Trouble with custom armor

[Medtech]

Hello everybody.I made a custom skyrim steel armor cuirass by editing and combining various vanila meshes and textures.Although it looks great as a nif I have two problems

 

a)I am unable to create a ground image.I read a guide that described doing that but I was unable to create the gnd file.

 

b)I went ahead anyway and inserted the nif file into TES construction set.But when I try to insert it to the game I get an error message (error not a nif file and then it is replaced with the WTF mesh error.

 

Does anybody have any idea what is wrong with the nif?

 

Here is the custom armor made by combining female iron and elven armor,erasing the elven skirt cliping in blender (which I only used for the first time yersteday),exporting as a nif and adding various edited textures.

 

PS I could upload the skyrim steel armor nif if anyone is interested to investigate the problem.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Medtech

[DrakeTheDragon]

By the looks of this screenshot alone already this obviously isn't a valid NIF file. The structure's mixed up and corrupted. The game will not understand this file.

There's a lot of other nodes on the same level as the "0 NiNode - Scene Root", which must not ever be. All other nodes must be children of the "Scene Root".

 

There's also a lot of child nodes from "NiTriStrips" or "-Shapes" outside of any "NiTriStrips" or "-Shape" blocks,

namely "NiBinaryExtraData" (usually the Tangent Space data for the vertex normals of such a block),

"NiShapeData" (especially this one only has a function inside a "NiTriShape" block, as it defines the shape),

and "NiSkinInstance" (the rigging and weight data for the vertices of the "NiTriStrips" or "-Shape" block it's a child of).

 

Here one can't even say which block they belong to, as the block they're children of, "Scene Root", doesn't even have such child nodes.

 

I wager a guess and say when you imported these into Blender you imported "both" with their respective "Armature", and then deleted one of them (as there isn't a duplicate "Scene Root.00" either), without ever making the first Armature parent of the second set of meshes as well. They're now without a parent, with bogus rigging info, and with no proper place in the resulting NIF structure. In short, the NIF structure is corrupted as a result.

[Medtech]

Thank you for your reply it was very helpfull.The truth is I have zero knowledge on graphical editing (I am a Biologist,I edit DNA :laugh: ) so it is not strange at all that I messed up.I just wanted to combine the Iron cuirass with the Elven "skirt" but there was clipping and I wanted to edit the mesh flatening the cliping parts.So I imported the "skirt" in blender and using sculpting I flatened the jutting part of the mesh (very roughly it looked like a crinkled piece of paper...).I exported with the default settings and then combined the edited mesh with the iron cuirass mesh in nifscope along with the elven pauldrons.No other editting on the meshes exept those simple functions.Then I edited some vanila textures and added them on the mesh using Nifscope.I really liked the result too bad I messed up (and have no idea how to fix it).I could upload the files if anyone would like to correct them.So if anyone is interested pm me.Thank you again for the reply.

 

I

Edited May 30, 2014 by Medtech

[DrakeTheDragon]

Ah, so the combining was done in NifSkope instead of in Blender. That's alright, and likely saves you a lot of hassle like the Armature parenting issues and the like I mentioned.

 

When you combined the contents of the skirt NIF with the other NIF, or also when you combined the pauldrons NIF's contents with the other NIF, how exactly did you do that?

 

Provided the target NIF already contains all Armature nodes required for the mesh to be copied over, the usual way to copy one mesh into another NIF is by copy-branch on the "NiTriStrips/Shape" branch one wants to copy and paste-branch into the "0 NiNode - Scene Root" branch of the target NIF. Do not copy the "Scene Root" or any nodes from inside the "NiTriStrips/Shape" branches, as this can only ever mess things up.

 

You can also go about and create the proper NIF structure yourself, copy&pasting branch-by-branch and child-node-by-child-node instead of using copy-branch and paste-branch directly. But it's always more likely to mess things up when you take them apart as when you keep them in one piece all the time instead.

 

If there's an error about the branch to be pasted missing Armature nodes, one can also copy&paste those missing NiNodes over into the target "Scene Root" first, provided the Armature in both NIFs is compatible, that is not one NIF containing a plain-structure list of nodes (such as your's) and the other a tree-structure of those nodes instead (like most skeleton.nifs for example), as both are valid NIF structures and both exist in Vanilla Oblivion's NIF files and can be produced during export from Blender or any other modelling app.

