baduk

Hi! Make sure that your nif is like a clothing, skined properly to the creatres skeleton and has the right shaders and stuff. And then you can just put it into the folder in your data folder that the creature is in. look in bsa browser of fomm to find what the folder needs to be called. Simple as that :D

Hi! Try flipping the normals of those faces. I dont know max but you probably can turn on a cactus view thing to show what direction normals are facing.

Hi! You can have 2 different types of headgear depending on what you need. One type is simply parented to bip01 head and has an egm file with it. this is the kind that you can have the shoulder issue on where the facegen usage flag is not checked. The other kind has the skin data like the regular clothings. It wont deform depending on facegen settings but it will deform like a regular clothing and its useful if you want to have tubes going into a backpack or something like that. It is important to be choosing the correct biped slot for the type of headgear that you are using. Look on this link for the details on it biped slots and their uses at niftools forum

Hi! Yea the nitristips block contains a bsdismembermentskininstance that contains a list of all the vertices and the bone influences on them. So it is not compatible with a different geometry data. If yo used max for modeling you can still use blender for skinning it tho. I heard that max focuses on envelope skinning and you would need to convert it to vertex groups for the game so it might be more confusing and hard. How about using blender and then what u can do is import the skeleton.nif and the geometry for your backpac k. Then make a cube and make it like a box about the same size as the backpack. then you can subdivide it 2 or 3 times. add 5 vertex groups for this box. bip01 pelvis, bip01 spine, bip01 spine1, bip01 spine2 and BP_TORSO. in weightpaint mode you can use mix brush to paint the box to move with the skeleton in a way that makes sense, maybe like for the bottom 4 verts u have it 25% pelvis and 75% spine1 or 50 50 and just paint the 16 to 20 vertices in a way that makes sense, you can pose the skeleton in pose mode and see if it is deforming like you think the backpack should. Dont forget to paint it 100% for the BP_TORSO one tho. then subdivide the box a bunch more once you have the weights right and blender will create a smooth gradient for each new vertex. Now you can use the bone weight copy script to transfer these weights to your backpack.

Hi! The art nifs for creatures and armors haev an armature in them that is flattened. Its just a collection of nodes for each bone in the skeleton. This armature in blender needs to be called "Scene Root" And the geometry parts, u know the stuff that you can see in the game needs to be parented to this armature. There are buttons on the import options that lets u import just the armature or just the geometry and thats what i usually do but i guess you can just have both the buttons off and import them both at the same time. import the body fo the monster first and then look at where the 20 little boxes are on the bottom of the 3d window in object mode. click the second one over to get another layer. It is good to do this for when you import the stopsign cause you will have to delete the parts of the stopsign and u dont want it all mixed up with the objects in the previous nif. Ok. I try to clarify some parts. I mean when you type the name of the vertex group. you type the name of the bone to be the name of the vertex group. so "bip01 Forearm.L" should be the name of the vertex group. and of course "BP_LEFTARM" for the other vertex group. dont worry about smoothing groups. or modelling an arm strap or uv mapping it for a custom texture or anything at this point. It was just rambling sorry. Just get the part you want of the stopsign, go into edit mode and hit a to select all the vertices and then go into mesh > vertices > remove doubles and that will be enough. It is not a lot of work at all but you have to get used to the process. once you learn the process then it will take you a few minutes to have your customized creature ready to add into your game. OF course at that point you will probably want to do a lot more so you can spend your time on the artistic side of it all :D

Hi! I dont see any equivalence between positive and negative endorsements. They are apples and oranges just like if there was an option for negative kudos. I think it is obvious why we dont have negative kudos.

Hi! What you want to do is extract the supermutant body nif from meshes.bsa and also when you have that folder open make a folder in the data folder with the same path. then extract the stopsign or whatever part u need. then import the supermutant armature and then geometry into blender and then on another layer import the entire stopsign nif at once. on the stopsign go ahead and delete the collision mesh and editor marker or whatever that empty thing that u get is and have just the geometry mesh. edit it as wanted like removing the signpost or whatever. then move the wanted geometry to the supermutant layer, so if you want to make it like a shield then move it into position on the body. Now select the supermutant body and look on the button window editing panel, link and materials tab and you can see a vertex groups dropdown menu thingy. look at the vertex groups. Ok so if you want to make a soft clothing item on the body you can use the bone weight copy script to get the vertices assigned to the needed groups but for a rigid object you will want to choose a more limited set. for example a shield u will probably want to have the entire stopsign assigned to bip01 forearm.L. That way it wont be all bendy in the game. Select the stopsign and in the link and materials tab for it click on the new vertex group button and type in the name of it. Also you need a bodypart vertex group so when you blow the arm off the shield stays attached to the dismembered arm so add another one called BP_LEFTARM go into weightpaint mode and just paint all the vertices to 1 for both the vertex groups you added. It should be all red. Watch out for double vertices cause theres lots of them in vanilla nifs and it can be hard to weightpaint those. Beth was liberal with extra vertices and some but not all of them are helping for smoothing the normals better. You can remove the double vertices in edit mode and redo the smoothing groups or whatever later on. go ahead and delete the body of the mutie cause all u need is the new geometry part. export that one and make sure to have selected the cloth shader presets button cause it includes shadowmap shader flag that is needed for armature deforming meshes. if you ned the export settings just find a guide for clothing cause any creature body is the same as clothing. If you get some error about vertices not being assigned go ahead and delete them cause they are just floating ones in the middle of the mesh, lol vanilla meshes. save the exported nif to the folder you added earlier and in the cs you can create a new creature entry and in the models list select the super mutant and just select your new body addon also.

