How do I make part of a mesh invisible?

[Tilarta]

I am having a problem where a glow effect is applied to the whole object, changing the visual appearance of the label and cap when I did not want it to:

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu100/zrowngctr/Fallout/Fallout4/NS/NCQnvGlowError01_zps4tnuatly.png

t occurred to me a possible simple solution would be to duplicate the mesh, then make the blue texture non-visible, so the second mesh is floating over/around the first mesh, allowing the label and cap of this bottle to remain unaffected by the glow property.

I did some research on this and it appears my theory is technically possible, but so far, I have not managed to get it to function.

Does anyone know how I can edit the mesh in this manner?

[steve40]

Ugh. Terrible idea.

 

If the label and cap are separate nodes/NiTriShapes/BSTriShape then simply give them different (or no) glow maps.

 

Otherwise, if they share the same UV map, simply mask out the area of the glow map that is mapped to the cap and label.

 

However, it looks like your mesh is done wrong. In your image, blocks 7 through 16 are at the parent level instead of all being children of the parent node or other child nodes. That's going to cause issues, possibly even a CTD when you try to open it in the CK or game.

Edited September 19, 2016 by steve40

[Tilarta]

I tried making a new NIF where the cap and label are a separate mesh.

It didn't go so well!

Creation Kit accepts it, it looks like it should, but the game crashes each time I try to interact with the object!

Even trying to view it in PipBoy shuts down the game.

I'm still studying it to figure out what went wrong.

 

I went back to the earlier version where it was just one singular object and tried the masking approach:

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu100/zrowngctr/Fallout/Fallout4/Textures/NCQtextset01rs_zpsclovc952.png

But it did not work either.

The cap and label still glow after I made these changes.

 

I think that I am either not formatting the DDS files properly or I am not getting the Color Channels to apply the correct masks.

[damanding]

Steve40 explained in his post why it will cause crashes.

[Tilarta]

I tried reorganising the node order:

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu100/zrowngctr/Fallout/Fallout4/NS/NCQtree01_zps8m7jubnx.png

But I obviously did something wrong, as it caused the CK to crash when I attempted to use this file.

 

My assumption is that since I didn't know the order of the nodes, I just moved them down a level and put them anywhere.

Obviously the order has to be more specific then that, if it didn't work.

[Perraine]

I'm not an expert on FO:4 .nifs, but that file looks totally ... wrong. There seems to be a lot of extra stuff in there, and the nodes are definetly in the wrong places. Try dragging and dropping the .nif into an open Outfit Studio window and see what happens. Outfit Studio seems to be able to "organize" .nif files to allow them to work with FO:4, it "might" help with your .nif. You might also try opening the vanilla bottle mesh beside yours in a separate Nifskope window and compare the two.

[steve40]

Yep, Perraine is correct, the structure looks a bit random.

 

Please upload the version that looked correct in Nifskope/CK and I'll have a go at fixing up the structure and checking for other issues that could cause CTDs.

[Tilarta]

I tried a new approach, taking the original object and doing a simple mesh swap.

The method I tried involves importing the mesh, moving it to the right spot in the tree and then removing the old mesh.

I had thought this would allow the structure to remain basically intact.

 

But when I tried it, it made the tree generate extranous data.

The random structure isn't my doing apparently, but something that happens when I try to reorder the children nodes by entering text values.

 

So if my analysis is correct, I need to figure out a way to simply organize the tree to stop it randomly generating new data.

 

I think my problem here is that I don't know how to rebuild the tree and keep it concisely organized.

[steve40]

http://s22.postimg.org/guy9pf25t/20160922072006_1.png