Vannus

What version of Max and the plugin are you using? Are you/have you tried installing it manually with the 7z archive link? What are the steps you are taking to install it? We really need more to go on than just "dont' [sic] install correctly"... There is definitely nothing wrong with the plugin itself, considering none of us have had any issues but you so far.

This is excellent! Lots of options to explore now. I definitely like the sound of option 5; I'm going to have to look into that! Thank you :)

I tried using the Conform Compound Object and had a bit of success with that. I basically applied it to the _1 mesh to conform it to the smaller _0 mesh. It did work mostly, but some vertices went crazy. You might want to look into that and see if it can speed up your work flow at all. I think, if I remember rightly, that I still found it too tedious, but it may work better in certain situations. Certainly worth trying, anyway.

I'd recommend not doing any edits to the actual Edit Mesh modifier at the bottom of the stack. For one, it's Edit Mesh, and that's not as good as Edit Poly, so I always recommend adding Edit Poly modifiers if you're wanting to change anything. Keep them under the Skin modifier. And two, it's destructive editing, so it's best to add on top (like adding layers to a Photoshop file so your changes/additions are non-destructive). I'd love to know more about these methods, as it was the main issue I was facing when I was trying to have a go at it. I just found it too time consuming to resize the mesh to the other weight scale. I even tried the compound object Conform, which sort of worked to a point, but bits weren't working well at all, and it was just as tedious as not using it at all. (I'm talking about the entire body mesh, not just armour, if you're wondering why I'm saying it's too tedious to do! Maybe I'm just too lazy, as others clearly have managed it.) I had originally made my edits twice—one to each mesh—but wasn't aware of the morph importance at the time (I forgot it was actually a morph and not just a swap!). It was unfortunate because while I kept the exact same vertex count, the order was totally messed up, and I couldn't get it to match. I was hoping Morphix was going to help me there, but it doesn't seem to work with 2012 :(

If I haven't missed anything, then sure, you should be able to do anything to it! But as you've modified the vertices themselves—and therefore the vertex order—you'll need to use that same mesh and resize it for the other weight morph once you're done. Sorry if I missed anything, though, and my help was pointless, lol; there have been a lot of posts I've been trying to follow ;)

Not sure 100%, but I'd assume so, yes. It should be fine. If not, I've had no issue leaving loads of Edit Poly modifiers in the stack upon export.

That's just the directory the mods are downloaded to, not installed. Think of it as a folder that they're stored (compressed) for the purposes of mod managing, where they can be disabled and re-enabled again. Edit: It also uses the directory for storing other data about the current state of mods, including files overwritten by enabling mods that may have already been in your data folder originally (if you manually installed any).

If you're only concerned about automatic updates, just go to your Library and right click Skyrim > Properties > Updates > Automatic Updates: Do not automatically update this game. I personally love Steam and use it for many games other than Skyrim. I can understand people's dislike if their first game using Steam was Skyrim and they purchased it retail, but I can assure you it's an amazing platform if you have friends using it as well.

Thanks! Always appreciate any Kudos. Also, a big thanks goes to Ghogiel for continually providing such helpful comments for everyone. Not sure what you're trying to accomplish here. The whole reason for my tutorial was to explain what you need to do in addition to this to make it work. As for your morph questions, I'll quote an earlier post I made in this thread: So, you must first make/edit your mesh for one body weight, then once you're no longer going to add or remove vertices you then use that same mesh and resize it to the other body weight scale. It's a tedious business, and the main reason I haven't done any body meshing myself yet!

Yeah, certainly I could, but that's extremely tedious to do for all the body's vertices each time I want to change the mesh. I haven't been able to find an alternative script, no :( I really hope there is one out there if someone knows of it! It seems, oddly, re-ordering vertices for morphs isn't a very common thing that's needed. I'm not sure of the typical way of easily doing morphs, then. Did you find out if this was the issue or not for you?

