Nif Exports textures oddly

[BlightRaptor]

I was making some armor tweaks using Max 2010 with Niftools plugins 3.5.5.4728 and all was going well until I came to the dark brotherhood mesh. There are two spots on the mesh that don't seem to be textured when imported into the game. Basically they show up as black strips.

 

screenshot

 

At first I thought it might have been something I'd done while in Max, but then I ran an unmodified version of the mesh through the same pipeline and it had the same problem in the same two spots. Any ideas where the hiccup might occur?

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Try flipping the normals of those faces. I dont know max but you probably can turn on a cactus view thing to show what direction normals are facing.

[BlightRaptor]

Hi!

 

Try flipping the normals of those faces. I dont know max but you probably can turn on a cactus view thing to show what direction normals are facing.

 

 

Hi. Thanks for the input, but flipping the normals does not seem to have an effect.

 

Update:

I've almost got the normals working. It's very strange... It seems like flipping them, then flipping them back gets it correctly. I don't know though, I'll have to experiment and see if it consistently produces the same results.

Edited March 6, 2011 by BlightRaptor

[BlightRaptor]

I haven't been able to reproduce any successful flips. Right now what happens is if I flip the normals of the troublesome faces, when tested in the game they will be invisible (which is what tends to happen when normals aren't facing the right way.) So I would guess that somewhere the nif is telling Oblivion to show those faces as black, or their specularity isn't being displayed right. (The "magic" effect makes them appear gray.)

 

Out of curiosity, I tested this with various edits of the dark brotherhood armor including the vanilla mesh. In every instance, after going through the import/export process (no editing) the resulting .nif has the same artifacting in game in the exact same spots. Could there be something in importer/exporter settings or in Nifskope that might have the be changed. Mind you, I've not had this problem with any other meshes from the game (yet.)

[sputnik421]

From the screen shoot it looks like a problem with the normals. Have you tried to make those ploys 2 sided then both sides will be polygons, only do it for the polys that are not working though

[LHammonds]

Have you tried running the "Spells --> Batch --> Update All Tangent Spaces" in NifSkope?

 

It looks like the vanilla textures so if you are using the exact same diffuse and normal map textures that ships with the game, the problem is not in the texture. And if you tested it by importing the vanilla armor and immediately export without any changes, it must be related to the import/export process somehow.

 

The 1st and easiest steps are to run through the NifSkope spells, then check to make sure you are importing and exporting the NIF properly although, many import/export problems typically end up as a non-functional NIF. This is quite baffling...but then again, I only use Blender so I don't know the quirks to 3ds Max and the NIF format.

 

LHammonds

[baduk]

I dont know but maybe you could also check and see if there are duplicate faces overlapping on that spot. Check what the uv map coordinates are on those faces.

[sputnik421]

I have a 3DS Max plugin that lets me open a nif directly with Max, are you using this method or exporting from nifscope as 3ds or obj?

[BlightRaptor]

I have a 3DS Max plugin that lets me open a nif directly with Max, are you using this method or exporting from nifscope as 3ds or obj?

 

 

I am currently using the nif importer/exporter from the Niftools site. I haven't tried any tweaking with Nifskope yet because I hadn't found a great deal of differences between the untouched nif and the ones I've output (in terms of their block info.) I have not found any duplicate faces, but what I have noticed is from trying different exports is that you can see the texture sometimes; however it will still appear very very dark (and then very very white, once the magic effect kicks in.)

 

I will look into LHammonds suggestion and double check the UV coordinates.

 

Edit/Update:

 

Updating the tangent space appears to have worked. The boot strap looks normal, but there is one oddity with the torso strap. It gets very very dark in.. well... the dark, and is easily noticed on the inventory screen.

 

Screenshot

 

And I am now realizing this thread is more 50/50 a Max and Nifskope question.

Edited March 9, 2011 by BlightRaptor

[LHammonds]

Is that strap a separate object with a different material? Would not make any sense to me if they were the same object as the shirt sharing the same material. It makes me think they are separate and the material settings are wonky.