Questions about first mod - preparing exported armour for game in Nifs

[sjf]

EDIT: Never mind, have it sorted now. (Sorry dont know how to delete posts)

 

I did it by copying the NiTriShapeData, NiSkinData & NiSkinPartition nodes, and matching up the bone lists but using the existing nodes in the target as a reference.

 

I will play about with it more but I can get it into game using the CS without it crashing or my character turning invisible which I consider a success for now...

 

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Hi.

 

I am working on my first mod for Oblivion trying to learn the tools. It is a simple armour mod, taking two parts of existing meshes, modifying slightly in 3DSMAX, retexturing and then exporting to NIFSKOPE to be copied into something to be used in game.

 

So far using the tutorials online I have:

 

Used Nifskope to find the components I want.

Imported both into 3DSMAX (one with skeleton).

Cut up and modified the meshes (very slightly so not to disturb the weight painting) (One is simply changing the shape slightly, the other is cutting the top half off a curaiss)

Applied the existing meshes (just so the the material property existed in Nifskope so I could see it working. I will probably want to texture in Nifskope rather than try and unwrap the map in 3DS)

Exported the new armour to Nifskope (seemingly successfully)

 

However its here that I get a little confused.

 

I am using Skree's tutorial [http://www.tesnexus.com/articles/article.php?id=248] to copy the armour components over to a target armour NIF that can be loaded into game but I get lost when it comes to the bone list.

 

As I understand it the idea is to copy the NiTriShapeData, the Bone List, the NiSkinData and NiSkinPartition blocks from the source to the target, but as soon as I touch the bone list in the target the model is messed up and only overwriting the entire NiSkinInstance repairs it.

 

Could someone explain what the purpose of copying these components is? Why can't I simply copy the entire NiTriShape from my export to my target as if I were copying from another armour? When I do this the Node pointers in the bone list seem to update to represent the correct numbers as used to ID the bones in the target.

For example in my export from Max, Bip01 L Thigh is NiNode 33, but after I copy the NiTriShape this entry has automatically updated to 34 - the equivalent NiNode in the target.

 

Why cant I export save my NIF as exported straight from Max?

 

 

Also, I have not got to the part yet about packaging my new armour and putting it in the game, but I dont think this will be a short process. When working on mods how do people here check theirs in-game before acctually putting them in-game?