( Video Tutorial) How to Get Custom Weapons Into Skyrim!

[Ghogiel]

@Ghogiel, your suggestion about deleting Skyrim blocks is a really bad idea :excl:

 

The way blender scripts work is PyFFI reads the file. The version of PyFFI used by Blender Nifscript v2.5.08 does not have the capability to read Skyrim blocks. Even if you do remove the Skyrim specific blocks, the remaining blocks would still not be known. The first thing PyFFI does is perform a check to see if it knows the header.

File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.49b\.blender\scripts\import\import_nif.py", line 170, in __init__
data.inspect(niffile)

Even if you fake it, the block sizes would be incorrect.

File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python26\lib\site-packages\pyffi\object_models\common.py", line 691, in read
   % (length, stream.tell()))
ValueError: string too long (0x6C0C0000 at 0x0000003A)

 

Even the current 2.6.0 dev version does not have Skyrim PyFFI support yet.

Delete the shader block, change version number, open nifskope as a fallout3 nif, copy what you want over to a F3 nif. Import into blender.

 

Specifically what (commonly used) operations in max preserve the vertex index index, and what changes it? Edit Mesh/Poly modifiers? Transforms/scales/rotations? UV maps? BSDismember? Collapsing? If simple mesh editing screws up the index, then how the heck do you weight different models (_0, _1)? So far I've been just making the _0 and _1 meshes identical.

 

You make _0 and 1_ like morphs. Meaning they are are basically clones. While you can leave modifiers like twist and bend in the stack in scene, but for Skyrim you'll have to collapse a lot of them or you'll freak out the exporter. One trick is to get max to reorder the verts. Say collapse the stack, reset xform etc. Then clone. Then you can probably use modifiers to do shape distortions as max will probably reorder the verts in the same way each time. Meaning your deformed clone will still be valid. Just test it with a morpher modifier.

Edited December 10, 2011 by Ghogiel

[aoikun]

Ok, I'm kinda stuck :sweat:

 

I'm currently doing the replacement of a helmet, but I've encountered a nasty problem, It looks like the skin modifier and the BSDismember Skin modifier don't get along well. Whenever I try to export the mesh with those two modifiers set (and correctly set, everything selected in BSDismember and all the weight to the head bone in skin) I get an error that crashes max. I can export the mesh with the Skin modifier alone, or the BSDismember modifier alone, it works as expected, the problem comes when putting both together. Any ideas on why this happens?

 

For the moment I'll try to export two meshes, one with each modifier and then try to copy the BSDismember mod into the skined mesh in Nifskope and see if it works.

[Ghogiel]

Sounds like the dismember modifier is incorrectly set up to me...

[aoikun]

Sounds like the dismember modifier is incorrectly set up to me...

It has to be something with my mesh, If I import a helmet, delete it's skin and dismember modifiers and add new ones, it works. I'm still clueless about what can I modify in dismember to make it work.

EDIT ok, as I tought my mesh was the one to blame here. It's made of different objects attached into one, I selected one part, detached it, deleted the rest and everything worked.

 

Still I would like to know how to make the fullmesh work, how should I attach everything?

Edited December 10, 2011 by aoikun

[dab0ne]

My textures aren't showing up when I import any NIF file into NifSkope. I use the FO3 archive extractor and load the NIF in NifSkope and there isn't a texture only the mesh. Just to test it I only extracted the Daedric Greatsword and nothing else. Opened it in NifSkope and no texture... I went to Render>Settings>Auto Detect... and got nothing. I even tried to manually lead a path to the Skyrim Data folder with no luck. I then Extracted the textures and they were put into the textures folder with the appropriate folder tree (just like the daedric sword mesh did). I then lead the manual path to the textures folder (no luck) then lead the manual path directly to the .dds file of the deadric sword texture. I know I'm not losing the swords UV mapping because Im not taking it into Max, Maya, or Blender. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Oh and thank you for the tutorials... very cool.

[Ghogiel]

Sounds like the dismember modifier is incorrectly set up to me...

