Anyone tried Pynifly?

[DogTownMassacre]

I started playing around with blender 3.6 and nifskope on my own to edit some meshes - everything went pretty smooth as far as just getting things to model correctly in blender and nifskope and pasting them onto the skeleton. However, I assume a bunch of the data was lost because it would render as invisible in the Geck and make my whole outfit invisible in game despite being an add-on.

 

Just wanted to see if anyone else found the trick. I don't know what I'm doing so its just pushing buttons to see if something breaks free.

 

Weird, this started out as just trying to make a vest/plates mod so that I could replay NV to keep my sanity after losing my job (I needed to break off Graham's vest to make a police-style vest). Now it's a week later and just bashing my head against the wall.

 

I've seen the guides saying to use 3ds but ... I don't have $250/week for a subscription, and the guides saying to use 2.49. I tried downgrading to 2.49 and followed Tammers and then wiped everything and tried ABCRadio's. 2.49 seems like it just has a lot of jank, though and even trying to merge multiple tutorials together, I couldn't get an untouched mesh to export and reimport cleanly. I know, its a me problem, but getting modern stuff to work seems like a better solution to me right now.

[DogTownMassacre]

Making progress.

 

No more crashes, got the meshes to render........ mostly, doing that spaghetti into the floor thing.

 

 

[M48A5]

If you insist on using Blender 3.6, you will have to export your work as an .obj file, then run it through Blender 2.49 and convert it to a .nif file.

 

Blender 2.49 is the only version that will consistently work properly with FNV.

 

Make sure you use NifSkope after converting the file to set the shaders.

 

If you go to the Oblivion mod site and search "Blender", there are all the tools you need to properly mod Fallout: New Vegas.

[DogTownMassacre]

Thanks for the info, I will look into that.

 

I don't know what setting shaders means yet, I'll have to read up about that before bugging people with anymore questions.

 

I made some progress before reading this and I've gotten, at least, the meshes exported into Blender 3.6 with PyNifly, export it back out and get it to render in game without issue.

 

However, for whatever reason, separating one object into two and I'm back at CTD, square one.

[DogTownMassacre]

I've got to just find a write up on how these Nif blocks relate to one another, how to add them, and which ones are essential.

[madmongo]

It's not clear from your posts exactly what you've done, so forgive me if you already have some of this correct.

 

If you are creating your own mesh parts, you need to parent them to the skeleton and weight paint them properly. Otherwise they'll do weird things like stretch to the horizon or just won't show up at all. The textures for your new mesh parts need to be UV mapped or they won't work properly. In Blender 2.49b, select the texture panel then on the right side click on the Map Input tab and click on UV to select it. Then split your screen and on the new screen select the UV image editor. Then on the original screen with the mesh, go into Edit mode and UV unwrap your object, then modify the UV mapping as desired.

 

If you were making a static or a clutter object, this is the point at which you would create your collision mesh, but since you are making an outfit, you don't need a collision mesh.

 

And since you are making an outfit, your new or modified mesh needs to be parented to the skeleton, and all of the vertices need to be weight painted. If I remember correctly there is a decent section on weight painting in the Blender Noob to Pro tutorials.

 

For nif export, make sure that you select all objects, since Blender will only export what you have selected. When you get to the nif export options screen, start with the defaults for Fallout 3. Under Collision Options (top center) click on Creature, then under that select Skin. Outfits and creature skins are the same thing as far as the game engine is concerned. Under Shader Options (top right) make sure Use BSFadeNode Root is de-selected.

 

If you were making a static or a clutter object, your export options would be different. For a static you would select Static under Collision Options then the object material for collision under that (there are also some things you need to set under the collision mesh but since you're not making a static we'll ignore the details of that). For a misc object you would select Clutter under Collision Options. For both statics and misc objects you would select Use BSFadeNode Root on the top right. This is important because if you make misc objects or statics then go back to making clothing, a very common newbie mistake is to leave Use BSFadeNodeRoot selected, when it needs to be de-selected for clothing.

