Separating Armor meshes. Comes up with red marker in CK. :/

[huntsman2310]

So, long story short, I'm working on a mod that adds in versions of the vanilla and DLC armors that let you wear chestpieces and leggings separately, similar to a few other mods that have been done but haven't updated in a very long while. (In fact I've even gained permission from Topvman - the creator of 'Greaves Return' - to use his meshes as a reference for my own work and to include in the mod itself.)

 

http://i.imgur.com/EubsMgI.jpg

 

I'm having a issue where the model of the armor shows up as a huge red marker inside the Creation Kit. I already know this means that something is wrong with the mesh and it isn't showing because of it, but I can't figure out what it could be.

 

These are the files in Nifskope.

 

http://i.imgur.com/C1QRnLj.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/K9i2xhY.jpg

 

Can anyone help me?

 

 

[CzarnyAfgan]

The red marker usually means one of a several issues:

 

1. There is something wrong with your model

2. There is something wrong with your texture

3. You have set the location / direction to the texture incorrectly ( there are some certain steps, that you must follow [ sorry, I am not an expert in armor exporting ] , otherwise your model will crash )

4. You have confused the order in deleting / copying / renaming the material branches in NIFskope - when it comes to static mesh exporting modder has to do 1first - delete existing material branch, then copy similar material branch from some vanilla template and then paste it over NiTriShape branch - and finally set the texture location manually

5. There is something wrong with the way you have exported your . NIF file

 

I cannot say anything more at the moment, but I can try give you the track, you have to wait for the opinion of someone's who is more experienced than me.

Edited May 6, 2014 by CzarnyAfgan

[Matth85]

Red marker means the model is missing. Got nothing to do with textures.

 

Where are your meshes/textures placed?

Are you sure all settings within nifskope is correct? If you have done something wrong, it's pretty hard to correct it.

 

to make it simpler: What have you done so far? It's the only way to help you, if we know what you have done. Seeing the .nif isn't helping by itself, we need to know what you have done, why you have done it and what you think you did wrong.

[huntsman2310]

My meshes and textures are placed inside the Skyrim data folder (meshes in mesh/armor, textures in texture/armor, so on and so forth), so I'm don't think that's the issue.

 

Pretty much what I have done so far is this:

 

- opened up the vanilla Stahlrim armor in Nifskope, changed the version numbers to 11 and 34, deleted the BSShaders branch.

 

- Imported the NIF into Blender 2.49 using Nifscripts and the settings from the TESAlliance tutorial.

 

- Deleted the skeleton. Removed all vertex groups from the armor. Separated the armor into chest and leggings.

 

- Imported in a Skyrim body and copied its weights over to the armor using Bone Weight Copy.

 

- Imported the body's skeleton and rigged both meshes to it.

 

- Exported the edited armor back into Nifskope. Changed the version numbers back to normal and reapplied the BSShaders.

 

That's pretty much what I did for the file. The only thing I did in Nifskope was link the BSShaders branch to the right NiTriShapes.

 

If it helps, I'll upload the files for you to take a look.

Edited May 6, 2014 by huntsman2310

[Matth85]

Have you compared your .nif to the original .nif?

Have you tried opening the Stalhrim armor .nif, deleting the mesh, then copying over your new mesh.

 

With nifskope there is a million things that can have gone wrong. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is wrong, or how to fix it. Heck, I have even had my mesh not show up with no errors, so I had to re-do the whole nifskope-part another time, no different from the first, for it to work.

[huntsman2310]

I haven't yet.... In fact as I was looking through my stuff, I realized I had come across this exact problem before, which I also solved by - surprise - copying over the attributes of the vanilla mesh.

 

Well, at least it isn't a new problem I ran into. Thanks for the assist, man :smile:

Edited May 8, 2014 by huntsman2310

[huntsman2310]

Okay, for some reason it is still coming up as a red marker. I've tried copying over the NiTriShape of my modified mesh and deleting the mesh of the vanilla file, but it keeps complaining about a 'failed link to parent node'?

[Matth85]

Hm.. This might get complicated to explain.

Basically, go to the parent node --> the node 1 level above the one you got. That could be a NiTriShape node, or it could be the NiNode. I don't know. But check it, and find the "Children" in Block Details. See what is linked. My guess is that it is not linked. If not, simple exand the Children menu, then type in the number of your mesh' NiTriShape node.

[huntsman2310]

^ Ah. Okay. The Children menu. I sort of knew about it, but I didn't realize the NiTriShape was involved there. Cheers, again, man :smile:

 

Edit: Well, took a look.

 

http://i.imgur.com/DxTNxRB.jpg

 

And it seems everything is in order as far as I can tell. Although there are a distinct lack of animation bones, could that be it?

Edited May 11, 2014 by huntsman2310