DRK-2PEX Alteration - Major Seam Gaps on Export

[DoctorL]

I've been working on trying to fix these seams all day, but to no avail. I'm working on adding bounciness to this body for Fallout 3 as well as having multiple new clothing edits. These are my import settings for the body.

 

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9417/importb.th.png

 

And these are for the skeleton when I go to export.

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/8043/simport.th.png

 

I've tried several variations of that and keep getting the same results. However, everything appears fine in Blender itself. Here is the body imported along with the hands and head.

 

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3231/bleft.th.png

 

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/7898/bneck.th.png

 

As you can see, there are no seams. When I export the body and then re-import it to see if the gap shows then, it doesn't. It's still fine. Here are the seams in question.

 

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/2778/leftug.th.png

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/3289/neckq.th.png

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/2382/rightz.th.png

 

And here are my export settings. Again, I've tried a couple different things. All produce the same result.

http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6963/exporte.th.png

 

This occurs even if I make no changes to the body. As a test, I imported the body unaltered, and then exported it. Either way, I get the seams. Nifskope doesn't say anything about translation or anything. I've tried copying the branch and pasting it into the original file. I still get the seams.

 

If anyone has advice or help to offer, I'd gladly appreciate it. This is driving me insane.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

U got some lovely seams there!

Edit: Ok about your actual separation of body at the gaps I added another suggestion, but i have not experienced it. was only looking at the visible texture seam in the blender pics when i wrote the post. Also on your import settings, you do not want to apply skin deformation to your mesh, Please click the restore default settings button. And then when you import skeleton and then import body parts separately u can just change the 2 buttons for skeleton only or geometry only and leave the rest the way it is by default.

 

Yeah i beeen looking into methods for reducing seams on my outfit that are currently like yours, I think i do this as the very last thing before i am finished with it.

 

Anyway There are some other methods people have been using to deal with it. Such as copying all their outfit over to an existing body. This is not exactly what i want because first of all you get unnecesary polys underneath the cloths, and also if you have the clothing tight on some areas or otherwise modifying the shape of the body its no good either.

 

The other way that i have seen used is to import head and hands and join them to the body removing double vertices at each connecting edge loop. U make sure the datablock for material is different for the head and hands and while blender smooths the normals between the objects as they are joined, the nifscripts exporter will separate the objects for you. You need to discard the head and hands tho afterwards for compatibility reasons, and the head vertex order will be destroyed by the process anyway, but it should get the bodys normals closer to what you want.

 

If there is actually a physical seam, then you can use the 3d cursor to snap the vertices on the edge loop to the location to corresponding ones on head and hands meshes before joining em. And it is possible that there may be more vertices on one side than another, well then modify the body to remove the extra vertices.

 

Kobayne, in that thread seemed to have accomplished quite a lot with texture work as well.

 

The most interesting method was kobaynes last suggestion about making a neck strip to go directly over the gap area and using transparency to fade it out on both sides. I am certainly going to give that one a try.

 

This is the thread i was referencing for a lot of the ideas.

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/184668-nifskope-blender-keeping-smooth-normals/

Edited January 24, 2011 by baduk

[DoctorL]

Ok about your actual separation of body at the gaps I added another suggestion, but i have not experienced it. was only looking at the visible texture seam in the blender pics when i wrote the post. Also on your import settings, you do not want to apply skin deformation to your mesh, Please click the restore default settings button. And then when you import skeleton and then import body parts separately u can just change the 2 buttons for skeleton only or geometry only and leave the rest the way it is by default.

 

Tried that

 

Anyway There are some other methods people have been using to deal with it. Such as copying all their outfit over to an existing body. This is not exactly what i want because first of all you get unnecesary polys underneath the cloths, and also if you have the clothing tight on some areas or otherwise modifying the shape of the body its no good either.

 

Agreed, but this happens with just exporting the body. Exporting the body and clothes is the same story.

 

The other way that i have seen used is to import head and hands and join them to the body removing double vertices at each connecting edge loop. U make sure the datablock for material is different for the head and hands and while blender smooths the normals between the objects as they are joined, the nifscripts exporter will separate the objects for you. You need to discard the head and hands tho afterwards for compatibility reasons, and the head vertex order will be destroyed by the process anyway, but it should get the bodys normals closer to what you want.

 

Tried that

 

If there is actually a physical seam, then you can use the 3d cursor to snap the vertices on the edge loop to the location to corresponding ones on head and hands meshes before joining em. And it is possible that there may be more vertices on one side than another, well then modify the body to remove the extra vertices.

 

Tried this too, but the edges are already lined up according to Blender.

 

The most interesting method was kobaynes last suggestion about making a neck strip to go directly over the gap area and using transparency to fade it out on both sides. I am certainly going to give that one a try.

 

This raises another issue, since the body is slightly rotated, moved, whatever when it gets exported (even though Nifskope says otherwise), the weighting gets messy and animations look odd at shoulders, elbows, etc. So, that doesn't fix that problem unfortunately.

 

Thanks for trying though baduk.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

I sure hope that you are able to fix your problem.

 

It sounds like somehow the skinning got messed up on your body mesh and now it wont animate properly.

 

Try getting the original version of the mesh, import that one, u know with defaults so it doesnt get that apply skin deformation or any other settings that can damage it.

 

then you can make sure the neck and wrist gap on your problem mesh is lined up exactly and then delete all the vertex groups and make new skinning with bone weight copy script.

 

And then keep using default settings for importing cause that will avoid future problems.

[DoctorL]

That's the thing baduk. I imported the original body without any changes and then exported it to see if I had done something wrong. The gaps still showed up. That's using the default settings or otherwise.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Ok in blender when u have the body in try deleting the armature and then import skeleton.nif with an animation atached to it and see if the gaps appear.

[DoctorL]

No gap.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_smKdOCuTO0Q/TT20_MVlBUI/AAAAAAAAABQ/5qPCYpgFAjo/s912/Neck.png

 

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_smKdOCuTO0Q/TT20_U5fu-I/AAAAAAAAABU/oRo5h0-dWBE/s1280/Right.png

 

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_smKdOCuTO0Q/TT20_oAQnxI/AAAAAAAAABY/x5M71iiivzc/s912/Left.png

[DoctorL]

Ok, so here's what I've decided to do. I'm going to export new hands and such when I export the body, because when I do that, it lines up. I'm going to take everything but the head and nudge the body until the gap is gone from the neck.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

I was interested in your problem, so i downloaded drk-2pex body and i also downloaded exnem bigger breast body to make comparison and look for problem.

 

There is a problem with nimaterialproperty name of arms01 as reported in this thread.

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/176034-drk-2pex-body-replacer-beta-endorsements/page__view__findpost__p__2628357

 

If you use correct import procedure you will get error nimaterialproperty has no attribute _parent

 

So fix it by removing the reserved name bip01 r upperarm from nimaterialproperty of arms01

 

There is one other problem unrelated to animation. environment mapping shader flag is not assigned on arms01

 

I tested it a bit with different poses against other bodys and it seems to deform properly in blender. It should work ingame just fine if you fix these 2 problems.

[DoctorL]

Actually, I caught the material name thing too. As for the Environment Mapping, it seems to be on. :pinch:

 

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/862/83546997.th.png