[Medtech]

I copied and pasted the parts on the graphical window (where the armor is visually displayed) one by one.I would for example click on the elven cuirass pauldrons,click copy branch,paste it (paste over) on the iron cuirass pauldrons (I had two nif files open,one with the iron armor and one with the elven armor),click on the iron cuirass pauldrons and then click delete branch.I edited the skirt by importing the skirt part in blender,doing the sculpting I wished then exporting it as a nif file with default settings.I then open the new skirt nif and pasted it over the elven skirt nif then I deleted the elven skirt.Then I aplied the various textures via nif.

 

Thank you for the instructions I will follow them in hopes I will fix this mess.

 

ps this armor is part of a Skyrim (in Oblivion) quest mode I wanted to make (again starting with zero knowledge).I figured it was a shame that Onra's Total Tamriel and various other mods on TWMP Skyrim landscape, buildings, furniture,ruins,weapons and armors that can be found on Oblivion Nexus were just sitting there.When I found our that Haldar was making a TWMP Skyrim mod with settlements and ruins I was super excited.I figured I would wait for it to finish then start my mod.The general mod story was discovering the fate of a group of adventurers that went looking for answers in a archeological mystery in Skyrim Land and vanished without a trace.You as the hero would take the task of trying to locate them,following their trail on Skyrim (that would go through settlements,ruins and would include traveling by sea by a boat that you would operate your self) and revealing a shocking/exciting fact regarding an ancient race that is regarded extinct.

 

I was rather unsatisfied with the existing Oblivion armor mods for Skyrim and I wanted to make some that would resemble a bit more the ones found in Skyrim game without actually importing them (which is a)a no no as far as I know and b)have no idea how to do it.I guess I have a lot to learn...

Edited May 31, 2014 by Medtech

[DrakeTheDragon]

Quite a way to go there, but certainly will be worth the work in the end.

 

I'd suggest not doing these copy&paste things from the render window though. It is paramount that the target you paste into ever and always only is the "Scene Root", and as such it's advisable to right-click the "Scene Root" node in the tree view and say "paste branch" in there. Your way of keeping two NIFSkopes open at the same time, one to copy from and one to paste into, definitely is the only way to go about it here. Just use the tree view rather than the render view for sake of selecting/targeting exactly the nodes and branches you want and not any random others you accidentally mis-clicked or something.

 

Oh, and when you're done, make good use of most of the "Spells" for sanitization and such, like "Batch" -> "Update All Tangent Spaces", "Optimizie" -> "Combine Properties" (saves a lot of file size, if it isn't already optimal), "Sanitize" -> "Reorder Blocks" and "Check Links". Most of this should be done automatically on save, but it also won't hurt to do it specifically once more right before saving.

[Medtech]

Oh god I did the combination again and that resulted in a NIF file that although does not get a message "no NIF file found" when I insert it in a cell of the worldspace via the editor for some reason it fails to appear as a mesh.Instead when I place it in a cell I get a WTF mesh missing mesh.When I try to wear it,my PC turns invisible in the torso and arms area.

 

I noticed that if I try to insert a vanilla mesh without a ground file (I failed to make a ground file for my custom armor....) it also fails to appear just like my custom armor.If I place it in a container I can take it to my inventory where it appears as an item with its weight,health,value etc. but when I place it in the world is a WTF mesh and when I wear it parts of my PC turn invisible....There shouldnt be a problem with the textures because then it would look purple not invisible right?

[DrakeTheDragon]

If your textures are missing their normalmap counterparts (the files with the exact same name but ending on "..._n.dds"), them turning invisible is one of the error signs for it.

The other is them turning pitch black, and I haven't yet figured out exactly what determines which one happens.

 

In order to get rid of your ground NIF troubles for the time being, it is totally fine to use any random other ground NIF you find fitting in its place. The game will not mind when it's not from the same folder or anything.

Some famous mod authors even put a simple box or sack mesh as the ground mesh for "all" custom items in their shop in the past, in order to save the hassle of creating an individual one for each of them.

 

Mind giving us another screenshot of the new NIF's tree structure? Structural errors corrupting the file are usually easily spotted for the trained eye.

[Medtech]

I did use an orc_armor gnd for my custom armor (but I moved it to the new folder I made for the new armor...) but I still was getting the same result.

 

There is the image of the armor in nifscope

Edited June 1, 2014 by Medtech

[Medtech]

Second image