It is well worth a read of the General FAQ to get a good overview of how the plugin works, how its been converted to run with Blender 2.6+ and also development process. As for beta stage, unfortunately we are a long way off, we are currently working towards pre-alpha 3. Finding time to devote to development is unfortunately very difficult. That said we are making lots of progress at the moment. Dev builds for pre-alpha 2 are available with basic support, but if you can't take the time to read documentation we won't take the to respond to any posts about it. Oh, and it is really easy for us to spot those who obviously haven't read the documentation. Usually trying to import unsupported features.

It does not officially support Skyrim, there is no official version that does. However there are various tutorials out there that have a workaround that involves removing all the Skyrim specific information/blocks which will allow import, then adding them back on export to work with Skyrim. Think its time you go improve your Google-fu again.