Right, to my knowledge, there are two skeleton nif files that are most important: skeleton.nif (male) and skeleton_female.nif (female). They are both located in the meshes BSA, with the male under "meshes\actors\character\character assets\skeleton.nif", and the female under "meshes\actors\character\character assets female\skeleton_female.nif". Depending upon whether your mesh is for male or female or not, you'll need the appropriate skeleton nif file in the same directory as the model you're importing. As my tutorial originally said, it should give you an error stating which skeleton is missing; does yours not? Lol, did I miss what this was in reply to?

By screwed, I'm expecting you mean the vertices are all over the place? I bet it's probably to do with morphs. Have you checked at the lowest and highest ranges of body weight? Try a new character and set the weight to lowest, does it look right? Then move it, does it break? Then at highest, does it look right again? If so, it's down to morphs. The problem is, each mesh (for armour or bodies, anyway) have two files: a x_0 and a x_1. The x_0 is the smallest size on the body weight scale (skinny/slim), and x_1 is the highest (muscular). In order for Skyrim to morph between these for values other than the min and max, the models must match exactly in terms of vertex count and order. This is where everything (at least for me) is tricky. One cannot just expect to make modifications to one of them, and then try and replicate those modifications to the other. Everything must be done from the mesh with the same vertices. So, if you're changing the actual vertices of a mesh, you'll then have to use that same mesh for changing it to the different size, without adding or deleting vertices—doing so will break the morphs. This, for me, is why I haven't made my own body yet. I don't know of a convenient way of resizing or even re-ordering the vertices. There's Morphix, but unfortunately it's old and hasn't been updated, and I cannot get it to work with 2012. It's a real shame because I bet that would have been ideal, otherwise. I've even tried using the Conform compound object, but what with riskily having to weld all the unwelded seams in the body, it's not ideal, and the results were never perfect enough to use—the odd stray vertex would be totally in the wrong place, and it was too tedious to fix it all. I'd love to know thegal's method of doing this, though I'm not sure he uses 3ds Max anyway, but it would still be interesting. I'm not patient enough to resize the body manually, which would be a big job if you wanted to then make changes to the mesh again at a future date! Which I definitely would ;) Maybe I should look into it again, but it's just such a time consuming process and I'm always phobic towards releasing anything I make, haha! I should change that habit and release something for once, really.

I think Ghogiel is referring to my thread (thanks :)), which you probably wouldn't have noticed as it's aimed at 3ds Max, but the general concept, after export, is the same. I'd advise reading all the comments, though, as there's a lot of relevant info in there beyond my tutorial.

Of course not. You can never use the SDK of a different engine to edit a game using another. Hell, in most cases it's unlikely you could even use an engine's SDK to edit a game that uses the right engine, as each game would probably have its own take/version specific to its needs. Skyrim itself wouldn't just use a generic SDK, Bethesda have created their own, which is why we're waiting eagerly for the Creation Kit. It's all about formats. Skyrim uses formats that are relevant to Gamebryo/Creation, while CryEngine has its own formats; just like Unreal, Source, etc. all would have their own formats too. Whether that is just meshes (NIF in Gamebryo's case), or game content like levels, interfaces, mechanics, etc. Even down to the graphics engine, like shaders, and physics. It's all different.

Yeah, the important thing is that the weights remain correct. It won't matter how the bones are aligned unless, like Ghogiel said, you're animating. You may need to twiddle with the Skin modifier a bit after some extensive editing, as I've found the weights sometimes totally mess up. It was quite a shock when I found this problem in the game, haha; vertices were all over the place. I found that rearranging the order of the Skin modifier in the stack fixed the problem after twiddling—I had been using Edit Poly modifiers to non-destructively make my edits, and the order they're in with the Skin can affect the weights. Also, it looks like the BSDismemberSkin modifier in MaxTools hasn't been updated for Skyrim either, as the Body Part (for my mesh anyway) were just numbers: 20 (body), 26 (shins), 22 (forearms). Remember to reassign these areas if you're adding new bits to the mesh! The 'Sel Unused' button can be a real help for assigning unassigned sections. Do not select anything in the Body Part drop-down, as I think this may break the assignments; I'm not certain, though.