Blender invisible meshes

[Nephenee13]

Drake, there's something seriously screwy with that cuirass, I imported it and tried to parent the universal skeleton, but on export, there were only three more bones added. So I have no freaking clue at this point.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Yes, the cuirass doesn't have any armature at all!

Additionally, by exporting without an armature, any rigging data (the NiSkinInstance block in NifSkope) was totally lost in the process and the vertices have no weights anymore and nothing to stick to!

This file, the cuirass, is damaged beyond repair I'm afraid. Too much vital information was already lost on export.

 

The lowerbody part looks like you tried to merge two armatures, just like I mentioned previously. As a result the "Foot:Legs" mesh has no armature at all now, and the rest is rigged to an armature "Scene Root" <inside> the real "Scene Root"!

Perhaps this one could be recovered somehow, but I think it's best to start over with both of them, this time im- and exporting everything correctly.

Remember, no armature mixups in Blender! Always use "1" complete armature "skeleton only" prior to importing "geometry only, parent to selected armature" from your NIFs afterwards!

 

And last but not least, the coat one completes our collection of what all could possibly go wrong on merging items in Blender... think I've never seen it all in one mod until now...

There's a second root node, "Scene Root.00", inside the real "Scene Root", and this one contains the coat and a body mesh or something and a proper armature in star-structure. However, the game will not accept the second root node and simply ignore most of this file.

At the same time there's a bogus mesh outside of it all, at the same level as "Scene Root". This one the game also won't accept, as it doesn't even know what to stick its vertices to.

 

I'm sorry, but it seems your best bet would be to do the merging again from scratch, following my instructions on how to do it right.

If there's any further questions about it, don't hesitate to ask.

 

edit: Oh, almost forgot something else important! In the cuirass there's a part of the arm...thingy which has its own white line coming from the origin. This is not a bone node, so it can only mean the mesh was moved away from its place improperly, which is copied by there being a translation and rotation on the object itself, which, if you check the others, you'll see no other meshes ever have.

 

I suspect you moved and rotated this object in Object Mode and afterwards never "applied" this transformation to it. I got used to never doing these things in Object Mode but only in Edit Mode. This way the offset of the origin of the object won't be touched and everything stays fine.

 

Of course, you can do these transformations in Object Mode also, but then you'll always have to "apply" them to the actual object before you export it. Unfortunately the shortcut for the Apply context menu escapes my memory right now, maybe because I only rarely used it at all, but perhaps you can also access it via right-clicking the object or from the menu bar below... don't know anymore, sry.

Edited March 3, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[Ekzz]

Thank you that helps a little

 

I might have to read through that a few times to fully understand but its beginning to make more sense.

 

I have somehow managed to get the boots working in game. No idea how it happened but i am uploading a new updated file. For some reason, i cant attach files to my posts... Also i cant start discussion topics for my uploaded file which is odd but hey im a newb.

 

So to see the updated mod navigate here: http://tes.nexusmods...le.php?id=41723

and download AEU Vampire + Ranger.zip

To have a looksie...

 

No idea why that other file wouldnt download for you. No one else has mentioned it. Mind you, with comments supposedly not working (i dunno, i enabled them but cant comment >_<) i suppose they couldnt get hold of me. Well hopefully this one works. i will test it too.

[DrakeTheDragon]

That's a common one these days, comments not enabled although saying so. Just "report" your own file telling them what's up and the moderators or admins will fix it in no time.

 

As for the rest, I added it to the end of my previous post. I was finally able to download it and have a look, see my observations above.

I'll do the same with your updated file next, but it might take me a while to answer, as I have to do some work for my job first now.

 

edit: Need to fix your link. The "..." are in the url also now!

Edited March 3, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[Ekzz]

wow its a whole lot worse than i first thought... Oh well i only need to delete some faces from the original meshes anyway.

 

All I really wanted to do was to merge two nifs together and delete any faces that caused clipping. In this case, i used the boots from Underworld Sonja armor and Alir's Pants. The pants came through the boots tho so i deleted some faces in blender. I had no idea about skeletons and stuff so i just imported and exported using the default settings, as i was told to in a mesh merging tutorial.

 

So how do I know which skeleton to use - the one from underworld or the alir one?

 

EDIT: http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=41723

sorry about that :P

 

yeah fair enough take your time if you have to. its saturday night anyway time for me to party. will have to come back to this later once ive recovered. Happy weekend guys and thank you both so much for helping me ^.^

Edited March 3, 2012 by Ekzz

[DrakeTheDragon]

That one works now. But I must wait an hour for the files to propagate to the servers... guess I was too fast on this one now... Oh well.

 

As for which item's skeleton? Neither. Like I wrote, the cleanest way is to import the skeleton from "meshes/characters/_male/skeletonbeast.nif" with the "skeleton only, parent selected" option checked, so you only get the armature but a complete one. Then all NIFs you import from only use the "geometry only, parent to selected armature" option while having the one-and-only armature selected. That alone should lead to a usable NIF structure already, no matter what export options you use.

 

It's Saturday "morning" here for me, but I'm having an unhealthy schedule lately and am working through the whole night. Guess that's what you get for working at home, no office opening times. Happy weekend to you, too!

