Invisible clothing

[Nephenee13]

Drake, are there any good tutorials for NifSkope? I'm learning what I can through trial and error, but something that runs through the basics would be really useful.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, I'm a self-educator as well, always learning by doing and only reading up on the basics, and as NifSkope itself is pretty simple... no, let's call that "basic" rather (or "elementary"? Can't find an expression for down to the basics but not degrading in the process), but can do a multitude of things from helpful to inevitable for post-export fix-ups or even compile and arrange a complete set of meshes into something "new" without ever touching a modelling app, I actually didn't read that much about it but just figured things out myself by playing around with it.

 

Nevertheless, this is a good place to start. The NifTools homepage with instructions and tutorials always was almost the only source of information I needed. (I say almost, because there were some situations I wanted to do something less documented and had to read up about it somewhere else.)

Edited November 19, 2011 by DrakeTheDragon

[NaomeShade]

Bodysuitliner.... that's a black area right in the place of basin. I didnt even touch it. Should I remove it?

As for the black spikes... It's a correct word. But when I launched the game one more time I saw this...

 

There was nothing outside this menu though. Only the belt part of the suit looked correctly.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Ah, no, now I understand its purpose, I think. If you didn't even touch it, then it being outside-in was intended to begin with, and this means its purpose is likely to give the suit an "inside" for the area you can look into from below. The clipping only comes from me making it outside-out again, which is against its purpose. In this case, as you removed most of the lower areas of the suit, having their inside untouched will likely look weird from outside now. You couldn't look through it before, because the suit mesh was over it. Now you removed this part of the suit mesh though and now you can look through it. I'd say, get rid of it entirely for your cuts to have the intended effect.

 

I wasn't debating if "black spikes" was a correct word or not, I just don't know what you mean by it. There's a multitude of things I know one could describe with this, so all I was asking for was some more information which of them it is for you. The screenshot shows some polygones stretching into infinity behind you though, so I guess that's your black spikes? Them being black indicates missing their normalmaps (also happens when textures themselves aren't found), and them stretching into infinity means they're missing bones they were rigged to in your skeleton. This last one stumbs me though, as this is not happening for me, there are no spikes coming out your mesh, whether black nor textured. Probably I just have the required bones already by using Growlf's Universal Skeleton since a long time, but you seem to be missing some and I wonder what those could be. Tail's coming into mind here, as many modders rigged their items to tail bones to give'em some "sway", and non-beast races don't have tail bones by default. But this is again only guessing.

 

First thing to fix here still is the missing normalmaps issue which renders the mesh invisible for you. When I change the texture assigned in NifSkope to one with proper pathing and where the normalmaps are properly found in the same folder (I simply used the default textures from SPB, so only changed the path, not the filename, to "textures/armor/speedbuster/mercenary/"), it's working fine for me, so there seems to be the issue situated on your side.

 

I think I could just start over, now that I know the purpose of the Bodysuitliner and that my "fixes" only made things worse, fix the pathes so they point to speedbuster's files at their default location (provided that's where the originals are on your side also) and send you the file. Though it's pretty pointless, if "textures/armor/speedbuster/mercenary/" is not where the textures are located on your side.

[mrlosesafer]

YOU IMPORTED A NIF IN BLENDER AND EXPORTED IT USING THE SAME SEEN ROOT. THIS CANNOT BE DONE!

YOU NEED A NEW SKELETON . there are too different one . one will import one wont . then.. read this pic http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41155

I use to have that a lot.. so I did a lot of ready and after about a year I can import and export the nif after modifying it .. good luck .

let me know if these steps work.. they should

ps caps is targeting ;)

[Nephenee13]

Make sure you use Growlfs Universal Skeleton.

[DrakeTheDragon]

YOU IMPORTED A NIF IN BLENDER AND EXPORTED IT USING THE SAME SEEN ROOT. THIS CANNOT BE DONE!

YOU NEED A NEW SKELETON . there are too different one . one will import one wont . then.. read this pic http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41155

I use to have that a lot.. so I did a lot of ready and after about a year I can import and export the nif after modifying it .. good luck .

let me know if these steps work.. they should

ps caps is targeting ;)

While I agree that using a clean skeleton (only 1 and removing all others) is a safe and sound way to get it right, it is not the "only" way.

 

The first line of this is wrong and definitely needs to be corrected. You can very well import and export a NIF into and out of Blender while not even remotely touching the armature in the process. You import the thing (1 file!) as a whole (geometry + skeleton), modify certain things about it, and export it again as a whole (geometry + skeleton) and most likely all things are working fine in the end. Depends on your import and export settings, of course, but I'm doing it on a regular basis. Maybe you'll need some NifSkope magic to fix the most obvious flaws of the export (renamed materials and node names, messed up texture paths, etc.) in the aftermath.

