Issue: I cannot see my own meshes in game

[Pellape]

I made 2 meshes, as I plan to release as a plugin to Homemaker, which is required to test this in game. The meshes are placed inside Homemakers workshop menus, at the Greenhouse section, where I think they belong.

I included an esl + meshes + ba2 and put it up temporary at Dropbox

/Edit. The link is edited to the latest version with new collisions

I edit my stuff on the latest steam version where I have CK as well but I play the game with a GOTY 1.10.163 and I cannot see the meshes in the game as all I see is exclamation markers, which indicates that the game cannot find the meshes but as far as i can see, the meshes are at the right place and also packed from within CK as ba2, but that does not help much. I do hope someone here can figure put what the problem is. We do see the mesh inside CK. The meshes are made with Blender, the collision added with NifSkope, the ,esh is reordered with the reordering spell in Nifskope and also cleaned up with Elrich so these meshes should work perfect.

I am at my GF flat, using remote to my game comp, so screenshots does not work properly, so I cannot show how it looks like in game, but i am convinced you have seen exclamation markers before?  Right?     I have seen them time to time during my 20 years as a Bethesda modder.    

I usually solve these issues myself, but not this time as I cannot see what is wrong at all.

They should look like this, not like Exclamation markers...

 

Here is also Digital Drools tutorial how to make full working meshes with Blender+Nifskope at the SS2 forum

Edited June 23 by Pellape
added a screeny

[Pellape]

I made another upload, as I suddenly recalled, that it is not possible to make a collision as a plane, well at least not for Ovlivion, so i made it to a box, but that did not help much as I still only see exclamation markers in game.

Here is the new file, with esl and ba2 + meshes.

The new link is also now added to my initial post.

Here we see the new collision:

Edited June 23 by Pellape

[worm82075]

Are you using the updated version of the CK? Is this the latest BA2 version?

How did you create your collision?

[Pellape]

As an object. I did mange to get this one to work.  Do take a peek at this thread where Digital Drool did add the tutorial I did follow.

I also have more screenshots there as well about how I made these meshes as it is limited at Nexus how many screenshots we are able to add.

I also have a theory what I need to0 do to make them work as I kept the old BSXflags, so I will export the meshes without any extra data from Blender and add them with Nifskope instead.

I did try to load the meshes in Outfit Studio before bed and that did not work but my stair rail did load,  so if it does not in Outfit Studio something is wrong.

Digital Drool are not finished with the tutorials, but did post a PDF, at the SS2 forum, so I will not upload anything until Difital Drool do it himself, and then I will help to spread the word about this. as much as I can as it also means we do not need 3D Max 2013 any longer to make complete meshes. So i do have 2 NiNodes in one of the meshes. I need to clean them up andf make them work in outfit studio. Each mesh is 2 meshes combined and cut and glued together, some hidden ends are open, which should work. I need to go back in Blender and make them more simple as possible, so if you have a SS2 account, do peek there.

I see now we can add files at the forum.

Here I exported the collision with PyNifly Blender Export-Import Add-On and exported it from NifSkope as an object, to be able to control the origin axis, well the 0,0,0 position at NiTriShape data, which became 0,256,128 if I exported it as a pure obj from Blender. Some stuff are easier to do and control in NifSkope. Digital Drool have added in his tutorial which version that works of each tool used to make this to work in game and every one is specific and my simple stair railing I did publish earlier is also proof that this works. 

Still...  The collision is not pure boxes, as it is 2 triangle cheese forms put together. I could start to test the mesh without collisions really to see if that works and after that I may need to try to make box collisions i guess..

This working mesh below has 3 pure boxes. Which the new meshes do not have, so I have to go back to Blender and start there and scratch my head some.  

 

I did use the latest CK in both cases. The Stairrail mod do not have any ba2 as it is loose files and I did start to test with loose files and that failed. I use the latest Steam Version of the game when I create mods with CK but I do play with a GOTY 1.10.163 version. So the BSA is the latest version and i do think I read somewhere that there was an issue with it. I could remove the BSA file and only add loose files, but still. The mesh must work in Outfit Studio, no matter what.

