Hair conversion from Oblivion to Fallout 3 gone wrong!

[Ghogiel]

it's a shader flag in the nif that enables the special hair shader. the hair shader is what colors it.

 

can't remember off the top of my head what it's called, just look in a vanilla nif for their shader set up

[flaggpuss]

it's a shader flag in the nif that enables the special hair shader. the hair shader is what colors it.

 

can't remember off the top of my head what it's called, just look in a vanilla nif for their shader set up

 

Yeah the shader and the vertex colors is what got it working right where the textures aren't missed mapped. It looks better ingame, but It has some cuts or faces that aren't showing ingame and I think it's 1 or 3 reasons why, the way it's UV mapped, the introduction of an _hl.dds and how it's alpha map suppose to be setup (the alpha map for the diffuse map), and how I save them with the DDS plugin in photoshop, which I've been saving all in DTX5 interloped alpha (and if the size of all textures for the hair has anything to do with it because it's original size is 4x3 or something but no larger) . But I think there's a way different way for saving each an diffuse map, normal map (which I haven't touched), and dark or_hl.dds map. I know there has to be guide or tutorial somewhere that explains each map texture and how to save and create them, for fallout 3, and not just for objects and armor, but for hair too. I think there are oblivion guides which alot of people direct people to, but there are slight or more different ways that oblivion and fallout use their files, which can cause confusion, if you know a tutorial or tutorials for explaining all .DDS textures and their different formats or how to make, edit or create them that's good for fallout, please tell me. Also I'm going to post in user uploaded images in my uploaded mod "Beautiful African Americans" my current progress with the hair as soon as I can, Thx in advance.

[Ghogiel]

but It has some cuts or faces that aren't showing ingame and I think it's 1 or 3 reasons why, the way it's UV mapped, the introduction of an _hl.dds and how it's alpha map suppose to be setup (the alpha map for the diffuse map), and how I save them with the DDS plugin in photoshop, which I've been saving all in DTX5 interloped alpha (and if the size of all textures for the hair has anything to do with it because it's original size is 4x3 or something but no larger) .

use DXT5 for everything that needs an alpha channel. < basically all three of the maps for F3 hair use the alpha channel for some sort of map, whether it's an opacity map, specular, or whatever the map is in the _hl texture.

 

My money why you have sorting issues still is because of vertex order. basically a mesh is drawn on screen according to vertex number. so any sorting issues you have now are probably caused by that faces verts being a higher number than any faces in front of it. so it's basicsally drawn that face thats closer to the camera in the zbuffer. and then tries to draw a face behind it.. = error. It's one of the inherent flaws in the system

 

the solution is to kinda hand order the vertices of the mesh. basically this means setting it up so the inner most faces have a lower number in the vertex number index than any outer most faces.

[flaggpuss]

ok, so there's a list/index that says vertices and within that is a bunch of numbers telling the position and maybe more of each of the vertices. There's thousands of them of course, the triangles have less entries, what I would call faces with my prior little knowledge of them.

 

"caused by that faces verts being a higher number than any faces in front of it"

 

Do you mean vertices being higher than the faces (triangles according to Nifskope) that they actully make? Or do you mean faces that are higher than vertices?

"drawn that face thats closer to the camera in the zbuffer. and then tries to draw a face behind it"

 

So the vertices aren't in their correct rendering spot ingame, as they are not in the correct spot in the vertice index under NriTriShapeData, but shows up rendered perfectly in Nifskope, but because they are not listed in the order their supposed to be in this index, they do not render the faces/Hair as it should be ingame? Do I have what your saying correctly?

"the solution is to kinda hand order the vertices of the mesh. basically this means setting it up so the inner most faces have a lower number in the vertex number index than any outer most faces."

 

What and where are the inner most faces and outer in the block details? I found that there are num vertices which displays a number and a vertices index under that which has what it seems every position of the verts on the mesh. Then there's the same for faces/triangles but the triangles have another spot in block details that triples the number of triangles that's found in num triangles. So how do I lower the face number and which one, the num triangle or the one that triples that one? Do i have to get offsets and subtract them or something? Please give me a post or link or some type of example on how to go about doing what you said.

 

Edit:The pics of the hair is up

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10836

[Ghogiel]

look up z-buffer/depth buffer. then try to find a paper explaining why the flaws in alpha transparency vertices and alpha sorting issues happen. It'll be the same for every game that uses a zbuffer, which is most of them.

 

to reorder the vertices in a mesh is done before exporting. it's not something you can do in nifskope. its done by attaching all the separate pieces of the mesh in order so they render inside to out

 

actually the image you posted could be other issues. But I can't speculate anymore.

[flaggpuss]

 

to reorder the vertices in a mesh is done before exporting. it's not something you can do in nifskope. its done by attaching all the separate pieces of the mesh in order so they render inside to out

 

 

That comment made me think just a bit more, I found out that in the mist of confusion I exported and imported the mesh as a .obj. My theory is that when this happened, the verts lost their order. so I just went back to the original oblivion mesh and copied the NriTriShapeData and just pasted it in the one that I was working on, turned on vertex colors and moved it into place and stuff, set TSpaceFlag to 16, update tangent space and it finally worked all the way. Thank you for sticking with me as long as you did, thank you. I'm going to post images of the fixed version. Now that I converted this hair to fallout do I ask the oblivion author if it's okay to upload the converted hair, or do I just credit him?

[Ghogiel]

Now that I converted this hair to fallout do I ask the oblivion author if it's okay to upload the converted hair, or do I just credit him?

Unless the permissions are as such that it explicitly gives you permission to use/convert the model, you have to ask for those permissions.

then you will want to credit the author as common courtesy/modders etiquette

[flaggpuss]

Now that I converted this hair to fallout do I ask the oblivion author if it's okay to upload the converted hair, or do I just credit him?

Unless the permissions are as such that it explicitly gives you permission to use/convert the model, you have to ask for those permissions.

then you will want to credit the author as common courtesy/modders etiquette

 

I'm going to ask him/her see about it right now, thank you for everything :biggrin: