Texture and Mesh relationship

[wektis]

Hi all,

 

Uploaded my first mod here: Spuds Primm Town House

 

Been up for around a day now and there are some comments in relation to missing textures/meshes in the armory.

 

The weapons and ammo are stockable/displayable items, to achieve this and to allow the player to pick up the item from display they are books with the meshes changed to either an ammo box or weapon in order to allow me to attach my pick up script.

 

Using FoMM I extracted the standard .nif files to data/meshes/spuds_stuff/meshes/ammo etc and used these to replace the book meshes. I included the appropriate directories and files with my mod when uploaded to the nexus.

 

Researching the missing mesh/textures here on the forums tells me that the .nif files should automatically be associated to the mesh files, is this correct?

 

I also found a topic on NifSkope, downloaded that and confirmed on a sampling of 10 .nif files that the textures are indeed associated.

 

Am I missing something here? There are only a few comments re this issue on my mod so the only conclusion I'm coming to at the moment is that perhaps some people have moved the meshes folder from inside the spuds_stuff folder thereby removing file associations.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Maybe your texture paths are hardcoded to c:\program files\... etc and they don't have their steam dir on their c: drive.

[wektis]

Thanks for your reply. I rechecked NifSkope.

 

Currently textures are set to for example:

 

textures\weapons\2handhandle\MinigunBackPack_n.dds

 

This does not show the texture on the model in NifSkope. When I hard code the specific drive ie:

 

c:\program files\... etc

 

The texture does show in NifSkope.

 

I left the texture reference as the first mentioned because I was expecting what you describe in that not everyone will have the game installed on the same directory, and I just know if I change it to the more specific reference there are still going to be people having issues.

 

I'm wondering if a .bsa archive is the way to go here? I'll check those out but hopefully someone can come up with something to help :)

 

Wek.

[davidlallen]

Never hardcode the full path of a texture file. You do not need to make bsa. Probably, your nifskope setup is incorrect. Please use the render->settings menu choice in nifskope and go the the rendering tab. Make sure that the path listed here is your actual install path, up to "data". Then you will see the textures display in nifskope without needing a full path.

[wektis]

Thanks David, that did the trick in NifSkope.

 

If I open each mesh then just save in NifSkope will this carry over for when the mod is downloaded and installed on different machines?

 

I hope its as simple as this, does seem a little weird that this would work even though the basic information appears to be the same >.>

 

 

*edit* it worked on the first test I guess because I extracted and the texture from the .bsa suppose I will need to have texture folder available as well... which takes me back to the question: I thought the .nif files auto associated with the textures in the .bsa files?

Edited February 20, 2011 by wektis

[davidlallen]

You should check each texture path in nifskope to make sure it does not contain any absolute path. That will not work reliably on all players' machines. Nifskope does not look into bsa files. Many modders expand all of the base game bsa files into another directory (not under "data", under some other place like My Documents). Then they add this directory in the render->settings tab to ensure nifskope will look there also. So nifskope finds the base game files by looking into this other directory, while geck and the game find them by looking into the bsa files.

[wektis]

Thanks again.

 

I guess the moral of the story for new modders like myself is that if you extract a mesh from a .bsa archive, also extract the texture and associate it in NifSkope per the above.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I wouldn't do that... textures are big, meshes are small. You just have to accept that nifskope can't see inside a bsa. It doesn't explain why your mod users have problems in game though.

[wektis]

Your right Quetz I'm still not sure what the issue is in game, it works fine here with the file associations as they are it may be some nigly little thing I cant find.

 

 

So I figure with no other responses my only recourse to rectify it would be to extract the textures and associate them to include in my mod files.

[wektis]

I had a thought, I don't know much about Texture Sets, would doing something with these avoid having to upload the textures? I mean if they can be associated to the .bsa files in GECK and in turn associated with the meshes, then that would work right?