Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game

[Edmond Dantes]

nothing special to get the body morphing to work. But it is a morph: the vertex number order needs to exactly the same between the 2 morph shapes.

 

That's good to know. Thanks.

Now if I was to reshape the mesh without actually adding or removing vertices/objects/elements, just moving vertices around, would that change the vertex order (my assumption is no, but just want to make sure) ?

How do do you check vertex order anyway?

[Ghogiel]

Is collapsing Edit Poly modifiers a stable operation? In other words, does collapsing different edits of the Edit Poly modifier - assuming no vertex additions/removal - preserve the vertex order?

if you had max reorder the verts already it would be safer...

 

nothing special to get the body morphing to work. But it is a morph: the vertex number order needs to exactly the same between the 2 morph shapes.

 

That's good to know. Thanks.

Now if I was to reshape the mesh without actually adding or removing vertices/objects/elements, just moving vertices around, would that change the vertex order (my assumption is no, but just want to make sure) ?

How do do you check vertex order anyway?

that is fine and wouldn't cause verts to reorder..

Edited December 14, 2011 by Ghogiel

[Edmond Dantes]

@Ghogiel: Thanks again for the reply.

 

Sorry to bother you all again,

 

I have another little issue that I need help with. I'm currently trying to export a custom headwear model to Skyrim. I already did all of the steps required, including creating a BsDismemberSkinInstance which I've assigned to the Head node. Same thing with the skin rigging, also assigned to the head node. Basically, since this is a headgear that doesn't hide the hair, I used the circlet as a base model (not using the actual mesh, just using it as a reference to see which bones it's attached too).

 

Once in Nifskope, I made sure to copy the BSLightingShaderProperty from a vanilla mesh and assigned the proper texture. Everything good so far. As a test, I replaced one of the vanilla in-game circlet to see how the custom mesh would look. Now normally, if it was an issue with skins, the game would probably either crash, show a highly distorted mesh, or not show anything at all (invisible) like the problem I had awhile back. But in this case, what I got is one of those HUGE exclamation signs that the game usually assigns to missing mesh. I can't figure out why I'm getting this missing mesh indication?

 

I thought it might be something with the circlet, but then I tried replacing another mesh (helmet this time) , and I still get that huge ugly red exclamation sign. I find it strange that the game would consider my mesh "missing". Are headwears different than armors? Is there a different method of getting them in-game?

 

Here's a screenshot of my Nif Block list, it seems like everything is assigned properly, but perhaps I'm missing something?

 

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2559/headgearnif.jpg

Edited December 14, 2011 by Edmond Dantes

[throttlekitty]

Red !'s are typically 'mesh not found' errors. Anything else will be a ctd or not visible.

[Ghogiel]

I've had red !'s... and the mesh would have to have been found no matter what, being a replacer, if I had missplelt the nif, it would just find the vanilla one in the BSA.

 

My first guess is when you say you assigned the dismember partition to 'head'... did you assign it the correct number (142)?

[Edmond Dantes]

My first guess is when you say you assigned the dismember partition to 'head'... did you assign it the correct number (142)?

 

I'm sorry, what number does this signify? Where do I assign it? In 3ds max or Nifskope?

Forgive my lack of knowledge, I don't remember having to pay attention to these things in either Oblivion or Fallout. I've done dismemberment in Fallout too, but I don't recall ever setting any numbers.

[Ghogiel]

body part names, as in what you would assign in the max modifier are not any longer used. Instead they are currently displayed as a number in skyrim. So it doesn't really matter what you set the dismember partition as in max, you will have to change it to the correct body part skyrim wants.

 

in nifskope check the BSDismemberSkinInstance, partition, body part. The number you want is actually 142.

 

As a happy coincidence... I think I just found out how skyrim does the different hair set ups.. It's not a biped slot in the CK entry, ie hair and head slots like we have seen before, it might actually be a different dismember body part number in the nif that does that...

 

circlets being 142 and other helmets showing hair being 131, and removing the head entirely would be 30.

[Skree000]

In the Partitions array in the BSDismemberSkinInstance there are two flags for Part Flag, PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE and PF_START_NET_BONESET

 

now, vanilla femalebodyastrid has the first one both flagged, and the next two just the first one flagged, so it looks like this

 

PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE | PF_START_NET_BONESET

PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE

PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE

 

now when I export from max, every Part Flag is set to BOTH* being checked off. Okay im thinking, thats an easy fix, lets just have a look at the checkboxes, or worst case, copy pasta the exact words where they need to go

 

except these checkboxes in this array seem to be broken...

 

clicking the field then the little dropdown arrow reveals two checkboxes (the checking of each box does coincide with either flag, when i click the dropdown on a field that has either (or both) enabled for example)

 

the problem is, when i release the mouse it changes the entry to 0

worse still, the field does not respond to alphanumerical input of any kind, nor does Paste, right click paste or anything work in there

even worse still, checking one of the boxes or unchecking them also does nothing, the action does not commit and it wipes out the fields back to zero (0)

 

So, I can change the Body Part entries just fine, but the Part Flag entries are fubared im guessing its this transitionary phase while the Nif.xml gets more lovins..

 

so the question is, does this Part Flag field matter?

Im not able to get my custom mesh to show up in game anyways either way, so im trying to make everything match up

[Ghogiel]

 

So, I can change the Body Part entries just fine, but the Part Flag entries are fubared im guessing its this transitionary phase while the Nif.xml gets more lovins..

 

so the question is, does this Part Flag field matter?

I don't think it matters tbh. The thing is I can report that nifskope does the same thing for me too... though I am 100% positive that it DID allow me to change them properly at one point, basically since this new beta build I have and the most recent xml I downloaded... because now this is also broken on F3 nifs, and I know it wasn't before.

 

So yeah it just got broke quite recently..

[Edmond Dantes]

so the question is, does this Part Flag field matter?

Im not able to get my custom mesh to show up in game anyways either way, so im trying to make everything match up

 

I was about to ask this very same question. After changing the bodypart partitions to 142 for every trishape of my mesh, I still get the big bad red exclamation point. The only thing left I can think of is that the BSPart Flag has to be the same as the one in the circlet mesh. Unfortunately as Skree mentioned above, I cannot change the BSPart Flag at all, as it would always reset to 0. I guess we'll have to wait for an updated xml.

 

I suppose custom mesh can only be brought into Skyrim successfully if it happens to be the type of mesh that requires both PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE | PF_START_NET_BONESET activated, as this is what the exporter from max defaults the values to. :sad:

 

btw, thanks a lot Ghogiel for answering all our questions. Hope you don't get tired of it, as there will be more. That I'm sure of :yes:

Edited December 14, 2011 by Edmond Dantes