Ragicka

Thanks for the breakdown, especially in regards to bad ads and adblockers. Trust has always been a concern of mine, you guys have earned it but I've always viewed ads as the "achilles' heel". Since you have consistently demonstrated your awareness and grasp of the issues, I have chosen to allow ads. And over the past couple years I am happy to report that I am none the worse for wear. In other words, the benefits out-weigh the risks by a reasonably wide enough margin. If this website has any value to you as a user at all, then allowing ads, while you are here, is the least you can do.

What's your load order? I had this happen after updating USSEP and forgot to move the plugin back up the list.

There's definitely something about the BSSubIndex modifier and how it's handled in Max. Every armor or clothing I work on eventually crashes or errors out at some point. So now I don't even bother with it at all anymore, just import without the skeleton (removes BSSubIndex), delete the skin data (useless at this point) and then let Outfit Studio sort it out when I'm done. This is more of a work-around than an actual solution. Like you, I've had moderate success in getting items into game but I'm not entirely satisfied. Ideally, I'd like to make my edits, adjust the skin data and apply a proper BSSubIndex. But niftools' implementation of this modifier seems incomplete and unstable as far as working with max 2016 is concerned. I hope niftools gets an update, specifically in regards to BSSubIndex. From my understanding, that would require an update to nifskope which, in turn, requires the release of the CK. I could be wrong because I wouldn't even begin to know where in the CK you would find that information but that's all I know at this point. At any rate, I'm glad you brought this up because it's something I've been pondering for a while. Hopefully others will chime in and maybe we can put out heads together and figure it out.

I wrote a walk-through a few years ago to convert skyrim animations to kf. It seems to have helped at least one person, and it's the method I use to get animations for weightpainting in max. You can find it here.

I wouldn't mind seeing more clothing mods from a dude called brokefoot. :smile: I'm a big fan of mashable, multi-slot items and a wide variety of choices is always a good thing. I don't know if this fits the criteria of "wanting to see more of" (because I looked and couldn't find any), but I'd like to see some camping mods. They can be simple or fancy, all I need is a placeable bedroll and an optional campfire. I'm sure a mod like this will hit top 10 in no time, especially when the new Survival mode goes live.

Could it be this one? \Meshes\Armor\RaiderHeavy\MUnderArmor.nif They hid that one pretty good. :yes: There's rarely any correlation between game and actual file names, quite often it's just a matter of extracting all the armor/ clothing files and then browsing with nifskope.

Holy smokes! That does work, not sure why it works but it does. Here I am, overthinking things and making it harder than it needs to be. Just snippy-snip and Bob's yer uncle. I was expecting, at the very least, a re-do of the BS SubIndex Modifier and nifskope edits but everything actually looks ok. One thing I have noticed is that nifskope shows the new model above the grid while showing vanilla models below the grid. Is there a trick to reconciling them to copy/paste branch trishapes? Or is it just me? I just went straight from max to game, haven't tried passing it through OS yet. Don't give up, just take a breather. Here are my max import/export settings if you want to compare. For export, be sure to edit Weld Vertices: to 0.0

Just a quick follow-up: Received the new card today (GTX 960 FTW). Adjusted video and enb settings to reflect the new card and Skyrim runs smooth as silk. Did a 30 min runabout which included bandits and a dragon attack on Riverwood. Using official high res textures and Realistic Water 2, Realistic Lighting and Realvision ENB (SSAO, DoF off). GPUZ recorded Max mem usage of 1968MB, Max temp 70 C. FPS stayed mostly around 60 (vsynch on) with rare and barely noticable drops to 50. All in all, a dramatic improvement over my old 560 and a good fit for skyrim. Thanks again. :thumbsup:

You're right, I get my bits mixed up sometimes. I only mentioned it because I was comparing the 960 to my old 560 which has a 256bit bus. I was concerned that it was a step backwards but further research seems to indicate that it shouldn't be a problem due to current compression tricks. I'm satisfied that the 960 will still out perform the 560 in that regard. We could probably go on for days about the pros and cons of the whole 970 drama but I have to make a decision. From my own research of reviews and YT commentary etc, my personal opinion is that the 970 is still a good deal as long as you know what you're getting into. Someone technically savvy enough to monitor their vram usage, among other things, should do well with this card. Unfortunately, most consumers aren't and would be well advised to look elsewhere. So today I made an executive decision and ordered this one. My old 560 was performing admirably despite it's age and 2GB vram, even with the hi-res texture packs and tweaked ENB. Other factors like heat management and power draw were also considered. When it comes down to the crunch, I have to consider price and performance. With taxes and delivery, I'm paying less than $400 CAD which is workable, barely. As long as I don't get a dud, I'm sure this 960 will do everything I need it to do and most, if not all, of what I want it to do for the next couple years at least. You made that recommendation already, I just needed to work it over and sleep on it a few times. I appreciate your input, it really helps to have someone to discuss things like this. Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes. :thumbsup:

Wow, I knew you could exceed 2GB but didn't know you can hit the wall at 4. Was watching a YT video where a guy ran Skyrim on ultra with the official high res texture pack (2k, I believe) and maxed at 1.4GB. And that was without additional mods. So 4k textures, and whatever else gets tossed in there can fill vram pretty quick. Good to know, thanks. Geek humor, I still chuckle. :smile: How do you like your 290, good deal?

