Tutorial: 3ds Max Skinned Meshes Into Game

[Edmond Dantes]

Any chance someone could do a breif tutorial on what steps they are taking in max EG: texture id,s and such.

 

I followed this tut quite a few times now trying to get a pendant in game and kept ending up with the dreaded red triangle issue, then i finally did something in Max regarding textures and FINALLY got it working

so i decided to give the bigger items like armour and gauntlets a shot using the same method but all i got was parts not being drawn, just missing in game, no big red triangle!.

So ive been messing around trial and error stuff and i seem to be stuck with either 3 issues ,red triangle / see through parts/ or Max just crashing on export.

 

im sure its a texture setting issue prior to export but as i cant find a single skyrim fallout 3 3dsmax rigging tut anywhere and as this is my first attempt at these games im relying on methods ive used for other games like gta4.

 

pls help 3 days is a big investment for nothing

 

I can only answer based on my personal experience plus the things I've learned through the forums. Maybe it'll help.

 

If you get red exclamation sign: Check your nif and see if it contains any nodes that wouldn't otherwise be in a vanilla Skyrim nif. Based on my own experience, I've had problems if the mesh contains nodes like NiMaterial Property, NiStencilProperty, etc. If you find these nodes in your exported mesh, try to erase them and see if your custom mesh appears in game without the exclamation mark.

 

If you get invisible parts (as in, the parts doesn't show up at all) : make sure that you've erased the BSLightingShaderProperty from your custom mesh, replace it with one from a vanilla mesh and then fix the texture path to your texture.

 

Crashing upon export is usually due to erasing certain parts / vertices from a mesh that has a BsDismemberskin modifier, you have to erase that modifier in max, then make a new one.

 

Hopefully one of these will help you solve your problem. Good luck.

[Edmond Dantes]

I have a problem that I'm hoping someone can help me with. The horse mane and tail Alpha has a strange property that I can't seem to replicate. I made some modification to the horse mesh, and upon export, any part of the mesh with Alpha would lose transparency. This is normal as far as I can tell, Alpha properties always needed to be redone after an export, but with the horse mane/tail I can't seem to replicate the exact Alpha properties that allows the tail to be displayed properly. It has nothing to do with flags, threshold or ordinary blending setting as far as I can tell. Its Alpha consist of a child branch with the following nodes:

 

BSNiAlphaPropertyTestRefController -

- NiBlendFloatInterpolator

- NiAlphaProperty

 

I've never seen this particular type of Alpha property on a creature or item nif before. Can anyone explain how I can get it to work for my custom horse mesh? I can't make the tail display properly even if copied the NiAlphaProperty from the original horse's tail mesh. Aside from modifying the horse's body, what I did was erase the mane of the horse but kept the tail. Now all I need is to be able to make the tail display proper transparency.

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Edited January 2, 2012 by Edmond Dantes

[AlphaWoIF]

All the same that is very helpful info and i had done some more digging in this thread and found this below.

 

1 when you export with 3dsmax it create another material called : NiMaterialProperty this needs to be eliminated this will remove the mark error

 

2 Set the default property that is this material away and in first place put the right material bslightning something

 

3 if the mesh is invisible , in this case you need to attach a alpha property spell ... so far worked with the simplier mesh

 

while i had already somehow managed to do this once NUMBER 1 fixed the the red triangle of death issue !

i dont really understand what number 2 means ive just followed the tutorial .

 

my only issue now is number 3 which i left with ,all my meshes are now like the pic below but i cant figure out away to resolve it & belive me ive been trying:(

 

as you can see below they are fine in nilfskope but invisible in the ingame shot ! strange though how the hands i used still show.

PS: I ADDED THE ALPHA NODES IN THOSES LISTS TRYING STEP 3 BUT NO DIFFERENCE

http://i39.tinypic.com/mwbli1.png

Edited January 2, 2012 by AlphaWoIF

[DizzasterJuice]

All the same that is very helpful info and i had done some more digging in this thread and found this below.

 

1 when you export with 3dsmax it create another material called : NiMaterialProperty this needs to be eliminated this will remove the mark error

 

2 Set the default property that is this material away and in first place put the right material bslightning something

 

3 if the mesh is invisible , in this case you need to attach a alpha property spell ... so far worked with the simplier mesh

 

while i had already somehow managed to do this once NUMBER 1 fixed the the red triangle of death issue !

i dont really understand what number 2 means ive just followed the tutorial .

 

my only issue now is number 3 which i left with ,all my meshes are now like the pic below but i cant figure out away to resolve it & belive me ive been trying:(

 

as you can see below they are fine in nilfskope but invisible in the ingame shot ! strange though how the hands i used still show.

PS: I ADDED THE ALPHA NODES IN THOSES LISTS TRYING STEP 3 BUT NO DIFFERENCE

 

 

Well just from the picture I can see that you need to re-name the scene root to dbarmortorso_0 and dbarmortorso_1 for the matching larger mesh. Also double check that you renamed your BSDismemberSkinInstance partitions correctly. That will also cause it not to show. Torso should be re-named to 38, wrists to 34, ankles to 32, etc.

I hope you get it working cause from the pic it looks gorgeous.

If you upload it here I'll be glad to take a look at it.

