Texture and/or mesh will not load. I've tried everything.

[Cauliflour]

A few days ago, I went to the trouble of gluing a pair of meshes together so that they would be of one piece in Oblivion, and as far as I can tell the mod should be working. However, when I try to load the new mesh in-game, I get one of two problems depending on how I define the texture paths in Nifskope. If I do the full filepath, one part of the mesh's texture will load correctly while the other other part will not load the texture that was displayed in Nifskope; instead, it seems to display one from the vanilla body even though the file contains no reference to that texture and the vanilla body textures have been replaced in the correct folder. If, on the other hand, I make the filepath for both pieces of the mesh ../textures/etc. one part of the mesh is black and misaligned, and the other is completely invisible. And if I try creating two mods, either one using just one piece of the mesh, the problem persists, which makes it clear, actually, that it has nothing to do with the meshes being glued together in one mod.

 

- I tried four different methods of archive invalidation, and none of them made a difference.

 

-The texture maps are placed in the right folders ("textures" in the data folder) and named correctly (ending with _n and containing no other underlines).

 

-The meshes are also placed in the right folders ("meshes" in the data folder).

 

-Another mod, Robert's male body replacer, works perfectly, so the problem isn't that I can't use replacer mods.

 

-There is no mod conflict going on. I know this because I turned off every mod except the one(s) that I was trying to make work.

 

-I tried starting a new game, and it made no difference.

 

-The esm is in the correct folder.

 

-The game is installed outside of Program Files, in a place where there should be no security issues.

 

It seems as though I've tried everything. I'm almost at a complete loss, at this point, to understand the problem.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Cauliflour

[DrakeTheDragon]

I think we will need to have a look at the NIF file you created here.

 

First of all, specifying any other file paths than the relative ones starting with "textures/..." in NifSkope is basically just asking for trouble and should never be done. Those NIF files also won't be able to be shared with others then, if their drive and folder setup doesn't perfectly match.

 

You said some parts of the NIF will load Vanilla body textures, no matter what's defined for the texture inside the NIF? Are those NiTriShapes/Strips by chance using material "skin" and contain one of the body part texture slot keywords (upperbody/arms, lowerbody/legs, foot, hand, tail) inside their names?

 

If so, then the rendering engine will take over and ignore whatever you set up as the texture and material inside the NIF. It's what enables items showing some skin to be worn on "all" races regardless of their skin textures, as those specifically marked body parts inside the NIF will always use material settings and textures of the race, not what's been specified inside the NIF.

 

The only thing important to keep in mind with these specially marked meshes is that, while the game won't actually "use" the textures as defined inside the NIF, if the defined ones are missing inside your folders, it doesn't matter the race's ones do exist, you will get a missing texture (solid purple) or normal map (pitch black or invisible) error indicator ingame nevertheless.

[Cauliflour]

Thank you for your reply.

 

I figured out that what is happening with the wrongly textured part of the mesh is that it is loading the texture from the other portion of the mesh instead of the one specified in the NIF file (I couldn't tell until I started fiddling around with the textures some more). Could this be because the NIF uses two "foot" texture slot keywords (both mesh parts come from the same bodily region of separate body meshes)?

 

You said some parts of the NIF will load Vanilla body textures, no matter what's defined for the texture inside the NIF? Are those NiTriShapes/Strips by chance using material "skin" and contain one of the body part texture slot keywords (upperbody/arms, lowerbody/legs, foot, hand, tail) inside their names?

 

 

Yes, they are using the material "skin," and they contain body part texture slot keywords inside their names.

 

If so, then the rendering engine will take over and ignore whatever you set up as the texture and material inside the NIF. It's what enables items showing some skin to be worn on "all" races regardless of their skin textures, as those specifically marked body parts inside the NIF will always use material settings and textures of the race, not what's been specified inside the NIF.

 

I don't get the black and invisible parts when the meshes are joined together (I just get the wrong texture on part of the mesh), and I have texture replacers installed that would look all right on the mesh, so this doesn't seem to be the underlying problem.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Cauliflour

[DrakeTheDragon]

Like I said, we'll really need to have a look at that NIF, else we'll only be grasping at straws here, asking and guessing around blindly until we hit a thing.

 

If you're not fine with uploading your NIF and linking it here wholesale, you can also just open all branches of the NIF tree on the left and give us screenshots instead, but the people around here able to help, and me, will need to at least see the structure of your blocks and also the important values and entries made in each.

 

 

That said, getting a wrong texture on only "part" of a mesh, that is only part of 1 NiTriShape/Strips object, usually indicates a mapping issue, that is textures made for another body mesh used on one with an unfitting layout.

You say all the parts of what you combined previously did look completely fine on their own alone and just don't anymore since they were combined?

[Cauliflour]

Here's a pic showing what Nifskope looks like with the NIF loaded. I'm disinclined to upload the NIF itself, since it's in an embarrassingly incomplete state and uses portions of meshes made by other people.