 

I admit it is "very" easy to mess up, if not done 100% right, this way, so the "clean skeleton" + "geometry only, parent to selected armature" approach is more advisable, but it is "not" the only way. There even are situations where you specifically have to do it the "import as a whole" way or things will not work out at all, but this is for pretty advanced tasks and some rare situations now.

 

To import more than 1 file, as in "merge" them, it is advisable "not" to always import "as a whole", but instead import the "geometry only and parent it to an already existing armature". That's where the "clean skeleton" comes into play, as you have to make sure "all" bones one of the files requires are present, which is not always the case, if you only imported the incomplete armature from another file. To maintain compatibility with most files you import, I copy that notion to use Growlf's Universal Skeleton resource for this. So far it combines most skeletons I know, at least "the most" compared to all other resources. However, take care you read the description and use the correct one without any fancy "I will act pretty weird when imported into Blender" warning stickers!

 

Keep this caps-locked line in mind for whenever you made a mistake and subsequently messed up your armature and NIF structure (A "Scene Root.00" inside a "Scene Root" or only a "Scene Root.00" at all are very common signs you did and will not work at all ingame!). You can then just delete "every" armature in Blender and import a new clean skeleton as the only one, and parent all geometry to this one before export. That's a sure-fire fix all the time.

 

Sorry for interrupting.

[mrlosesafer]

Make sure you use Growlfs Universal Skeleton.

Edited December 4, 2011 by mrlosesafer

[mrlosesafer]

YOU IMPORTED A NIF IN BLENDER AND EXPORTED IT USING THE SAME SEEN ROOT. THIS CANNOT BE DONE!

YOU NEED A NEW SKELETON . there are too different one . one will import one wont . then.. read this pic http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41155

I use to have that a lot.. so I did a lot of ready and after about a year I can import and export the nif after modifying it .. good luck .

let me know if these steps work.. they should

ps caps is targeting ;)

While I agree that using a clean skeleton (only 1 and removing all others) is a safe and sound way to get it right, it is not the "only" way.

 

The first line of this is wrong and definitely needs to be corrected. You can very well import and export a NIF into and out of Blender while not even remotely touching the armature in the process. You import the thing (1 file!) as a whole (geometry + skeleton), modify certain things about it, and export it again as a whole (geometry + skeleton) and most likely all things are working fine in the end. Depends on your import and export settings, of course, but I'm doing it on a regular basis. Maybe you'll need some NifSkope magic to fix the most obvious flaws of the export (renamed materials and node names, messed up texture paths, etc.) in the aftermath.

 

I admit it is "very" easy to mess up, if not done 100% right, this way, so the "clean skeleton" + "geometry only, parent to selected armature" approach is more advisable, but it is "not" the only way. There even are situations where you specifically have to do it the "import as a whole" way or things will not work out at all, but this is for pretty advanced tasks and some rare situations now.

 

To import more than 1 file, as in "merge" them, it is advisable "not" to always import "as a whole", but instead import the "geometry only and parent it to an already existing armature". That's where the "clean skeleton" comes into play, as you have to make sure "all" bones one of the files requires are present, which is not always the case, if you only imported the incomplete armature from another file. To maintain compatibility with most files you import, I copy that notion to use Growlf's Universal Skeleton resource for this. So far it combines most skeletons I know, at least "the most" compared to all other resources. However, take care you read the description and use the correct one without any fancy "I will act pretty weird when imported into Blender" warning stickers!

 

Keep this caps-locked line in mind for whenever you made a mistake and subsequently messed up your armature and NIF structure (A "Scene Root.00" inside a "Scene Root" or only a "Scene Root.00" at all are very common signs you did and will not work at all ingame!). You can then just delete "every" armature in Blender and import a new clean skeleton as the only one, and parent all geometry to this one before export. That's a sure-fire fix all the time.

 

Sorry for interrupting.

I have no luck with exporting a nif with its sceen root . after 47 attempts of trying just to import a nif then export it still did not work.the mesh was always invisable .. so i use a new skeleton and do what is needed then export it defualt settings

for oblivion untick stitch strips this is for armor or anything to do with the pc npc. not with world object. world objects have to be placed acordinly with a convexpoly with the correct properites . then exported as oblivon default

tic clutter and wood or metal etc. o and the properities being. string string string string float int. but gald to here that you can use the same seen root thats good for you. ;)