Hi! Yea i looked again at the exported nif and there was some problem with my instructions. You may want to turn off stripification but i really dont know what it affects, maybe it is fine unless the nif has geometry morphing which this doesnt. I wasnt able to figure out so far how to export it with the correct nitransformcontroller or niviscontroller blocks on it except for some broken ones on the special nodes. You can just paste these blocks from the original weapon onto the controller ref in the block details of the corresponding nodes on your exported nif. Anyway, it will probably work fine in game that way and i think its just a weird thing about weapon animations because those are applied by the game with the same keyframe file as the character animation is.

Hi! I guess yo could try changing the eutler rotation on the projectile node but that can really be a pain to do. There is no axes display or anything on it and euler is hard to get used to unless you are a math guy or something. IF you take your model and import it to blender then you can find it will have different empties for each node on the weapon. Some of them are used sort of like bones to parent the animated parts of the weapon to for reloading. The sighting node. projectile node, adnd shell casing one tho are right there and you can rotate them easily with blender. I was just looking at one gun and it had transform properties of x-90 y-90 on sighting and projectile. It points to the right on x axis globally. So import to blender with settings of import extra nodes to get the special ones in. Then when you export it you gotta turn off the export skin partition, flatten skin, and export dismember body parts things. Turn on the havok presets for weapon and choose the right material, default shader presets across the top row of buttons, and make sure to turn on use bsfadenode root. I just quicly imported and exported a weapon to look at it all and the exported nif looks just fine, so I think it will work for you in game properly.

After reading the thread and everything I guess the negative endorsement system causes more good than evil. It may simply reduce the number of flames on the feedback thread. Flames should be simply responded to with the report button but sadly you just cant trust the uploader to always do the right thing when emotions get involved.

I just found a script for positioning rigid body joint pivots. SigTerms pivot script Gonna be trying this out today :D

Hi! Hide it in spoiler tags?

The loop tool one looks so handy! Thanks. Yea fore, Im gonna be trying to animate my guy the old fashioned way but u might as well post the script :D Here is a site with some useful blender scripts. I use geom tool and uv tool a lot and theres 2 other ones also. Geom tool and other scripts I think it is cumbersome to position the constraint pivots. I wonder if there is a script for that or some other way to get the desired position from 3d cursor.

I hope you dont just give up cause when you get it working you will feel good. It does work just fine. Read the tutorials on weight painting and you will know about vertex groups and you can check them to see if they are matching the skeleton. There should be one group for each of the bones except for bip01 and bip01 nonaccum. You should also have some vertex groups for the dismemberment body parts. You can delete the armature and import the skeleton.nif for supermutant with a kf file attached to it to test it in blender without going into game. I posted some instructions at the bottom of this thread earlier. http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/299219-vertices-not-rigging-properly-for-export/ I hope that you can get it working. Its a good idea to take a short break when you are frustrated or fatigued on your project so you can focus on it when you get back to it. I do this maybe more than i should.

Hi! Yea u need to say what kind of problem you are having or people wont be able to help you at all. I think that you have made this suit to fit onto the body of a super mutant? It looks nice. Maybe since it is not moving along with the rest of the super mutant during animation your having a problem with the skinning of it. I dont know what different things you tried but what you gotta do is have all the vertex groups and bone weights set up properly. This is not something that you can achieve in nifskoep, but its pretty easy to learn how to do in blender if you dont give up. This wiki page has links to some tutorials on doing that. http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Blender_rigging_/_skinning Basically you will need to learn how to use the bone weight copy script to get the new geometry weighted about like the existing geometry to make it move properly with the rest of everything.

Maybe the suggestion about requiring some sentences of feedback for an endorsement would go a long way to filter out some of the negative endorsements. A large percentage of which being given because of stuff like exclamation points, purple or chameleon textures. The mod downloader would simply prefer to think that it is caused by the incompetency of the mod creator rather than their own. Requiring feedback for positive endorsements would reduce the number of endorsements you could expect for your mods tho. It is already not a lot compared to how many downloads you would expect. We hope that the endorsement system serves to reward and encourage modders. I will go out on a limb and suggest that wanting less negative endorsements is not a meaningful motivational force for modders to invest effort into the quality of their work. It is possible that wanting less negative endorsements does motivate mod uploaders to try to write a clear and comprehensive readme for their mod, but readmes only go so far as they are being read. I think someone only should be punished for their upload if they have broken the rules in regards to the content of their mod.

