whiterabbit0 Posted January 22, 2012 Posted January 22, 2012 (edited) How precise do I have to be with the armor when I'm trying to cover the body, does it have to be like precise to the shape of the body to the tee or can I just cover over the areas showing skin? Re-skinning things is an art form. Yes in theory you can be lazy about it and just make sure no underlying polygons are showing on the exterior texture but the end result will reflect that laziness. Ideally you want to be mindful of the shape you're creating. IE : Does this look believable? Should there be a bulge here? This piece of armor has a cape / loose cloth, should it hug the body or sort of fall off into space? Does this make the model look fat? (Am I trying to make the model look fat deliberately ?) etc etc. Edited January 22, 2012 by whiterabbit0
stilllogicz Posted January 23, 2012 Posted January 23, 2012 How long is this supposed to take? I've spent nearly 2 hours already on just the 0.nif part lol. Still have the 1.nif to do. Surely there is an easier/faster way of doing this no?
whiterabbit0 Posted January 23, 2012 Posted January 23, 2012 (edited) How long is this supposed to take? I've spent nearly 2 hours already on just the 0.nif part lol. Still have the 1.nif to do. Surely there is an easier/faster way of doing this no? Are you using soft selection? Soft selection speeds the process up immensely if you learn to manage how to adjust the tool so it affects larger & smaller regions. 3DS max has a fairly steep learning curve. Until you learn about all the stuff it has to help you go faster, you tend to go ultra ultra slow. (I'm still learning, I'm used to Lightwave 6 from like.. a decade ago) It literally has taken me days of struggling with NIFSkope & 3DS max to make a couple useable meshes. But I'm pretty anal about things, so if I see a stray clipping issue, or a buggy poly in game, I'll spend the time to go back into 3DS max and hunt the bugger down. Especially with some of the more complex armors, it's usually not even a misplaced vertex, but rather a vertex that is improperly weighted, which turns out to be a real pain to fix. Edited January 23, 2012 by whiterabbit0
stilllogicz Posted January 23, 2012 Posted January 23, 2012 Yea I've been using soft selection. I guess it really is just a learning curve. I've spent now hours working on it and just decided to take a break and actually play the game. Will get back to it soon enough.
trakes Posted January 23, 2012 Posted January 23, 2012 I do not have access to 3DS Max but I do have Blender and am trying to learn how to use it. Would I benefit from this tutorial or are the applications/processes so different that it most likely would just confuse me? Thanks!
CherryHotaling Posted January 23, 2012 Author Posted January 23, 2012 How long is this supposed to take? I've spent nearly 2 hours already on just the 0.nif part lol. Still have the 1.nif to do. Surely there is an easier/faster way of doing this no? Well your learning a 3d program it will take some time to learn at first.It takes me anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour now to get things going (Depending if the mesh gives me trouble with the sliders) Remember your learning a valuable Real life skill here hehe.
CherryHotaling Posted January 23, 2012 Author Posted January 23, 2012 I do not have access to 3DS Max but I do have Blender and am trying to learn how to use it. Would I benefit from this tutorial or are the applications/processes so different that it most likely would just confuse me? Thanks! Wellt he current blender does not support .nif's properly.There is a guide somewhere how to convert etc but I have no idea how to use blender. I used it to test some issues and weight paint with it, but that was it. I am not a fan of it and I paint weights and model in 3ds max :( sorry. I know theres a video tutorial on how to export and import for blender on the nexus somewhere.
jimhsu Posted January 23, 2012 Posted January 23, 2012 (edited) 3ds max's paint deformation tools are actually quite incredibly good for the job, significantly better than soft selection. Ex. ... another advantage is that it can be used in mirror mode, and so is perfectly symmetrical. Plus, it's actually quite fun to use. I literally did an armor conversion in 15 minutes with that and Skin Wrap. Edited January 23, 2012 by jimhsu
CherryHotaling Posted January 23, 2012 Author Posted January 23, 2012 3ds max's paint deformation tools are actually quite incredibly good for the job, significantly better than soft selection. Ex. ... another advantage is that it can be used in mirror mode, and so is perfectly symmetrical. Plus, it's actually quite fun to use. I literally did an armor conversion in 15 minutes with that and Skin Wrap. Oh how cool! I have never used the paint deformation tools.Now is the time to try! thank you very much!
jimhsu Posted January 24, 2012 Posted January 24, 2012 (edited) Unfortunately the manual mesh positioning part is still a pain in the *** to do, especially when dealing with more ... exposed armor meshes as far as porting content from Oblivion/Fallout is concerned. (because of the differences in Skyrim's skeleton). It's best to try this first with something like an iron cuirass to make the process go faster. (The armor I did in 15 minutes was an already existing skyrim armor ported to a different body. I'm trying to port content from Oblivion now, and it's taking considerably longer because of the skeleton differences.) Unless someone writes a script to convert "default oblivion skeleton pose" to "default skyrim skeleton pose", it's going to take that long. Edited January 24, 2012 by jimhsu
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