Braggi

OK, bit of an update. Looks like its something in the overhead wires connecting our home to the ISP. Requires a tech to fix and they can't get one out here until sometime Thursday afternoon. (Mumble grumble... just when things were getting really fun too!) Anyways, looks like Internet access will be unreliable for us until then. Apologies and thanks for being patient.

Wow... Murphy really loves me. :P Sorry 'bout that. I'll try to sneak this reply through the next time the internet comes back. I got the notification of your reply, read you suggestion, managed to get the images uploaded to my image section on Nexus (thank you for the link pointing it out - never used that feature on the site before)... and then my IP lost connectivity. So, my internet is going up and down like a teeter totter right now, driving both my wife and I bonkers. (She's working from home today.) Nonetheless, you should now be able to see the images as part of my Nexus profile. (The very first one I posted is the one I linked to at the thread's beginning, with the steps to the final nif included.) If I can't reply after this, please be patient. We need to get this networking issue sorted out.

Thank you again. I managed to get the capsule shape scaled by following your instructions. Here's a link to how the collision looks now: https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMfr8_6bBPLg15JRZcurxZ9G2wQ0Q4k2sud4klk This is pretty much exactly what I wanted. I'm going to go get the rest of the sickle types skinned now and then see if I can populate some necromancer inventories with them. :smile: Your help is deeply appreciated! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: Oh, and as a P.S.: Was the utility from 2004 you mentioned called "Nif Skinner"? I went through my archived Morrowind nif utilities and found the following: NIF skinner, NIF Texture and NIF Tx strip.

@Pellape Yes, yes, I say again. YES! It worked. :dance: (Years of frustration just evaporated, right there. :smile: ) I was even able to adjust the box part of the collision so it overlapped the blade properly. (The new Nifskope is very cool indeed! Way easier to understand and use then my older clunkier version.) As it stands, I can use the model and that is a win. I do have one last question though: is it possible to adjust the size/scale of a collision capsule? (The capsule sticks out almost twice the length of the sickle's hilt.) If not, no worries - I'm plenty happy with the results. Either way, thank you for your guidance on this. I have wanted to solve this problem for literally years. I'll wait for your reply. Once I know about the capsule, I can get to re-skinning the model with the textures for all the other metals beyond ebony.

OK, ran into my first snag using the transplant method. I'm using an outdated version of Nifskope, to start with! (Doh!) Been using 1.13 Rev36 forever because I kept getting crashes on my old computer system whenever I enabled "Display Nodes" in the Render Properties after upgrading. Time to trade up. :smile: This also explains why I couldn't find some of the icons you mentioned in your initial instructions. Thank you for posting the screen shots of your work in Nifskope... showed the version number, among other things. So, let me get the latest version set up and running and then I'll try this again. (Five minutes later) Also found a useful video on setting up and configuring a new install of Nifskope by GamerPoets here: (Just in case anyone else is coming in from the stone age of modding like I am.) :tongue: Also, I managed to get the sickle model into a war axe collision by following your instructions. Here's a .jpg of the view in Blender (now that I've updated it): https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipP_6GrCL9eDIajCjksJ5OJs5ydynbENcEshNkmu Also, does anyone have an image host they can recommend that the board here is OK with? As mentioned, I'm coming from about ten years behind the times, so I need to do some catching up. Anyways, I'm off to test the nif in-game. Assuming to works as planned, I'd like to learn a bit about how to adjust the collision mesh, which you mentioned doing a bit earlier. Thank you for all the help so far. Looking forward to more of your replies. :thumbsup:

@ Pellape (aka Pekka) OK, I'm back from the walk. Before I dig into the intricacies of the nif information you gave me, I just wanted to say that I remember you now. I have a couple of your older mods (Spells for Companions and Halls of the Phoenix) from back in the day. Love the companion spells - yours was the first mod that let people add them "on the fly", so to speak. Big step up from assigning them in the CS or having a random spell levelled list. A similar function was included in Toaster Says Share.. was that influenced by or an evolution of your work? It turns out you and I also go way back with ES games too. My first was Arena where I was given a save slot on an install of the game shared between three friends on a Pentium 90 computer all the way back in the summer of 1995. Graduated to Daggerfall in 1997 and never looked back. Like yourself, I also play a modded Daggerfall Unity to this day. (Favourite mod for it? Ariships - I love the panoramic view of High Rock from the deck as you sail along. Saves a massive amount of in-game travel time too.) In fact, I have working installs of TES 1-4 that I rotate between from time to time. Still have all my original floppy disks (for Arena) and the CDs/DVDs for Arena and all of the rest of the games. Now, let's get into what you have posted. First off, I had heard of the technique for transplanting from one nif to another and always wanted to try it, but the version I saw (about 12 years back, no less) was poorly explained. Your version is much clearer, so I am going to archive it for reference give it a whirl tomorrow when I have some free time. Because sickles are an odd shape to begin with, I think the closest I can come is a one-handed axe of some kind. They have a similar silhouette and profile when drawn or sheathed. (I am absolutely open to alternate suggestions if you have any.) Also, when I try doing the mesh transplant, may I ask your assistance/advice if I run into any snags? As far as Blender goes, I have used it to modify and export statics before. (I did that sort of thing when I was part of the Beyond Cyrodiil: High Rock project between 2007 and 2009.) However, I never got as far as weapon exporting. If I have to go that route, I might need some pointers to get things right. As far as getting Oblivion nifs into blender, I'm pretty certain I used a one-off conversion program to go from nif to obj format. This would, of course, nuke all the havoc data but you just created new havoc meshes on export to nif anyways. Now, I am very rusty with Blender today - my version of it and the nifscripts for it is ancient. My archived Blender version is 2.4.9b and the nifscripts version is 2.5.4. Any advice you can give me regarding the newer versions out there? I need to regain some of my Blender-fu and this seems a good place to start. Let's see... what else here.. Oh, right! WAC and MOO. I have both but prefer MOO for its clarity (and the harpies). Also, WAC (iirc) disallows permission to use assets outside the mod, so I respect that and leave it be. There is some great stuff in there though... like the sabre toothed tiger. Would have killed a zillion Daedra to get permission to use that one for the High Rock project, if it had been available back then - we wanted to recreate the entire Daggerfall bestiary. (I have a personal project, just for fun and not for release, where I've done that with both Arena and DF... but there are two critters missing. The above-mentioned tiger and the wereboar. Got models, sounds and so forth for everything else.) OK, I think that covers everything so far...? Thank you again for the help and the warm welcome. I don't mind that the community is smaller here today - feels a bit more homey to me. Also, feel free to look over the nif I posted and let me know if any glaring errors jump out at you from the view in Nifskope, if you like. I'm always open to constructive criticism. :D