 

 

You say all the parts of what you combined previously did look completely fine on their own alone and just don't anymore since they were combined?

 

Yes, that's right.

 

I'm not sure if it matters, but I removed a large portion of one of the meshes before combining them. The texture still showed up correctly in both Blender and Nifskope.

Edited March 29, 2017 by Cauliflour

[DrakeTheDragon]

Wait a second... am I seeing a male and female body part combined in one NIF there? No surprise one or the other will have a mismatching texture layout when worn.

 

Neither Blender nor NifSkope will display this issue, because those both use only the texture that's assigned inside the NIF. Inside the game, however, that's no longer the case. There you'll get a female skin texture wrapped around the male body part or a male skin texture around the female, depending on who wears that item. And unless you're using both Robert's Male and Robert's Female bodies, these layouts will never match.

[Cauliflour]

Does that mean Oblivion will only load one texture per mod? Otherwise I can't see why it wouldn't work; the two bodies merge seamlessly as I've made them.

 

If that won't work, the game should surely still be able to load the meshes separately as two different objects (the Nifskopes for that are identical to the above, except only one Nitristripe is present per mesh). It doesn't, though--even if just one of the meshes is worn, the game produces the same graphical error, the male part being invisible and the female part showing the wrong texture (which I'm pretty sure is the male texture unless it's the vanilla female texture).

Edited March 30, 2017 by Cauliflour

[DrakeTheDragon]

No, but Oblivion will only load 1 texture per race and gender and body part slot.

 

Let's try to explain it differently. These are the texture layouts, or UV-maps, of the upperbody meshes of HGEC and Robert's Female respectively. I know these aren't a male and a female layout, but the difference between RF and Robert's Male is almost negligible.

 

http://orig04.deviantart.net/be6f/f/2016/312/c/0/upperbody_hgec_uvmap_by_drakethedragon_1980-danq1qf.jpg http://orig13.deviantart.net/a862/f/2016/312/6/2/upperbody_rf_uvmap_by_drakethedragon_1980-danq1qa.jpg

 

I hope it can easily be seen why a skin texture made for HGEC will never work on a RF body part mesh, nor will a skin texture for RF ever look good on an HGEC mesh.

 

In your case the texture for your male race will not work correctly on the female mesh and the texture for your female race won't fit onto the male mesh. But you cannot be both, male and female, of gender at the same time in this game, thus both meshes will always only use one and the same skin texture.

 

Every NiTriStrips/Shape block inside your NIF that's named "foot" (with or without an added remark signaled by ":") and is using material "skin" will be using the same one texture, the foot slot skin texture of the current race and gender it's worn on.

[Cauliflour]

 

Every NiTriStrips/Shape block inside your NIF that's named "foot" (with or without an added remark signaled by ":") and is using material "skin" will be using the same one texture, the foot slot skin texture of the current race and gender it's worn on.

 

This is part of what's wrong, then, (it still doesn't explain why one mesh by itself doesn't work) as the textures fit with each other just fine other than me needing to tweak the colors a bit. It should be noted that the texture fits the male part of the body perfectly; it's just the female part that appears to be using a different texture or a different instance of the same texture.

 

If I can only have one foot texture at a time, I'm at a loss as to what I can do to make this mesh work. I really don't want to have to perform major surgery on a texture. I wonder if I could alter a body texture so that it contains what are in effect two textures, one for a small ring and the other for the body part I'm trying to attach (I don't need the whole texture, only part of it, so there is plenty of extra space to do this in), and then line up the UV maps correctly before applying this one texture to the two objects?

Edited March 30, 2017 by Cauliflour

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, one mesh by itself doesn't work, if it's the wrong gender. The other mesh will work, both by itself and in combination, if it's the right gender.

 

Both meshes use the same texture, but the way the texture is wrapped around them, which area from inside the texture, and where on the mesh, is different between the two.

 

Basically, yes, you can edit a texture so it contains two, but in case of the skin textures that'd be a ginormous bad idea (excuse the color in words). The skin texture will be used by all body parts inside all other items as well, and once you changed the layout of the texture, you would have to change the UV unwrapping of all those meshes afterwards as well... and every future item to come. Not quite a feasible idea.

 

But why don't you just try and "line up the UV map correctly" of the "small ring" of skin you're talking of, so they both use the proper skin texture for the proper race with the previously unfitting parts having been refitted to the texture? You already needed to do some changes in color to the textures you use so they align at the border. If you make them both use skin areas from the same texture, this shouldn't even be necessary anymore. You aligned the models, you can also align the UV, and any seams will completely disappear.

 

 

What you can also do, but it's not a bright idea when this NIF is intended to be an actual body part rather than a skin-colored wearable item, is to simply change the material name ay from "skin", and already the game engine will no longer interfere and it will only use the two textures you assigned inside the NIF instead, each one on the mesh where it is meant to be used. The mesh won't adapt in skin tint and color according to your CharGen settings then anymore though, nor will it automatically change texture when worn on another race.