Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game

[DOGREDRUM43130]

Was going to post this as a PM but this might be better off here, might help others. In regards to making a mash up of vanilla assets and how to make a working _1 and _2 morph parts

...

This is excellent! Lots of options to explore now. I definitely like the sound of option 5; I'm going to have to look into that! Thank you :)

 

Agreed lots of options that all seem like they would work and option 5 does seem to be the closest to way Bethesda would go about it to make new bodies for armors that we have right now. Thanks Ghogiel.

[PrometheusTS]

Ok thanks well for now I have to solve other problems tough ... I have been able thanks to Ghogiel pm tutoring to export the nif ... I can see it fine in niftools I do all the nif alchemy as writtenin the main post by the OP , swictching the texture stuff etc...

 

then

 

this is the result ..

 

 

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7779/battlemage.jpg

 

 

At least didn't crash this time but any idea why that's happening and how I can fix?

I have tried all kind of vatiations yes no nif magic and stuff . nothing works I always get this ! mark ingame , like ifmay be missed the same model ? but makes no sense couse if I put back the old model it does appear fine , so its something else I tried even to merge the 3 pieces into one piece only but nothing works I am getting now really annoyed at all this NIF Crap stuff ... Any idea what I can do to fix?

[throttlekitty]

It's very hard to troubleshoot with nothing to go on, there's many ways to craft a .nif that doesn't work.

Either go back through the tutorial and see what you skipped, compare your nif to a similar and working one, or post your nif for someone to look at.

 

Option number 2 will help you the most, so you can avoid the same mistakes in the future.

 

You whine about this "nif crap stuff" often, that kind of attitude isn't very helpful.

[Edmond Dantes]

@Prometheus: I'm by no means an expert compared to the other fine individuals here, but have you tried to see if your nif has any unusual property nodes not found in typical Skyrim mesh? For example, a few days ago I had the exact same problem you did. The big ass ugly exclamation mark would be displayed in-game instead of my mesh, and having tried everything, I still couldn't solve it. Then, by accident, I noticed that my mesh had a NiStencilProperty (which according to what Ghogiel mentioned may no longer be used by Skyrim's engine), when I deleted that NiStencilProperty node, my problems went away.

 

Your problem may not be because of the NiStencilProperty but what I'm getting at is, try to see if there are some nodes/branches in your mesh which you wouldn't find in a typical Skyrim mesh and try to erase/delete them. That big exclamation mark may be the game's way of saying it has no idea how to render the property assigned to your custom mesh.

 

Again, I'm not an expert. I'm just reporting what worked for me. If you want to try deleting unusual nodes/properties from your mesh, please make a backup first. Then test them in-game to see if the mesh works.

 

P.S. Should this still fail, I'd be willing to take a look at your mesh if you're interested. You can PM it to me.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Edmond Dantes

[Edmond Dantes]

Hello fine people of the forums,

 

I have a question regarding material properties. In Nifs prior to Skyrim, there used to be a node that dealt with material properties, I think it was called NiMaterial Property or something, it allowed the mesh to be given different kind of specular quality. like metallic or plastic by manipulating values like glossiness. I don't remember seeing it in Fallout, but I think back then what I did was mess around with the shaderproperty.

 

My question is, for Skyrim, is there something (a branch/node/property) that we can manipulate to give a certain kind of specular effect to our mesh? For example, how would I make a mesh appear metallic instead of plastic or leather? Based on my personal experience, manipulating the specular map of the _n texture isn't enough. So how can I get the effects I want?

 

Another thing, this may be related to material property as well so I thought I'd ask too. I successfully ported a hair into Skyrim. Currently, it's just headware, and not really a hair replacer at all, but it displays strange specular properties under different lighting conditions. It would generally look fine in typical lighting condition, but sometimes, the hair color would be brighter in areas where it's supposed to be dark, like under shadows. And under certain lighting condition, like standing near a fire pyre, it would look darker than it should instead of illuminated by the light source. I know that hair in previous Beth games have been given different properties, and I'm wondering is there anything I should pay attention to when making hair for Skyrim?

 

Just in case you're wondering, I've tried both disabling and enabling vertex color on the mesh and it didn't have any effect. Obviously, at this point, I don't yet know how to make my hair change color. But for now, I just want to know if I can fix the strange specular/lighting issue.