@Pellape Quick reply: Regarding your display room - you must be an absolute saint in the patience department. :smile: I watched your video with mingled frustration and laughter from all the memories of times I've tried to finesse something over the years only to have it go wonky when least expected. (All those clanging and clunking weapons, just when you thought they were settled into place... I'd have torn my hair out in frustration, one strand at a time!) Kudos to you for the determination. I have a longer reply in the works, but am heading out of the house for the afternoon. (Wife and I are going on a park walk and then for ice cream - let me know your favourite flavor. I'll send it by Gold Horse Courier (Aedra approved TM.)) :thumbsup:

OK, first off to Drake the Dragon: Thanks for the heads up on files and filesharing. (Things certainly have changed.) I'll try using my Google Drive folder space to host the nif. Fortunately, it does seem to have a collision mesh - simple box type - with MO_QUAL_BOX as its motion system and MO_QUAL_DEBRIS as its quality type. So, first off here is the original sickle nif file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OaPdvoaIXYmfm_pzNvL1Ld4CjHxBPuwK/view?usp=sharing Next, let's see if I can noodle out how to get an image hosted on GD to show up here. (ten minutes later) OK, no such luck. It keeps saying I am "not allowed to use this image extension on this community." I tried picture files in both .png and .jpg format. Same message both attempts. Rather then wasting more time chasing around that particular mulberry bush, I'll just post a dl link to GD instead. https://drive.google.com/file/d/18fp9y4FfyZwCxveGitnxe03WcBveBhvZ/view?usp=sharing (With that done, anyone who wants to can open the mesh in Nifskope and/or download the image file to see what is going on.) Next to Pellape: Your post has a lot of really useful info in it. Thank you. I'll reply to it in depth once I have read everything and followed the links you have posted.

First off, just let me offer some thanks to all of you for your help. I left the community about ten years back (no fanfare or anything, just stopped posting to the forums) very quietly because I saw people becoming really rude & unhelpful to each other. (At the risk of dating myself, I go all the way back to the pre-Nexus TESSource days for Oblivion and Morrowind.) It is really gratifying to see the old "help-each-other-out" spirit has returned. Again, thank you. :dance: Now with that said, I'm going to thoroughly read what has been posted before I reply. Want to make sure I don't miss anything. Just wanted to let you know your replies are seen and appreciated.

Been modding Oblivion since around 2007 and I can confirm what everyone else here is saying - you don't need to specify a normal map in Nifskope, just the basic texture itself. Have the normal map in the same directory as the texture and the Oblivion engine will load it automatically. I know that other later versions of the engine (New Vegas is one example, I believe) allow you to specify normal maps in the nif's model path. However, Oblivion is older then that convention. Texture naming conventions for Oblivion: Basic texture for the nif: mytexture.dds Nomral map for the texture: mytexture_n.dds Hope some of that helps. Cheers!

I'm currently working on getting a ton of new weapons into my Oblivion play install. Scimitars, war staves, broadswords, scythes and so on. Most of these are from pre-existing modder's resources from here on Nexus. However, there is one I have a problem with: Sickles. A few years back I found a version of the vanilla OB sickle here that someone had gotten working as a side-sheathing weapon in Oblivion. Worked great as a weapon when the player or an NPC used it. The problem came in when you dropped it from inventory. The item would just stay stuck in the air where it appeared, similar to a static. No dropping, bouncing or anything else. The author mentioned this in his mod readme, so I went in well-warned. I monkeyed around with it in Nifskope and finally got the physics engine in the game to act on the object. However, I'm not certain just how I did it and I must have done something wrong - when dropped indoors, the weapon falls through floors and vanishes into the void. When dropped outdoors, the weapon falls though statics but stops when it hits the ground plane. (All my other weapons. vanilla or modded, work as expected, as a point of clarity.) So, what can I do to get this thing behaving like a proper weapon when dropped in-game? (No point in adding it to levelled lists on NPC's since they will just fall though the dungeon floors when dropped in combat... and I would love to go up against some necromancers armed with these things.) I know very little of how to finesse the physics in Nifskope. Hit some tutorials for it but they are way out of date. If anyone with more experience/expertise is interested, I tried to attach the weapon model to this post, minus textures although the paths are intact, but the forum won't permit it. (Might be my post count or some such?) The file is tiny - only about 48 kb in size. Hope that's enough to go on, and thanks to anyone who replies in advance. I've got in-game stats, textures and inventory icons corresponding to all the major in-game metals (including mithral and orcish) already set up. I just need sickle models that behave correctly.