I'm starting to warm up to the 960s. One of my biggest concerns was the 128bit rate but with the higher clock speed and memory compression, it should be quicker than my 560 at 256bit unless I'm mistaken. I have a 24" LCD synchmaster at 1920x1200 and perfectly happy with that so that's another check in favour of the 960. Found some 4GB versions. This one in particular is a contender. Still need to check a few more sites. Now I need to determine if the 960 4GB is actually 4 and not 3.5+0.5 like the 970s. So far, an EVGA forum mod and a review state that it is a contiguous 4GB at the same speed. Nothing definitive, still looking for confirmation. My understanding of the whole 970 debacle is that: -A. The nvidia marketing dept posted the wrong specs and it took 4 months for the truth to come out. -B. 3.5GB at 224bits and a separate cache of 0.5MB at 32bits. Any app or game that caches over 3.5GB will hit that bottleneck and lag heavily. Easy to do at 4k res I imagine. If there's a way to disable the slower .5MB cache or limit the app to only 3.5GB vram, then the 970 would be a winner. Which only leads me to more questions: How much vram is really needed? Can a heavily modded skyrim with hi-res textures exceed 3.5GB at 1920x1200?

Quite right about FO4. I'm expecting it to use a beefier version of the Skyrim engine but that's based on speculation. My 560 handled Skyrim well enough on high settings with intermittent micro stutters but still playable. It also handled Max rather well for editing skyrim files but it's not a money maker, at least not yet. It's just that I use it a lot so my rig gets a daily work out with everything I throw at it. I had to replace the psu last year and opted for something with plenty of head room, that pretty much illustrates the way I approach hardware upgrades. Since FO4 is around the corner, so to speak, I need to guesstimate its demands the best I can before I commit to a purchase but I'm probably over-thinking this. I think it's reasonable to assume that the current line-up of mid to high range cards should be able to handle it. I like the 980's but can't justify the expense. I was thinking that even a 760/780 would be a significant step-up but the prices of those I do find give me no incentive. I haven't looked closely at the radeons, more inclined towards nvidia, but I'll consider them. Re: the 970 memory issue. I was aware of the vram discrepancy (3.5GB compared to the advertised 4GB) and was ok with that since it seems to be a popular card and the reviews I've read from several forums gave me the impression that it wasn't that big a deal otherwise. I wasn't aware of the stuttering problem you mentioned and that's the kind of thing I want to avoid. Do you know if it affects all the current versions? Any signs from nvidia to correct this? I appreciate your prompt advice and I'm a little less panicked today about the whole thing. :smile:

It's a EVGA GT 560 ti that has served me well until a few days ago when it kept giving me BSODs. I updated the driver, cleaned out the case and reseated the card. Now it shows artifacts on screen and the driver won't recognize it, so now I'm using the on-board gpu. Specs are: Asus P8Z68-V Pro mb Intel i5 2500 8GB Corsair 500GB WD SATA HDD 850W Thermaltake psu Win 7 Pro 64bit It looks like I'm in the market for a new video card a lot sooner than I expected. I'm thinking of going for a GT 970. It uses PCI 3, my board is PCI 2 and according to research that shouldn't be a problem. However, I wonder if my board and cpu together will be enough of a bottleneck that I'll be throwing money away. Should I consider a 960 instead? I like the prices but they're only 2GB vram at 128bit compared to ~4GB and 256bit. Whatever card I get, I expect it to last a few years. I mainly play Skyrim, War Thunder and I'll need it to run FO 4 and TES6 when they come out. I've also been doing a lot of work on 3DS Max, so it needs to work hard and play hard. Thanks for your time.

That was just a quick 'n dirty edit. I'll see about getting a proper male/female version in a few weeks or so. I will let you know.

I agree, it's a low poly mesh and can't curve around the fingers properly when they curl. The vertices at the tip of the mitt are being stretched too far. I started by moving those vertices at the tip of the mitt to even them out overtop the four fingers and pushed them up a little bit away from the bones at the fingertips and reskinned, but those vertices still stretched and clipped. These are the finger bones starting from the right hand out to the finger tips: Index: RF10, RF11, RF12 (tip) Middle: RF20, RF21, RF22 (tip) Ring: RF30, RF31, RF32 (tip) Pinky: RF40, RF41, RF42 (tip) Since it's a low poly mesh and just a handful of vertices near each finger, I used Abs.Effect to modify the bone weighting. Removed the weightings from the tip bones and reduced the weighting on the mid knuckle bones. So that now those vertices are being affected mostly by the knuckle bones closest to the hand (RF10, RF20, RF30 and RF40). Depending on the location, some of those vertices are shared between the index and middle finger, middle finger and ring finger etc. After fussing with it about 20 minutes or so, this is how it looks so far. A little better but could probably use some more tweaking. This is just one method, there's many ways to skin a mesh. Maybe move the vertices some more and skin to a glove instead of the hands. Or msmooth some the vertices of the mitt and reskin, it might take a bit more playing around with it to see what works best.