Importing/Exporting collision with 3dsmax?

[RoyBatterian]

Is it possible to import and export nif's with collision that has multiple nodes with different material types in 3dsmax? Or are the import/export tools just not as good as Blender for this?

[mindboggles]

Yes, if you want a mesh to have a particular collision and Havok material then place a bone (NiNode) at the origin with zero rotation and parent your mesh to the bone / node. Set down a bhkRigidBody and a bhkCollProxy, set the proxy helper to use your mesh to generate the collision geometry from (or your own really low poly version just for collision) and assign the material you want. Point the rigid body helper to look at the proxy helper and place them both at the origin also, once you've done this parent the rigid body helper to the bone. This will give you collision for that mesh with it's own Havok material, if you want more then just repeat for the number / different material collisions you want.

 

I recall being able to assing multiple Havok materials to the one rigid body helper (via multiple proxy helpers) but having need for such a collision last night it wouldn't work for me. Not sure if the niftools is a different setup to what I used to have on my old computer.

[RoyBatterian]

Thank you mindboggles, that will get me started with exporting a scratch made mesh.

 

How about if I want to import a vanilla mesh and then alter it, say by mirroring. Is it enough to check collision when importing? It seems to merge the multiple nodes into one and destroys it.

 

:EDIT:

 

hrm if I want to work with F3/NV what's the best version of niftools to use? I'm not sure I have the right one for this.

[mindboggles]

You can import and include skeleton which should bring in the nodes preserving the hierachy (which is what I do for weapons). I normally don't for anything other than weapons as I usually just rebuild things like collision later.

 

Depends on what version of 3DS you use but with 2012 I've been using Figments version 373 http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5622/ Apparently there are some Niftool versions out there that won't handle animating properly. I should warn you but it won't export extra normals data like tangents and bi-tangents (generate using Nifskope), it will mess up the shader flags, won't export stencil block settings, or set the controller block data fully for .kf's.

 

Also if you are doing mesh manipulation be sure to use Utilities -> Reset XForm when you've finished to reset the overall geometry or you might get some unwanted results with your exported nifs.

[RoyBatterian]

I'm using 2011, and the niftools that millenia recommended in his weapon tutorial. I know about the the tangent spaces and shader flags issues and fix them in nifskope. I don't know what stencil blocks are, so I'll have to look that up. I'm currently not working with any animations at all. From what I can tell a weapon doesn't need the animation embedded anyways since they are external .kf files, it just needs the correct node names. I could be wrong about that, but I recall seeing posts saying they aren't needed and leftovers.

 

I guess I didn't have import skeleton checked, I didn't know kit pieces even had one. I will try some more.

 

OK noted about reset XForm thank you.

 

Thank you again.