 

Edited June 23 by Pellape

[Pellape]

I did load that stair rail mesh into OutfitStudio, and it did not show up, so that was not entire true:

The mesh i did test before bed, see below, I only edited the UV in NifSkope, so it was not exported from Blender...    So this theory that it must work in Outfit Studio, just crashed...    It does not mean it does not work in game as the mesh above does work in game.

No matter what, I need to make the mesh as simple as I can in Blender and test them without collisions to start with.

[Pellape]

Yippie. So far so good. I cleaned up the mesh, removed everything that was not supposed to be there, kept one single empty as ROOT, as there was 7 empties in the original file. This mesh has no collisions, not yet. So I looked for a testcell, and did find CTEST and added it there. In Oblivion, we did had plenty of testcells that bethesda made, maybe there is here as well, as this cell is a bit tiny. 

Digital Drool managed to make my meshes to work with collisions as he did test them earlier and made some editing. He removed my collisions and added new ones. But when I added a collision to the mesh in the screenshot above, I got the exclamation marker in game. Well now I know what the problem is at least and that is much better than fumble in the dark. I added the mesh at the SS2 forum, as that's the place where we test this and I do think me and Digital Drool might sort this out together or he will.  It might be best to just work in one thread, at one forum, so if you are interested, go there and follow the progress.

Edited June 23 by Pellape

[worm82075]

The reason i asked about the BA2 version is because when i opened it, it was empty and i am using pre next gen BAE.

As far as i know the only way to create a valid collision from scratch for this version of NIF is with 3DS max.

Nifscope(2.0 Dev 7) is not able to render collision geometry for any NIF files made for Skyrim SE or later so if you are getting a render then it is not a valid collision for this NIF version.

Make it easy on yourself and just copy the collision from another object. Unlike previous games this nif version allows you to translate collision by nesting it in a ninode.

Using the CK's static collection creation mechanic you can combine trishapes and static collision geometry and copy/paste the result from the created static collection NIF.

[Pellape]

Thanks for the advice. We did manage to make a working collision with this method. I will most likely skip BSA and provide loose files as they are only 2 anyway, so if you read that thread that I did mention, you will see that Digital Drool made it to work. My released stair rail is also proof that I managed to make it work. Digital Drool who is an old 3D teacher have put a lot of work into how to make it work.

I do have 3D Max 2013 but I want this to work with Blender and it will be solved.  I guess I can cheat right now, making it with 3D Max, but I really do not want to do that as I want this to work with Blender.

Edited June 23 by Pellape

[worm82075]

21 minutes ago, Pellape said:

I want this to work with Blender.

Ah, a noble aim indeed. I do not have access to 3DS and would love to be able to make collision from scratch. If you ever get it worked out please drop a note here so I can come and learn how.

Thanks and good luck.

[Pellape]

3 hours ago, worm82075 said:

Ah, a noble aim indeed. I do not have access to 3DS and would love to be able to make collision from scratch. If you ever get it worked out please drop a note here so I can come and learn how.

Thanks and good luck.

Yes, Digital Drool's goal is to share everything as soon as he feels he is ready and everything works perfect and as he have been a 3D teacher for a long period, I am sure it will become nice and pedagogic tutorials. Meanwhile, just look at his cool and good looking Showreal, as that is amazing stuff. I do not get impressed by a lot of 3D these days, not after I went to 3D school for the last year myself and got bombed with 3D, from the best there is, but Digital Drool do play in his own league and not only make realistic 3D as he produce pure art . He gave me the link yesterday and I looked like this: 

Do compare his portfolio with my boring one.      Honestly, anyone can make realistic 3D easy, but not all are able to make art, so he is a real pro.

We see where it ends. I do plan to add links to his tutorial in every mod I manage to make, as if he suceeds, it must be spread so more modders will be able to make cool stuff easier, specially those that did not managed to get 3D Max 2013. I am hopeful and excited, no doubt. Still I am lucky to have 3D max 2013 but I do not want to use it.    There are some impressive stuff already made for Fallout 4 that is added to Nexus, but why stop there? 

I did give him the link to this forum,  but he wrote that he is not ready to publish anything here yet.

Edited June 23 by Pellape