Need help figuring out how to make a simple mesh edit to the base game laser rifle

[IShidMyShirt]

I'm about to slam my mf head into the dishwasher, guys. Lol. I vividly recall having SOME mod a few years back that reduced the size of the the laser rifle & pistol's square ass into a slimmer rectangle. So it looks like you're holding a type of gun rather than a damn fence post that shoots lasers.

 

I've spent the last 4 hours straight trying to find out but to no avail. So I think: "I've messed with and edited meshes in UE4 so I could probably just thin out the block assed weapon in another program myself and make a new upload on the nexus for all my fellow autists that are so severely disturbed by the shape of a thing, right?"

 

No... Not the shitting slightest... Apparently God wants me to visit the ER today -_-

 

I can't for the life of me figure out how to pull the mesh for the laser rifle into nifskope to edit it. Can someone P L E A S E save me from my own idiocy?!?!

[RoNin1971]

I'm about to slam my mf head into the dishwasher, guys. Lol. I vividly recall having SOME mod a few years back that reduced the size of the the laser rifle & pistol's square ass into a slimmer rectangle. So it looks like you're holding a type of gun rather than a damn fence post that shoots lasers.

 

I've spent the last 4 hours straight trying to find out but to no avail. So I think: "I've messed with and edited meshes in UE4 so I could probably just thin out the block assed weapon in another program myself and make a new upload on the nexus for all my fellow autists that are so severely disturbed by the shape of a thing, right?"

 

No... Not the s***ing slightest... Apparently God wants me to visit the ER today -_-

 

I can't for the life of me figure out how to pull the mesh for the laser rifle into nifskope to edit it. Can someone P L E A S E save me from my own idiocy?!?!

 

By that last part you mean to ask how to edit a mesh with nifskope? (as you can just 'file' -> 'open' any nif you want.)

Answer: You can't. There are a few things you can do, but editing a mesh in detail isn't one of 'm.

 

You could use the X or Y scale to make it slimmer, but keep in mind this doesn't count for any collision. Although any parent for a collision can be given a 'scale', it is completely ignored. It might still work, but you need to check and adjust the collision if needed.

 

So, you would need to open the nif with Blender (only to edit the mesh) or 3DS 2013 (only version working with official Havok plugin (for collisions))

edit/scale it, create a new collision (you can not import & edit the existing one sadly), save it as new nif and make it all work as a weapon again. (I don't do weapons, so can't help you there), or edit the original to replace the mesh & collision objects.

[IShidMyShirt]

Thank you so much, I seriously appreciate it! Whenever I get around to getting this figured out and uploading it to the nexus, I'll leave a link here for any future visitors to this thread if they'd want it :D

[lordmogul]

I've done minor edits to models in nifskope (mostly clipping armor mods in New Vegas that decide to be inside each other and combining pants from one with shirts from another)

And while it can be done, it is tedious.

You basically have to manually move individual vertices. And not by dragging them but by changing the XYZ coordinate values. The fusion call on the side alone has about 500 vertices and is about 3.4 units wide. The main "barrel" on a laser rifle has about 880 vertices. The back part where the fusion cell is put into when reloading has about 2700, each of them with their own 3 coordinates. You're looking at manually editing about 7000 values, each with 6 digits of precision.

 

But as already said, that would only change the visuals, not the collision.

Edited March 26, 2023 by lordmogul