 

I'd appreciate any help. Thank you.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Edmond Dantes

[Ghogiel]

Hello fine people of the forums,

 

I have a question regarding material properties. In Nifs prior to Skyrim, there used to be a node that dealt with material properties, I think it was called NiMaterial Property or something, it allowed the mesh to be given different kind of specular quality. like metallic or plastic by manipulating values like glossiness. I don't remember seeing it in Fallout, but I think back then what I did was mess around with the shaderproperty.

 

My question is, for Skyrim, is there something (a branch/node/property) that we can manipulate to give a certain kind of specular effect to our mesh? For example, how would I make a mesh appear metallic instead of plastic or leather? Based on my personal experience, manipulating the specular map of the _n texture isn't enough. So how can I get the effects I want?

 

NiMaterialProperty is used in F3. But in Skyrim it isn't, all that is controlled in the BSLightingShaderProperty, and specular color and strength actually work now in conjunction with the specular map. Gloss is in there as well. The other thing used to sim metal is environment map shader. If you want to use this, start with a shader block from a vanilla asset that has this set up is what I recommend.

 

Another thing, this may be related to material property as well so I thought I'd ask too. I successfully ported a hair into Skyrim. Currently, it's just headware, and not really a hair replacer at all, but it displays strange specular properties under different lighting conditions. It would generally look fine in typical lighting condition, but sometimes, the hair color would be brighter in areas where it's supposed to be dark, like under shadows. And under certain lighting condition, like standing near a fire pyre, it would look darker than it should instead of illuminated by the light source. I know that hair in previous Beth games have been given different properties, and I'm wondering is there anything I should pay attention to when making hair for Skyrim?

 

Just in case you're wondering, I've tried both disabling and enabling vertex color on the mesh and it didn't have any effect. Obviously, at this point, I don't yet know how to make my hair change color. But for now, I just want to know if I can fix the strange specular/lighting issue.

 

I'd appreciate any help. Thank you.

not sure.. you have tried an unconventional way to add it to the game, you can try not using the hair shader and use one from different nif and see if that narrows it down.

 

If set up as a hair it should have vert color is about all I can yell you.

[Edmond Dantes]

If set up as a hair it should have vert color is about all I can yell you.

 

So to clarify, does that mean that if I were to give the mesh vertex colors and use that mesh to replace a vanilla hair, then the color changing function associated with vertex colors would work on my mesh? (By this I'm assuming that by activating the vertex color property to yes, it should be able to change color like any other hair).. Is there not any other shader property associated with hair?

 

Also, what do you mean by setting it up as hair? Do you mean naming it as one of the hair files to replace it? or is there some other kind of "set up" method I should know about?

 

Thanks in advance

 

P.S Sorry, forgot to add, you mentioned hair shader in your post. What exactly is the hair shader? I looked at the nif file of a vanilla hair, and the shader type is a string of number and the shader flag is set to SF_DECAL. Is this what you meant?

Edited December 18, 2011 by Edmond Dantes

[Ghogiel]

If set up as a hair it should have vert color is about all I can yell you.

 

So to clarify, does that mean that if I were to give the mesh vertex colors and use that mesh to replace a vanilla hair, then the color changing function associated with vertex colors would work on my mesh? (By this I'm assuming that by activating the vertex color property to yes, it should be able to change color like any other hair).. Is there not any other shader property associated with hair?

 

Also, what do you mean by setting it up as hair? Do you mean naming it as one of the hair files to replace it? or is there some other kind of "set up" method I should know about?

 

Thanks in advance

I was just speculating on using the hair shader as a regular asset might give unexpected results.

 

And yeah to set up your mesh as a hair you would probably currently have to replace one of the existing hair assets. But bare in mind tri files and the baldy version. But looking at hair here doesn't seem to be anything special about the nif ther than the hair shader.

 

The only other thing I can think of is a problem with the normals. If they are inverted for example, lighting will not react with the surface in the usual way.

[goblinhero]

Hey everyone. I'm interested in creating a mesh for genuinely chubby/stocky/"fat" PCs and NPCs (one thing I HATE about Skyrim is that every single character has essentially the same body type), but before doing so I was wondering if anybody was already working on something similar to it? I figured asking in here would be the best thing to do before attempting to do my own mesh. If someone is already working on it, I'd love to help you out in any way.

 

Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but how possible would it be to make an NPC skeletal modification mod like the one available for Oblivion in Skyrim? http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29853

Edited December 18, 2011 by goblinhero

[Ghogiel]

 

Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but how possible would it be to make an NPC skeletal modification mod like the one available for Oblivion in Skyrim? http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29853

probably possible.