WorldShaperDragon Posted November 7, 2011 Share Posted November 7, 2011 Nif files are the reason I have no mods to my name here. Oh, I can model, just ask the guys on #transcendence or #naev on freenode But export to nif files? The thousands of adoring fan death videos on youtube do not do justice to my feelings towards nif files. As of oblivion, the process from model to game is a horrible, convoluted mess that I'm not masochistic enough to bother hammering away at any longer than I already have attempted. Hence why I am asking the question in the topic title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rustychops Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 (edited) Nif files are the reason I have no mods to my name here. Oh, I can model, just ask the guys on #transcendence or #naev on freenode But export to nif files? The thousands of adoring fan death videos on youtube do not do justice to my feelings towards nif files. As of oblivion, the process from model to game is a horrible, convoluted mess that I'm not masochistic enough to bother hammering away at any longer than I already have attempted. Hence why I am asking the question in the topic title. Nif files are Gamebryos exporting format. Skyrim isnt using Gamebryo. *edit* wait never mind they are still using it. Kinda interesting that they kept Gamebryos format for their new engine. Im going to be modding Skyrim (never modded oblivion) and well if its using nif format its not to bad. As long as it has a exporter for maya its fine for me : D Iv worked with it in the past. Kinda cool that its a format that stores all the textures and materials inside it so you create you're material network externally rather than using a bad hacked together in engine material editor. However this was using the Gamebryo nif exporter not bethesda one (if its any different?). Personally I find making materials in game far more anoying than setting it up in you're own modeling program (UDK excluded). Edited November 8, 2011 by rustychops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WorldShaperDragon Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Nif files are the reason I have no mods to my name here. Oh, I can model, just ask the guys on #transcendence or #naev on freenode But export to nif files? The thousands of adoring fan death videos on youtube do not do justice to my feelings towards nif files. As of oblivion, the process from model to game is a horrible, convoluted mess that I'm not masochistic enough to bother hammering away at any longer than I already have attempted. Hence why I am asking the question in the topic title. Nif files are Gamebryos exporting format. Skyrim isnt using Gamebryo. *edit* wait never mind they are still using it. Kinda interesting that they kept Gamebryos format for their new engine. Im going to be modding Skyrim (never modded oblivion) and well if its using nif format its not to bad. As long as it has a exporter for maya its fine for me : D Iv worked with it in the past. Kinda cool that its a format that stores all the textures and materials inside it so you create you're material network externally rather than using a bad hacked together in engine material editor. However this was using the Gamebryo nif exporter not bethesda one (if its any different?). Personally I find making materials in game far more anoying than setting it up in you're own modeling program (UDK excluded).maya? hmmmInteresting. Maybe I'll try that path vs. the 3dsmax one I was using previously. Are there any tutorials for that specific export path, any specific instructions - I've just seen blender & max, though they are both painfully convoluted? I know that the nif format varies between games (ie, morrowind nif =/= civ4 nif =/= oblivion nif, etc etc), so how do you get it from the pure gamebryo format to the game-specific nif? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greywaste Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 (edited) Nif files are the reason I have no mods to my name here. Oh, I can model, just ask the guys on #transcendence or #naev on freenode But export to nif files? The thousands of adoring fan death videos on youtube do not do justice to my feelings towards nif files. As of oblivion, the process from model to game is a horrible, convoluted mess that I'm not masochistic enough to bother hammering away at any longer than I already have attempted. Hence why I am asking the question in the topic title. Nif files are Gamebryos exporting format. Skyrim isnt using Gamebryo. *edit* wait never mind they are still using it. Kinda interesting that they kept Gamebryos format for their new engine. Im going to be modding Skyrim (never modded oblivion) and well if its using nif format its not to bad. As long as it has a exporter for maya its fine for me : D Iv worked with it in the past. Kinda cool that its a format that stores all the textures and materials inside it so you create you're material network externally rather than using a bad hacked together in engine material editor. However this was using the Gamebryo nif exporter not bethesda one (if its any different?). Personally I find making materials in game far more anoying than setting it up in you're own modeling program (UDK excluded).maya? hmmmInteresting. Maybe I'll try that path vs. the 3dsmax one I was using previously. Are there any tutorials for that specific export path, any specific instructions - I've just seen blender & max, though they are both painfully convoluted? I know that the nif format varies between games (ie, morrowind nif =/= civ4 nif =/= oblivion nif, etc etc), so how do you get it from the pure gamebryo format to the game-specific nif? What's been your problem with max exports? What version of max? I use max 9 and my exports have always been flawless, I've felt blessed personally that's it's so much easier than other games I've modded. If it's possible to use max for skyrim exports in the future I'll be happy to help if you still encounter problems Edited November 8, 2011 by greywaste Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WorldShaperDragon Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 Max 9 for nif. And I have never gotten it to export properly; even if I simply imported & then exported a working nif file (which I have done on multiple occasions to test & try to figure out what was going wrong)Meshes are often messed up (vertices in the wrong places, missing faces, etc), when they even show up in a game at all (missing mesh placeholders/mesh entirely absent). I appreciate the offer, though I'd much rather learn to get it set up right so that I can have flawless exports of my own and wouldn't be dependent on the schedules of others. How exactly did you have it set up? Maybe I screwed up the installation of the nif plugin or something, or am using a completely different export tool than you are using.I'm assuming by "Flawless" and "Easier", that once the model leaves the max, you don't need to do anything else with it. Just about every other game (as in, non-gamebryo games) I've made models for (ok, well, some of them used sprites rendered from the models, so beyond tweaking the lighting & camera settings, they were really easy to do. Assembling spritesheets could be annoying depending on file requirements though, until I ended up programming my own sprite sheet assembler that accounted for those peculiarities) has been easier. Not even getting corrupted truespace scenes into max & blender was as painful as my experiences with exporting to nif (because the key difference between the two is that I succeeded in this, but not exporting the nif files), despite having to completely reconstruct the materials and parts of the meshes by hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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