 

You can default everything else.

 

Blender WILL NOT properly export the shader flags, so you need to fix those up in NifSkope. For each mesh object in your nif, drill down until you find BSShaderPPLightingProperty.

 

For any exposed human skin bits, set the Shader Type to SHADER_SKIN and in the Shader Flags beneath that, check SF_Skinned and SF_Facegen.

 

For armor and cloth bits, set the Shader Type to SHADER_DEFAULT and in the Shader Flags check SF_Skinned and SF_ShadowMap.

 

Blender should have set all of the other flags correctly.

 

If you don't set these flags correctly, your armor/clothing/skin/whatever will probably end up invisible in-game.

 

If you set the ShadowMap flag for a static (which you can do in the Blender nif export screen), it will end up invisible. It needs to be checked for clothing and unchecked for statics and clutter objects.

 

The two most common mistakes for newbies are either not setting the export options properly for what you are exporting (different options for statics, clutter, and clothing) and not fixing the shader flags in NifSkope after exporting. A third common mistake is not properly weight painting all of the vertices in your meshes.

[DogTownMassacre]

Thanks a ton, all of that is super helpful. I have a copy of Noob to Pro and will try to find that section.

 

If you set the ShadowMap flag for a static (which you can do in the Blender nif export screen), it will end up invisible. It needs to be checked for clothing and unchecked for statics and clutter objects.

 

The two most common mistakes for newbies are either not setting the export options properly for what you are exporting (different options for statics, clutter, and clothing) and not fixing the shader flags in NifSkope after exporting. A third common mistake is not properly weight painting all of the vertices in your meshes.

I troubleshot using blender 3.6 w/ pynifly and nifskope and could import an unedited mesh into blender and then load it into the game without issue. When I used blender to separate the vest vertices from the rest of the upperbody (I literally changed nothing else) I would get the spaghettification textures you mentioned, probably because I didn't weight paint and some flags were wrong. It would also crash the Geck or show up invisible if I didn't import the skeleton into blender.

 

Weight painting looks fairly simple based on the quick video I watched (looks like a few clicks if not making flow-y bits?). Are any of the other tasks you mentioned only possible through blender? I feel like my lack of knowledge on Nifskope and how the blocks relate is whats causing me problems. It sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, I can change all the necessary flags and parent/child issues through Nifskope, alone? I've switched to outlook studio for what I'm trying to do now, but I want to learn how the Nif block system works and how to "hang" stuff myself. The manuals just arent specific to this game so its hard.

 

For anyone else who is fresh starting with mods and/or is just trying to nif-bash some stuff together, Outfit Studio (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25?tab=files&file_id=288150) in conjunction with Nifskope accomplished my nif-bash task in about 5 minutes without having to download a bunch of 15 year old apps and plugins. Highly recommend. No flagging, parenting or weight painting required. Just masked off the piece I wanted from the mesh, inverted selection and deleted everything else. It has less options than blender but its fine for starting out.

 

Heres a 10 min video tutorial for nif-bashing - just set the application to New Vegas. (Tutorial: Beginners' Guide to making nifbashes)

 

5000000x easier than following any of the 90+ minute New Vegas specific tutorials I've watched multiple times. Highly recommend.

[listenwater4]

I've been able to modify bodies and armors, weight paint them, then export with properly set shaders very successfully using Blender 3.6 and the niftools plugin for New Vegas.

https://github.com/niftools/blender_niftools_addon

 

Sometimes you will get a "polygons not attached to body part" error when exporting from niftools.
To fix this you need to apply "face sets" to the polygons, not vertex weights.

Basically anything I have tried to do it has worked, there are options for the materials to have the proper shader flags set.

 

I would also recommend double checking the exported file with nifskope until you get the hang of everything, making sure everything is set properly compared to the original nif.

 

For Skyrim SE I have had better luck importing with niftools, exporting as obj then copying bone weights and partitions from the original in Outfit Studio. Always with the latest Blender.

Edited November 9, 2023 by listenwater4