Issues with NIF file in-game

[XiNAVRO]

Screenshot attached to show the issue.

 

http://i.imgur.com/weH9Fuz.jpg

 

So I started fiddling with Blender last week. As I have stumbled upon a new method that uses 3DSMax and Blender 2.49 on the Nexus wiki, I decided to give it a shot. Rather than creating a new file from scratch and wondering where I went wrong, the approach I took was to modify an existing item first and see how it works in the game. The candidate I chose is DixiePig's Slooty Vault Suit, as I wasn't too happy with the proportions but did not like how Bodyslide skewed the clothing part either.

 

Most of the process went fine, and while I was testing the file I was able to see it in the game performing as I intended; problem is, only a specific part of the clothing was showing up. The vault suit part was showing, but nothing else - no skin, no belt, no boots.

 

I did not touch anything in the ESP file, and copied all the material properties from the original file to minimize any chance of making a mistake. I have went through Blender to make sure no orphaned VGroups were remaining, and made sure all vertices had been weight painted as well (not that I would assume this is the culprit, as all I did was change the proportions of the original mesh keeping its weights intact).

 

 

Not sure what I am doing wrong. The file in question is here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?voficp0d25gql5r

[JonathanOstrus]

I had a very similar issue with an item I was working on. For me it turned out to be a skinning issue. The exporter plugin in 3DS (I think) was screwing things up. I had to load the nif in Outfit Studio, export to OBJ, close and reopen Outfit Studio to reset things, load a reference, import my obj, re-weight in OS, then export nif. Once I did that everything was working as intended. I was really hoping to remove that whole mess of OS stuff and just export from 3DS direct to functional nif but I haven't found a proper settings workflow to do that.

 

As a note, taking your nif, exporting each mesh to obj via Outfit Studio, loading CBBE or vanilla body as ref, then importing each obj and doing a basic copy weights generates a full working nif. I didn't play with it much as I don't have the material files installed but it was functional as far as I could tell.

 

P.S. I love that face. Is that a pre-set you found or one you made yourself?

[XiNAVRO]

For me it turned out to be a skinning issue. <snip>

 

That was indeed the case - as stated in the wiki linked in the OP, it was showing up as invisible due to unused VGroups. To be more precise, I had a suspicion that it might be the vertices where the bone weight was less than 0.020; weight squashing and normalizing solved this issue. After taking a look at every VGroup and removing anything that seemed insignificant enough, the armor is now showing up in-game properly. Either figment's 3DS import / export plugin is making an issue handling the file, or Blender NIF plugin is unable to handle such fine print (as the original was working fine, must be the process of import/export).

 

 

 

P.S. I love that face. Is that a pre-set you found or one you made yourself?

 

Made it myself. Used the mesh mod Asian Face Enhanced with a slightly modified variant of my custom Skyrim face texture.