Hi! The to sphere mesh tool is nice for if you have just added the object and you select an evenly subbed plane and delete some faces you can easily make a circle out of them. It is located in the mesh tools panel of the editing tab of the buttons window. You have to select the edge loop of the hole you made and move the 3d cursor to the center of your selection with shift s. Then hit the button to make it project the vertices into a sphere making a circle. But when you want to preserve your local transformation properties and not apply scale and rotation before doing it it can cause strange results. I have tried to replicate this issue but I cant seem to at the moment. Anyway, it also causes problems when you have deleted faces that have different length edges. What you can do is use geom tool http://glender.hybird.org/ to distribute the vertices before snapping the cursor to selection and hitting the to sphere button. Repeat that process as necessary until u got your nice round hole. Once you have the circular hole you can extrude it, scale it and sub and bevel it or whatever. Blneder artists forum was down for a while but now its all back! Here is a good thread on there about how to make the most of quad topology and have absolute control over your mesh. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93651 Oh yeah there is a blender forum here on the nexus also! http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/forum/320-blender/

KURESE is awesome.

There is nothing childish about what LHammonds is saying. I think you are totally out of line. :mad: If you really respect him then you should do a better job of showing it. I hope we never forget about all the pioneers whos hard work has made modding easy. Now we have the luxury of focusing on the art rather than being bogged down in the technical stuff. It is somewhat uncomfortable for me to read your first post hailing fore as a "god of animation" although i think he is extremely helpful and everything. I have also felt rather embarassed by your overly praising posts about some stuff i posted about. I am very new to modding and have only meager contibutions to the community under my belt. Its ok to be enthusiastic about your own accomplishments or those of your peers but lets keep it in perspective. I dont know what it was like during the dark ages of morrowind modding, i got here in late 07 and didnt even try modding to begin with untill late 09. Please read through this thread that i enjoyed reading about early modding for fo3 in late 08. Beth used a different nif version for fo3 than for oblivion and it was insanely harder to make stuff than it is now. http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/82738-fallout-modelling-mini-tutorial/ The people at niftools had built up an extreme level of expertise by then and they were able to update the nifscripts very quickly. It also helps to read through various older threads on the niftools forum. Here is an example. http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=307 Now on topic, there was legal limitations preventing beth from releasing export scripts or documentation for the nif file format since they were under a contract with gamebryo. Since this new engine is a inhouse setup there is no such limitation. They may even release a max plugin and I feel pretty confident that they will release at least some form of documentation that would greatly speed development of blender scripts.

Hi! I understand the reason that no modders resources are allowed but its too bad that any non vanilla armor or clothing mod that shows skin would be ineligible under these rules. If a modder were to make a port of their own armor mod for a vanila body model would it be eligible? Are there any limitations on releasing their armor to the public for a non vanilla body model while a vanilla version has been submitted to the contest?

Hi! When you add the nialphaproperty it will have a default flags of 237 or whatever it is. It makes the transperency seem to work but that setting is not good for alpha blending and stuff. You can consider 4845 as the standard flags setting to change it to. There are other ones you can use tho if you find an issue during playtesting, try extracting a vanilla foliage nif and see what they used on their one.

Hi! Yea as they said its got at least 50 times more vertices than you probably want in most swords. Its true that the sword is held near the camera, but not as near as the sights of a gun. Its good to have only real high poly on places like the eyehole of a scope on a gun. and when you have lower geometry elsewhere it keeps the overall polycount down. 3d models have a neat feature tho, its called normal smoothing. There is this little button you can click to make your lowpoly model appear smooth. What it does is it takes the direction of 2 adjacent faces (normals) and then instead of at the edge having an abrupt change in the light reflection properties, it makes a smooth gradient. Later you can even make a normalmap for your model and that allows you to further tweak how light reflects off it to make it appear to have even more geometric detail. It would be a good idea to try importing some vanilla swords and nice swords others have made to examine them in blender to get a better idea of how you want your model to be.

Hi! There is nothing wrong in the setting panel you have screenshotted but your screenshot may not be showing where the problem is cause its only that litle part. U want anyway 2 textures both set to uv input and then the top one set to map to color and bottom one set to normal. Both u also want to have in texxture buttons tab set to texture type image and then you can load the dds files in there. Just to make sure, u are gonna only want to have 1 material per object, as you have shown in your screenshot. U can have both textures set up on same material.

Great, please let me know how it goes with your project. I will try to improve the tutorial if necessary.