Edited March 3, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[Ekzz]

ohhh i get it ok it makes sense ty ty

 

Im fully recovered from my weekend. I havent had a drop of alcohol since october last year and sat night went and drank more than half a bottle of southern comfort. Wellllll im pretty small and i was wasted. I think it was cause we kept playing circle of death and smoke or fire. That went well >_< I have effectively reminded myself why i dont drink much anymore. lol.

 

So yeah thanks so much for your help. A nice character called Manks actually sent me a message. He's fixed the nifs for me and is going to send them to me. Saved. Going to give him huge credits in the readme lol.

 

Also, Manks mentioned that without flesh between the gaps in armour, those parts will be invisible =/ well thats another lesson for me lol

 

Working on a saturday? crime! you run your own business from home?

[DrakeTheDragon]

Glad to hear you got it sorted out.

 

For the future just remember "never" to use the armature coming with the clothing/armor NIFs when you're going about merging contents from several files. Chances are high they will not have all bones the other files require, and merging armatures from several files into one is rather complex and error-prone, as you have seen. Always import a complete armature from one of the base character skeleton.nifs with "skeleton only, parent selected" first and the items with "geometry only, parent to selected armature" later. Once I myself finally figured that one out the hard way, it's been a life-saver ever after! And when moving meshes around in Blender, keep in mind to either do this in Edit Mode right away, or to "apply" the transformations afterwards "by all means". The game doesn't like translation or rotation properties on clothing and armor items!

 

As for my job, no, it's not "my" business. It's a little web application software company from my brother, I'm just an employee. We design everything "web", from webpages' background functionality with PHP and Java (what makes the pages actually "do" something) to server-based applications, multiple-server ad-serving systems, impression- and click-tracking, conversion statistics and all that fancy business stuff they use to max out their income.The first we do for our own projects, what we call our "money printing machines" (a little initial effort, minimal maintenance throughout, and a constant income from shop-partners' provisions), the latter mainly for a big German internet business company, the ones behind GMX, 1&1, WEB.de and all those web portals, providing them with their own in-house ads for those huge websites, tracking income from click provisions and sale conversions, etc., whenever you see an ad banner on these pages with a little red shopping cart logo branding, that's one of ours, coming from the server-backend we developed for them.

 

It's fun sometimes, especially working for and with those business giants (8 million ad impressions per day, that is access to our server-backend to serve an ad for every page displayed, and our system has to cope with the load this produces without choking!... and they still haven't even started putting their own ads onto all their portals webpages. Right now it serves only as a fallback rather, whenever a 3rd-party-ad's booking runs out or something, still 8 mio. impressions a day already, imagine that!), but it's a lot of work, especially when we're close to another deadline again. Those big business guys don't like having to wait for their new shiny goodies, I can tell you. So there I am, working all day and night to finish a task before its deadline, getting horribly paid for a part-time job and don't even find enough time to finish my university diploma in applied computer sciences... let's not even talk about how little progress my modding projects make considering this immense amount of free time I have...

 

Oh well, you were asking for it, and once I started typing there's no stopping until I'm exhausted... or something. I apologize for the off-topic spam.

And for the records, I'm also working on Sundays, and what a holiday or vacation was about I lost memory of by now... just telling. :sweat:

 

Alright, back to business. Whenever there's anything again my little knowledge could help you with, just ask. That's what I'm hanging around here for, the little things I still can do, and enjoy. :wink:

Edited March 5, 2012 by DrakeTheDragon

[Ekzz]

wowie sounds like you need a holiday xD

 

Have you thought about trying alternative methods of making extra cash? life is playground. if you cant do what you really want to, you should change the game board :P thats my method anyway.

 

Besides all that. I got the nif back off Manks and it works great except i now have to add the gloves in. So i did exactly what you said in blender:

 

1. imported skeleton beast with "import skeleton only + parent selected"

2. imported gloves mesh with "import geometry only + parent to selected armature" (while selecting the skeleton as i found that was the only way to import this way without an error)

3. edited the mesh on the gloves a little (just deleting some vertices)

4. imported the rest of the mesh (the entire top) same as step 2

5. edited the gloves a bit more to prevent clipping

6. exported entire mesh as nif.

7. opened nifskope and did afterwork previously mentioned

 

After that i had the exact same result - invisible meshes in oblivion. what the hell??

 

Anyway if you are curious to see, ive uploaded just the nif to my mod here http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=41723

its the one that says for Manks. I'm hoping someone will be able to tell me what im doing wrong.

[Nephenee13]

Importing the skeleton should be the last thing you do.

 

Open the mesh (or import it from a NIF file). If there is an existing skeleton (generally shown with a set of horizontal lines at the skeleton nodes) select it and delete it.

 

Make all you changes to to the mesh that you want. Select the ENTIRE mesh in Object mode (Hit "A", make sure everything is selected). Go to Import NIFs and import the Skeleton (or Skeleton Beast, you are using the Universal Skeleton, right? In that case it doesn't matter, both are identical) and import it with "Import Skeleton Only and Parent Selected", once its imported, immediately export the NIF.