An easy way to fix your missing meshes problem

[Oblivionaddicted]

Hello everybody!

If you're used to play this game especially with mods you probably already noticed some problems of missing meshes. Fortunately this problem is very easy to fix, open your meshes with NifSkope, click on the object -> NiTexturingProperty -> NiSourceTexture and check the folder way.

 

You can either replace the shown folder with the correct one starting with textures\ or copy the the textures to the specified folder if several faulty meshes use the same folder way.

Edited December 31, 2024 by Oblivionaddicted

[DrakeTheDragon]

You sure about this? I never had this happen even once in my years of modding and creating mods.

For armor textures it always was the entry in the NIF file stating where the textures are to be found.

Have it anywhere else than the NiTexture entry tells and you'll get a purple, pitch-black or invisible mesh ingame.

 

A "missing mesh" error, as in the funny placeholder mesh, most likely a yellow "!" but sometimes also a "WTF I'm a missing mesh!" (depending on replacer NIFs you installed for this error indicator), always only comes up, if the NIF file is indeed "not found". I wasn't even able to willingly 'produce' this error other than by removing the NIF file from the place the plugin was pointing to.

 

On the contrary I can even present a couple examples where my files are located exactly the way you're telling above not to do, and it will not produce the error, as neither the texture nor the NIF will be at a different location than the NIF or the plugin is setup to search for them.

I produced a bunch of copy&paste NIFs, mixing multiple existing NIFs' TriShapes/Strips to create unique new armors, like many other modders I know of did and still do, and they all still point to the exact same locations where their textures always have resided, which is by far not even close to the folder I put the armor into.

Remember, an armor consists of multiple different parts, maybe even little accessories or trinkets. They can also exist in other armors or as individual jewellery at the same time. There's definitely no need for each of them to have identical copies of its textures inside the folders for all the armors they're included in.

 

Let's not even talk about the skin parts inside the armor NIFs. Even though their real texture and material property will always be ignored and overridden by the game engine, those all point to textures found at very different places than the armor's textures, likely within "/textures/characters/Imperial/" for sake of compatibility and not forcing a "missing normalmap" (pitch-black or invisible) error indicator to show up ingame. Sadly, even though the texture itself is never even looked at by the engine, pointing to a file which doesn't exist will inevitably lead to exactly these.

 

The "missing mesh" error indicator can only ever occur in your game, if a NIF file a plugin or masterfile points to physically cannot be found at the place it's searched for.

This is most times caused by the NIF file being misplaced, and only by the NIF file, other files being misplaced leads to other errors,

but it can also be 'forced' by faulty Archive Invalidation measures, like having an entry in an out-dated "Archive Invalidation.txt" list still point to a replacement file which you removed a while ago. Although the actual file is still inside the BSA, as long as the old A.I. list is still pointing to an external file which is now missing, this will 'force' a missing mesh error to appear.

 

Apart from this, no other means to cause a missing mesh error are known to me. Not saying there can't be others, just saying what you mentioned above is unlikely to be true, when knowing of examples myself where it's not.

[Oblivionaddicted]

Maybe is it a bit more complex than I thought but I already fixed the problem with this method in mods like "Adventurer's items" or "Creepy old shack".

Edited December 12, 2013 by Oblivionaddicted