LE Nifskope & body parts...

[thumbincubation]

I have been trying to teach myself nifskope, with various tutorials, so I can do things like adding sleeves and pants to armor, etc. One of the things I find myself doing, in my experiments, is copy/pasting upwards of a dozen branches from one mesh to the other, before I can even copy the armor in question.

 

Can anyone point me toward a modder's resource with a complete ...skeleton? I don't know if that's exactly it, but where the body is complete, so I can just copy over the armor pieces, rather than having to move over toes, fingers, every time I want to try a combo.

 

Or, could I take one base mesh and add all the body parts I can think of, save it, and use it as a template? If so, which is likely to be the most complete already?

[dalsio]

The problem is that the way armors are made is that the modeler removes the parts of the base body mesh that are covered by armor vertex-by-vertex so that it doesn't clip through the armor. Because of this, no two armors contain the exact same body mesh, since different armors require different modifications to the body. Usually, the body parts of an armor mesh only work with that armor or armor of a near identical shape.

[thumbincubation]

Ah, I was afraid of that. Much appreciated. At some point, I'm going to have to just bit the bullet, and learn Blender. :/

[dalsio]

Indeed. Unless you're trying to take pieces of the same armor and combine them into a single mesh, or split a single armor mesh into multiple components, you would need to modify the mesh somehow.

 

However, if I remember right Outfit Studio (which, compared to blender, isn't as powerful but is much easier to learn and use with Skyrim's meshes since it was made specifically for Skyrim) might be able to do some basic armor mesh modification to the extent that you're looking for. Even if you can't exactly delete the vertices in the mesh, you can resize and maneuver them a bit in order to make a body mesh from a similar-but-not-quite-identical armor work with the armor you're trying to use. Before learning Blender, I suggest learning Outfit Studio first.

 

EDIT: If you do want to learn blender, I suggest you start with weapon or static object models (like furniture) as they are simpler to work with and will get you used to importing into blender/creating, modifying, and exporting meshes to Skyrim. Body and by extension Armor meshes are more complicated because they have to morph and stretch in predictable ways in response to character movement.

Edited September 6, 2016 by dalsio

[thumbincubation]

I really appreciate it. I had never heard of Outfit Studio before, but I will find it now. Thank you again.

 

Most of what I try to do, I think people would find to be pretty simple. It's just difficult for me, because dinosaur. I did manage, with nifskope, to put thieves guild sleeves and pants on scaled armor, and remove that one shoulder plate. Only works for male, though, as female keeps stopping me for a left toe. Idk why, I've put it there a bunch of times, but it never seems to realize I have put it there. Anyway, that sort of thing.