[DizzasterJuice]

I have a problem that I'm hoping someone can help me with. The horse mane and tail Alpha has a strange property that I can't seem to replicate. I made some modification to the horse mesh, and upon export, any part of the mesh with Alpha would lose transparency. This is normal as far as I can tell, Alpha properties always needed to be redone after an export, but with the horse mane/tail I can't seem to replicate the exact Alpha properties that allows the tail to be displayed properly. It has nothing to do with flags, threshold or ordinary blending setting as far as I can tell. Its Alpha consist of a child branch with the following nodes:

 

BSNiAlphaPropertyTestRefController -

- NiBlendFloatInterpolator

- NiAlphaProperty

 

I've never seen this particular type of Alpha property on a creature or item nif before. Can anyone explain how I can get it to work for my custom horse mesh? I can't make the tail display properly even if copied the NiAlphaProperty from the original horse's tail mesh. Aside from modifying the horse's body, what I did was erase the mane of the horse but kept the tail. Now all I need is to be able to make the tail display proper transparency.

 

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

I just extracted the horse.nif and it had a normal alpha with no child branches so I'm not sure where that came from. The only difference I could see is that threshold was set to 35 instead of the usual 128. As a test I removed some polys on the mane using an Edit Poly modifier then exported it and the NiAlphaProperty did not change (normal with no child branches). Question: Are you making the changes on the editiable mesh or on a new modifier "Edit Poly"?

[Edmond Dantes]

I just extracted the horse.nif and it had a normal alpha with no child branches so I'm not sure where that came from. The only difference I could see is that threshold was set to 35 instead of the usual 128. As a test I removed some polys on the mane using an Edit Poly modifier then exported it and the NiAlphaProperty did not change (normal with no child branches). Question: Are you making the changes on the editiable mesh or on a new modifier "Edit Poly"?

 

Yeah, sorry I forgot to mention that the horse mesh I was messing around with was shadowmere. It does have certain strange Alpha properties that isn't shared by other horse mesh. I assumed they were the same.. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

To answer your question, I was using edit mesh that came with the nif. I was only altering the shape of the horse, but I don't think in this case it's related. Using edit poly gets me the same problem. As far as I can tell, it's strictly an Alpha issue. Let me just try to play around with ordinary horse mesh, hopefully I won't get the same problem as the one I encountered with shadowmere.

[Edmond Dantes]

Edit: I think I solved the issue. I had an epiphany while I was at work :happy: I won't be able to test it until tonight, but I'm 90% sure the issue has to do with my export settings. Hopefully that'll solve it.

 

AlphaWolf: I was also working on rigging the Raven Armor, but I'm only 60 % done. Wasn't happy with the way the arms and shoulder area moved. I hope to be able to see yours soon cause that'll save me some work :biggrin:

Edited January 3, 2012 by Edmond Dantes

[AlphaWoIF]

@ DizzasterJuice

Thanks for the info ,this is my first time using nilfskope as in never modded anything for gamebryo before so anything i missed EG: normal rotuine things i will probably miss @ first,

Also i just want to clarify that those models were not created by me, i would never try to take credit for work i didnt create, they are from the witcher 2 and there will be more to come, my only skill is rigging & mesh and poly editing still such a noob with max only been using it for couple of months now so creation from start is simple stuff atm.

Going to make a witcher mod including witcher contracts and mutagens skills tree if possible.

 

@ Edmond Dantes

Y es i know what you mean about the arms & i bet its the underarms thats giving you issues , prob like you i used that models because it follows very close to the original shape of the body without and additional pieces that could cause extra rigging work but im always getting that underarm drag from the torso sides whenever i move the upper arm bones ,its defiantly a battle trying to solve it

[AlphaWoIF]

I tried most of what you said even removed the alpha property nodes i added trying to fix it but in the end i could still not get them to show so i realized thet it must have been something i did with the dismemberment settings while in Max, as im not really 100% sure on what the process is apart from the tutorial.

Im pretty sure some times i would delete the imported ones from the original nilf (dbarmour) that got applied to my custom model hence removing those 3 numbed ones and creating a new one from the modifiers list and adding one called torso, i belive after some thought this is bad idea and more than likely the root of all my problem .

 

good news is i spent all night rigging it properly and its turned out the best rig of that model so far as i got around the issue with the under arms i was having, so now i have a pure pre-export torso that i have not changed settings from dbarmor import so will be trying to export it tomorrow after work , then i will do the other half of the armour and combine them in nilfskope to finish it as the have different texture maps , tell me if thats ok to do it like that ?

as exporting 3 meshes on a nilf skeleton from max gave me errors. makes it easy if i can combing them in nilfskope after export .

Edited January 3, 2012 by AlphaWoIF

[DizzasterJuice]

@AlphaWoIF - Yeah I thought that looked familiar....TW2 has some nice armors.

The BSDismemberSkinInstance always gets trashed in max so the first thing I do is delete the original one and the very last thing I do before export is create a new dismember on the top of the stack. If you didn't make the new one correctly that may be the problem.

You said: "...creating a new one from the modifiers list and adding one called torso..." - If you only made 1 partition for the jacket in the picture instead of 2 then that would definately cause a problem.

Add new modifier (for upper body mesh) - BSDismemberSkinInstance, select all the polys then alt-click (de-select) the last 2 strips of polys on the wrists, then hit the "+" and the next partition will automatically select the wrists only. Close the modifier and it's done. For the lower body mesh seperately you'd do the same way and select last 2 strips of polys on the ankles. You can leave them both named torso and then change them to 38 (torso) and 34 (wrists) in nifskope.

The way you're suggesting is the way I'd do it, make the jacket, then the pants, then the body (if it has any skin showing) and put them together in nifskope. To get things at a test stage I would use just one mesh, then name it both dbarmortorso_0 and dbarmortorso_1. The body morph won't work yet but at this point it's just to test to get it working. Once you have a clean working mesh then you make the other mesh using a morpher like I described on page 22 of this thread.

Edited January 4, 2012 by DizzasterJuice