It has to be something with my mesh, If I import a helmet, delete it's skin and dismember modifiers and add new ones, it works. I'm still clueless about what can I modify in dismember to make it work.

Well there is nothing to really diagnose your problem on.. but it doesn't really matter what you put in the dismember modifier as long as you do not leave ANY faces unattached to one partition, insta crash on export if any faces are not assigned to one of them. less of an issue I think is adding faces to more than one of the partitions, I did that by accident recently and it exported without crashing, just was a visual issue in game. The body part partition itself you have to manually change in nifskope anyway, as yet it will only export those names as used in F3. So you end up changing BP_torso or whatever it is to 32. Other than that you can add as many or as few as you like. I've doe a lot of testing on outfits and just used 1 partition, 32, to save time in the tests cycle.

[aoikun]

I've already succesfulley replaced a helmet (well, I replaced it with a hair mesh but it served its purpouse) but I can't make the other mesh work.

 

First I want to explain something. I'm currently working with meshes from another game (just to have something to replace), that's why I don't really want to upload screenshots showing them, this website's rules are against any kind of port and I'll obey them. I'm aware that showing a screen of an asset from a different game in Max might not be considered as a port per se, but I still would like to refrain from posting them.

 

That said, I understand it's difficult to discern what might be the cause of my problems when you don't even know what exactly am I talking about. I really apreciate your efforts to help me in spite of all this problems.

 

Now, I noticed this: if I export this mesh it comes out as 3 different NiTriShapes, even though in max it shows up as a single object, maybe that has something to do with the crash. I'm starting to think that there must be other way to join meshes that I simply don't know, my overall lack of knowledge is a big part of the issue =S

 

At least I've made it trough all the tutorials, the wepon I replaced works flawlessly blood effects included, even the helmet I replaced with a hair works so i'm knida happy ^^

Edited December 11, 2011 by aoikun

[jimhsu]

My textures aren't showing up when I import any NIF file into NifSkope. I use the FO3 archive extractor and load the NIF in NifSkope and there isn't a texture only the mesh. Just to test it I only extracted the Daedric Greatsword and nothing else. Opened it in NifSkope and no texture... I went to Render>Settings>Auto Detect... and got nothing. I even tried to manually lead a path to the Skyrim Data folder with no luck. I then Extracted the textures and they were put into the textures folder with the appropriate folder tree (just like the daedric sword mesh did). I then lead the manual path to the textures folder (no luck) then lead the manual path directly to the .dds file of the deadric sword texture. I know I'm not losing the swords UV mapping because Im not taking it into Max, Maya, or Blender. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Oh and thank you for the tutorials... very cool.

 

Did you use a proper BsLightingShaderProperty from a working NIF?

[aoikun]

My textures aren't showing up when I import any NIF file into NifSkope. I use the FO3 archive extractor and load the NIF in NifSkope and there isn't a texture only the mesh. Just to test it I only extracted the Daedric Greatsword and nothing else. Opened it in NifSkope and no texture... I went to Render>Settings>Auto Detect... and got nothing. I even tried to manually lead a path to the Skyrim Data folder with no luck. I then Extracted the textures and they were put into the textures folder with the appropriate folder tree (just like the daedric sword mesh did). I then lead the manual path to the textures folder (no luck) then lead the manual path directly to the .dds file of the deadric sword texture. I know I'm not losing the swords UV mapping because Im not taking it into Max, Maya, or Blender. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Oh and thank you for the tutorials... very cool.

Also I read that there's a version of Nifskope that doesn't load textures, check if yours is the latest just in case....

Edited December 11, 2011 by aoikun

[Ghogiel]

Now, I noticed this: if I export this mesh it comes out as 3 different NiTriShapes, even though in max it shows up as a single object, maybe that has something to do with the crash. I'm starting to think that there must be other way to join meshes that I simply don't know, my overall lack of knowledge is a big part of the issue =S

 

The exporter will split the mesh according to material ID. If you have more than one material on it, then it'll be split according to that. pretty much the only reason it'll get split that I can think of...