Nifskope Stuff

[arbider135]

I'm having an issue when i try to combine parts of other armors into one. One example is I tried combining the shorts from dragbody's "The Anger" from his 10 armor pack and the top of the "Nathan Drake" armor from his new armor pack on the nexus. I did successfully combine them but my problem is that in game my character's model is out of wack, and by that i mean that my back is strange, my readius is out of place, and i'm facing the wrong way when aiming. Example images are provided. And reminder, this only happens when wearing the nifskoped armor

Edited July 10, 2015 by arbider135

[KimberJ]

Prepare to have ... ... MIND BLOWN! lol :D

Armor as you know it, is actually an animation rig. Because it has to move around. To do that it bends an morphs the shape. Though existence could be simulated. Such as simulated cloth. But I digress. It's a puppet. A stick figure armature, hopefully with motion capture on it. Maybe mind not blown, we've all seen mocap. The stick figure is the skeleton or armature. It's in the center of the animation rig, just like a real skeleton. It's definitely weird an a little gross at first.

The stick figure is made of bones an we can put as many bones as we want for specific tasks. The fingers for example, need to move an bend like fingers. Though it's a simulation. So more often it's very primitive. Technical. Because it doesn't actually have to be "real" it just has to work in a simulated environment. So there is a grey area, hence the bending an morphing. Most of video games are like that, a grey area, because it just has to look an perform right.

Around the stick figure is the shape. Geometry made of dots that form triangles or polygons. The bones are set to grab all the geometry. Then in a hidden layer the geometry is painted different colors that correspond to different amounts (weights) of movement. Another way to think of it is painting it to be a solid item or an item that will bend an morph. The base actor is painted first then that is copied an edited for iterations upon it. Flushing it out.

Nifscope would need to be able to set a complete armature an then edit an paint and/or copy. It is possible an I've seen people do it. Though it's way too much work. This sort of thing is best done in a fast & easy streamlined manor. In that a workflow is developed to speed the process up. This depends on the artist, but is limited basically to Blender or 3D studio max (Autodesk). Blender is free an the Autodesk tech is very expensive though there are student licenses.

Fallout 3 an Fallout New Vegas are very easy to work with as far as the armors in Blender. Making it more easy is that LHammonds made a set for us to use. LHammond's Blender 249b Set Leave a thank you. Skyrim for example we can use Blender for, but finding the software to do it, maybe not so easy. Making matters worse is that Blender has gone from 249b to 274 or something. 249b was the old Blender at the height of it's day, which was also during the FO3/FNV era.

 

The Blender workflow I use for rigs (armor, creature, body) is import a base rig, then up to 10 or 11 other rigs in separate layers, shape it, cut it, join it, delete it, make new parts, UV 2D image to 3D shape, look for perspective, copy bone weight, edit bone weight, join or attach to skeleton ??? Then it's exported. The import settings never really change, an the export settings only really change between static or animated meshes. Then nifscope checks the blocklist an sets the shaders or materials after export.