Tutorial on editing body mesh?

[Heartcloud]

Did a google search but came up with no results, everything is on how to create armors, not interested in that. I was wondering how I can edit body meshes (eg, femaleupperbody.nif, femalefoot.nif)? Do I need blender for this or can nifskope handle the job? I tried to edit the waist area in nifskope but didn't find any function other than rotate and scale, which is pretty much useless as all it does is stretch the mesh into weird angles. I'm new to nifskope so I might have missed something though. What I wanted to try was to combine two user-created meshes, the DMRA body with the HGEC Pregnant body, ending up with a DMRA body with a pregnant belly. I tried to edit the DMRA femaleupperbody.nif but didn't find any function to stretch out the stomach.

Thanks. :laugh:

 

A side question: I remember that one of the clothing-pack mods here had a "wearable body shape". Basically it's a transparent piece of "clothing" that you wear simply to force your body into a different shape, highly useful. If anyone knows the procedure on exporting a body mesh .nif file into a clothing item and could tell me that would be great!

Edited June 29, 2011 by Heartcloud

[kingtitan]

I know this isn't really an answer, but I too have been looking for the same thing. I have been wanting to edit my own body meshes but I have not the slightest idea how to, considering google turns up just about nothing applicable. If someone with a bit more knowledge could help us both out I know I would very greatly appreciate it!

[DrakeTheDragon]

As the bodyparts are included within the armor or clothing items there's basically no difference between modeling an armor item and modeling a bodypart. The modeling app doesn't really care, it's both just vertices and polygones.

 

What makes such a mesh an actual bodypart though is a combination of material name "skin" (case doesn't matter) and a keyword in the name of the respective NiTriShape/Strips node telling which race texture slot to use. "upperbody"/"arms", "lowerbody", "hand", "foot" and "tail" (again case doesn't matter) are the ones I figured out so far. Their meaning should be self-explanatory, considering there are exactly 5 texture slots for a race in the CS. The ":" has a special meaning as it serves as a remark character somehow, enabling you to write anything you want after such a keyword and the game engine will still recognize it, like for example "Foot:Upperbody" will still use the foot texture but tell the person looking at the file that this mesh is meant to be the upperbody (irrelevant information the game engine does ignore).

 

There's one restriction though, although the game engine will ignore every setting you do in the material and the texture you assign, you still need to assign an "existing" file or will get the common "missing normalmap" error indicator (pitch black or invisible) ingame. Additionally it must also be using a filename which makes for a proper skin texture. I don't really know the rules myself, but renaming "footmale.dds" into "footmaledragon.dds" made my bodymesh 50% translucent.

 

Not using material name "skin" but a keyword in the NiTriShapes/Strips' name does nothing. It will be like a regular clothing item.

Using "skin" without a proper keyword in the name of the NiTriShapes/Strips will cause massive texture issues, as the game engine cannot decide which race texture to use for the mesh.

 

So to summarize, to edit body meshes you will need a modeling app, like Blender for example. NifSkope can't do much in "altering" meshes. The alteration itself is done just as usual, the same as with any other mesh, clothing, armor, whatever.

After export into NIF one has to make sure the conditions above apply or the mesh will not behave like a bodypart ingame. Blender for one tends to mess with the names of the NiTriShapes/Strips and/or materials and a little change like "skin" -> "skin.00" or "foot" -> "foot.001" (happens pretty often due to Blender not accepting the same name for more than 1 object, whereas NifSkope and the game does) will render it non-functional.

 

I hope this helps.

[Heartcloud]

As the bodyparts are included within the armor or clothing items there's basically no difference between modeling an armor item and modeling a bodypart. The modeling app doesn't really care, it's both just vertices and polygones.

 

What makes such a mesh an actual bodypart though is a combination of material name "skin" (case doesn't matter) and a keyword in the name of the respective NiTriShape/Strips node telling which race texture slot to use. "upperbody"/"arms", "lowerbody", "hand", "foot" and "tail" (again case doesn't matter) are the ones I figured out so far. Their meaning should be self-explanatory, considering there are exactly 5 texture slots for a race in the CS. The ":" has a special meaning as it serves as a remark character somehow, enabling you to write anything you want after such a keyword and the game engine will still recognize it, like for example "Foot:Upperbody" will still use the foot texture but tell the person looking at the file that this mesh is meant to be the upperbody (irrelevant information the game engine does ignore).

 

There's one restriction though, although the game engine will ignore every setting you do in the material and the texture you assign, you still need to assign an "existing" file or will get the common "missing normalmap" error indicator (pitch black or invisible) ingame. Additionally it must also be using a filename which makes for a proper skin texture. I don't really know the rules myself, but renaming "footmale.dds" into "footmaledragon.dds" made my bodymesh 50% translucent.

 

Not using material name "skin" but a keyword in the NiTriShapes/Strips' name does nothing. It will be like a regular clothing item.

Using "skin" without a proper keyword in the name of the NiTriShapes/Strips will cause massive texture issues, as the game engine cannot decide which race texture to use for the mesh.

 

So to summarize, to edit body meshes you will need a modeling app, like Blender for example. NifSkope can't do much in "altering" meshes. The alteration itself is done just as usual, the same as with any other mesh, clothing, armor, whatever.

After export into NIF one has to make sure the conditions above apply or the mesh will not behave like a bodypart ingame. Blender for one tends to mess with the names of the NiTriShapes/Strips and/or materials and a little change like "skin" -> "skin.00" or "foot" -> "foot.001" (happens pretty often due to Blender not accepting the same name for more than 1 object, whereas NifSkope and the game does) will render it non-functional.

 

I hope this helps.

Thanks DrakeTheDragon for the detailed answer.

If I understood correctly, basically I have to create or edit 4 "sculpts" of the body itself in Blender, femaleupperbody.nif, femalelowerbody.nif, femalefoot.nif, and femalehand.nif? I don't really have enough mesh editing skills to create an entirely new body mesh from blender. I was wondering if you know how to simply edit an existing one in Blender? I installed Blender as well as the Blender NIF plugin, but the interface is way too complex lol, and my Photoshop skills don't really help in 3D modeling. If anyone has some links to some body mesh editing tutorials in Blender that would be great, or has any interest/free time in combining the DMRA and pregnant body for tesnexus lol? :tongue:

 

I uploaded the two sets of meshes, too big for tesnexus so onto megaupload ^^

DMRA body mesh: [link]

Pregnant body mesh: [link]

 

Any help would be appreciated!

[Heartcloud]

I just tried to use blender to edit but couldn't get the proportional editing scale right... whenever I try to stretch the stomach area it stretches the entire mesh >_<

Darn so much harder than it looks...