Egm Help Needed

[nivea]

Alright I thought I had this all figured out, but clearly I do not.

If someone would be so kind as to post a "play by play" of all the steps needed to make a working .egm for some piercings I am trying to finish to release.

From Blender to FNVEdit everything, even if its somthing I should know.

 

I would be greatful ~_~

[Ghogiel]

I use scanti's conformulator.

 

just export the nif as normal, now open the nif. export as obj. < you will get an error if you use the nif as an input. This only works with oblivion nifs. But the Obj works fine.

 

Now run the conformulator.

 

for the head use the head tri file that you head gear/hair is for.

 

for the hair input use the obj.

 

I can't remember if nearest point or nearest face is the best quality. I think there is a help file somewhere explaining all that. might be on the DL page.

 

hit conformulate,

 

you now have an egm that matches your exported nif.

Edited May 24, 2011 by Ghogiel

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I have made egms for some headgears before, more or less following what Ghogiel just said. There is a readme in the dl for the conformulator that explains it. I have always had to move it around afterward in order for it to match the head position, and I have never gotten them to actually "conform", i.e. you make your head wider and your mesh changes with it. I don't know what step I might be missing for that. But other than those 2 things it seems to work fine.

[nivea]

I use scanti's conformulator.

 

just export the nif as normal, now open the nif. export as obj. < you will get an error if you use the nif as an input. This only works with oblivion nifs. But the Obj works fine.

 

Now run the conformulator.

 

for the head use the head tri file that you head gear/hair is for.

 

for the hair input use the obj.

 

I can't remember if nearest point or nearest face is the best quality. I think there is a help file somewhere explaining all that. might be on the DL page.

 

hit conformulate,

 

you now have an egm that matches your exported nif.

 

This is my problem, I do everything you said Ghogiel to a T. It all shows up in game perfect everything works fine, except it does not conform. I need it to do that other wise I can not release my piercings/plugs or people will complain to me that it does not fit their characters and that the mod sucks then. :P

If I can not figure this out I will not be releaseing my jewelier mod, including the lovely bottle cap necklaces I have made... :\ so any more suggestions?

[Ghogiel]

What you have describe is that your egms aren't doing anything at all. Or you have not added them to a BSA archive, which afaik egms can only be read out of a bsa in NV... or was there a workaround to that?

 

Pivot centers. The meshes transforms are exported when you export to obj.

 

Basically you may need to make sure you have matched them up to the head. you can either export with them, Or you can set them up in the nif. You can give any mesh object any transforms you wish without ever changing it's object space. making the mesh object a child of a ninode, giving that ninode the final transforms you need, which will move the mesh object in object space, now you give the mesh itself the exact counter transforms, which should move it back to the correct position that you wanted it when you exported. Now rclick on that ninode and collaspes transforms. What should happen is that the mesh objects transforms should now be what were on that ninode, and the ninode should now be zero'd. That means you can unlink that mesh object from that node and delete it. Voilà

 

anyway, what you need is for the obj to be in the right place or else it will not pick up the morphs because it is too far away, which is what it sounds like what might be happening. When you create a tri file, how many morphs does it say it created? if it's like 0 then what I have described is likely the case. If you get morphs, then it is probably that you are not using BSAs

 

o_O

 

Isn't there a tutorial for using the blender egm function somewhere...?

Edited May 24, 2011 by Ghogiel

[Quetzlsacatanango]

They have to be in BSAs? I never knew that... I'm sure that is the problem, at least for me.

And it's not true that it does nothing... it still moves with the head and everything, just doesn't expand or otherwise change shape like it should.

[Ghogiel]

that whole BSA thing drove people wild for a couple weeks. Ask TK about it. I don't really know anything about it to be honest. You may have come across an issue: People who extracted their BSAs into their game folder get an issue with all the hair no morphing correctly. It's worth a try innit.

 

'moves with the head' sounds like you mean that it is attached to the head ala skinning. egms do not have anything to do with that. You either skin it or use a special extra data node to do that. prn. and the appropriate bone in the data field. Hair/hats 101.

 

edit: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1125649-geck-fnv-facegen-bug/

 

Well this is in particular to do with hair. but the symptoms are basically the same. So I am just assuming..

the relevent line is

"So, going back to the modded hairstyle in question, I used Fallout Mod Manager's BSA creator to create an archive for said asset. Deleted the loose files from the game dir, and put the new .bsa in place. The result is that the hairstyle now works with FaceGen as expected."

Edited May 24, 2011 by Ghogiel

[Quetzlsacatanango]

Right. Mine are unrigged meshes. The moving part still works after conformulation, as if it were rigged to the headbone. Just not the morphing part.

[nivea]

I get morphs when makeing a .tri, but for helmets/hats/piercings I dont think you would need a .tri file? I dont see any of those in the vanilla .bsa and I have packed them in a .bsa as well and it did nothing.

 

Why must this be so much more difficult then oblivion? lol

 

I guess I will try some more editing in blender, but I really do not know what I am doing wrong. I drop the head down in blender, fit the items to it. That is correct yes?

[Ghogiel]

I get morphs when makeing a .tri, but for helmets/hats/piercings I dont think you would need a .tri file?

yeah you don't need the tri for helmet/hats. I just mentioned that as it is like the easiest way to tell if you are getting something with the conformulator. Bum that the BSa thingy didn't work. That would have been the easy part. I know for a fact I have managed to get working egms on helmets in F3. I have pictures to prove it. not sure what's up with NV. :/