CM Partners x117 Race

[Rabbit1251]

As the title suggests I am trying to make a companion using Blackie's CM Partners mod on an x117 figure. As you may, or may not, know the x117 Race is a small body with a large head in proportion to the body giving the appearers of a child. Everything seems to work well except when it comes to creating the head for the figure. The hair, mouth, ears and eyes are "bugged out" or floating away from the head. If I go ahead anyway and save the esp the game crashes when my character enters the same cell where the companion resides. Does anyone know how I may fix this? Thank you.

 

 

Rabbit

[Natterforme]

Any time a body part or weapon is floating around, it means your weights are not correct. Reweight your child CM parters body mesh and try again. If that doesnt help, post a response. Good luck ^^.

[Rabbit1251]

Thank you for the tip, Natterforme. It looks like I will have to learn weighting. If I may impose on you further what application will I need to use for this. Would it be Blender? Thank you.

 

 

Rabbit

[Natterforme]

Absolutely!^^ I use blender all the time and have had to go through learning how to weight items properly myself. But before I go into it, do you not normally use Blender? I dont want to give you directions to a program you are not familiar with. Once I was told how to do it, it is usually very easy, if a little monotonous.

[Rabbit1251]

Actually I can get around in the Construction Set after a fashion, but Blender is like Nuclear Science to me and I haven't gotten past just starting it up before getting scared off. If you know of a tutorial on weighting that you could direct me to I would be most appreciative. I've looked, but I do not have a link to such in my library as yet.

 

 

Rabbit

[Natterforme]

Ok this is a step by step on how to bone weight items you want. It is based off of instructions given to me by a fellow modder about a month ago:

 

Hmm. Sounds like you made a few missteps. I'll list out instructions that apply to Blender.

1. Select each object and delete all the vertex groups.

--this means each object to be weighted

2. Import a body that is similar to the form of your equipment.

--use a default body that you are comfortable with, it will probably be the child body

-- in order to import a body, go to file, import, and choose netimmerse/gamebro(this is the basic .nif file format used in oblivion game engine

--this assumes you use blender 2.49 or higher with pyffi and nif scripts. I dont use the most updated version because of bugs. If you need help getting these items, just ask and I can point you in the right direction. It is all free and easy to install^^.

3. Delete the bones.

4. Select every object. Select the body last so it is highlighted.

5. Go to Object->Scripts->Bone Weight Copy and set it to Quality Level 3.

--if the script fails to initialize, that means that the object to be weighted contains a vertex group, recheck the pieces and make sure they are clean

--vertex groups are listed to the bottom left corner

6. Grab a snack or a drink and wait until it finishes.

--No really, get something, this could take a while. the only way I can think of that would lower the amount of time it takes to "bake" this process faster is with a small file size or a super high end system. I run all my files from a stock hp laptop, so dont get worried if you think your system cant handle it^^.

7. You probably won't have to go in and manually weight paint... Probably.

The only times I can think of that need more manual weighting is when you have items that are supposed to react to certain actions, but remain still in others. A good example is the BBB animations. Also, capes and coat tails can be a hassle.

8. Select everything and import a fresh skeleton with Parent to Selected as the importing option.

-- you can either use your own custom child bones that you have made or use a stock borrowed from another child mod you use to simulate. I think you can also use one of the universial skeletons and scale it down in proportion to your child's size, but I ve never had the need to try it. Also, I think this is what is used in vanilla imp animations.

9. Select only the Skeleton when you export and it will export out all the parented pieces.

-- You may wonder why you should only export the skeleton to a nif file. This is because parenting the skeleton to the new object makes the object a dependent. So, now anywhere the bones go, the clothes/body mods will follow^^.

Hopefully everything works out for you?

 

If you have any more questions, dont hesitate to ask.