LE Custom armor invisible in CK

[nazra7]

Hello everyone, I've been searching for hours and I've found several posts with almost the same issue, but I've tried all the solutions I could find and still nothing worked. I ripped an armor model from TERA Online and I'm trying to import it into Skyrim as a custom armor for my custom stand alone follower. Everything loads ok in NIfskope. But when I try to load it in the creation kit preview window the body mesh shows up, but the armor mesh is invisible with no errors. There are two reasons why I think this might be happening. Please let me know if this is correct and how I can fix these issues, or if its not either of these issues and what else it could be:

1. Under partitions, I know I am supposed to type in 32 (for torso armor) in Nifskope on the bottom entry. But every time I try to, the program automatically replaces the "32" with "SBP_32_BODY". I have no idea why this is happening, could this be the issue? And if so, how can I fix this?

2. Every tutorial I could find for making custom armor with 3ds max says, because when you export nif meshes from 3ds max the shader branch settings do not get exported properly, you're supposed to delete the shader branches in the nif files and replace them with a copied and pasted shader branch from the same, but original and unedited (by 3ds max) vanilla mesh nif file. The problem with this is, in my case, I don't have any original nif file for this armor because it was not originally a Skyrim model, it came straight from TERA. So instead, I tried copying and pasting another custom armor's shader branches that I know works in game instead because I couldn't think of anything else to do because none of the tutorials say what you have to do when working with a completely original mesh. However, people have said this invisible issue could be caused by shader problems in the nif file.

But I don't know if the shader branches absolutely HAVE to be from the same mesh shape like they say in the tutorials, but I've looked at other nif files and the settings in their shader branches are all unique. And it would make sense because the body loads fine, but I had the original unedited nif file for the body mesh so I could properly do this with only the body mesh. But if this true, then how can you import brand new original meshes into the game without an original unedited nif file with properly working shader branch settings? Could this even be the problem? And if so, what can I do to fix this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and if you need me to upload any photos just let me know. Thanks in advance!

[IsharaMeradin]

 

 

1. Under partitions, I know I am supposed to type in 32 (for torso armor) in Nifskope on the bottom entry. But every time I try to, the program automatically replaces the "32" with "SBP_32_BODY". I have no idea why this is happening, could this be the issue? And if so, how can I fix this?

That is normal.

SBP == Skyrim Body Part

32 == assigned slot

BODY == slot name

 

As far as the rest, no idea. Extent of my 3D modeling knowledge ends with fiddling around in NifSkope.

[nazra7]

Thank you very much for that. So then I'm thinking that its probably number 2 if not something else. I really hope someone who's made a completely custom armor from scratch, or have imported armors or other meshes from other games into Skyrim can tell me how they got the shader branches to work, especially if they used 3ds max. I've spent so much time on this custom armor, I really hope that this is not going to completely ruin it for me.

[ScrollThief84]

What I do is what you have done, simply export your mesh from 3ds and then copy over the shader block from another armor and set it to point at the textures I want it to and tweak some settings. As for creating problems... ...I haven't had any. I wonder if you would be willing to post a link to your nif file so I can take a look and see if I can find the issue... Save some time trying to trouble shoot everything that could be causing it not to show ;)

 

-Scroll Thief