[LE] Nifskope, Blender, make actor mesh game ready

[Tasheni]

I need advise how to get an actor mesh ready to use it in game. I have the model as BSFadeNode-NiTriStrips and BSLightningShader- BSShaderTextureSet and it looks pretty nice in Nifskope.

 

The simplest thing I could think of would be just to replace the shape of the actor with this mesh. But obviously things are not working as I may want.

 

I know that I need to rig this model somehow. What I tried already:

Copy the Nodes of a similar mesh with Nifskope that's already in game to the new one - that doesn't work. I get an error that the branch can't be pasted because of wrong parent name. But I renamed all textattributes to match each other and can't see what is wrong there. I also tried not to copy the whole branch but single columns, no luck.

 

I tried to do that in Blender, but I never worked with it before and so it was pain to follow the outside tutorials I could find, like this from Caliente:

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/qqdlf/help_tutorials_for_modding_character_meshes/

I've read a lot more, even german ones but they hop always over important steps so I can't follow them.

 

I use Blender 2.77 with nifscripts installed and this seem to work fine.

 

If someone can point me in the right direction that would be great. I know that I must go deeper into that stuff but time's always short :smile: (:

 

Thank you for helping and greetings from Tasheni

Edited September 10, 2017 by Tasheni

[Tasheni]

EDIT: I get help from someone, so it's solved.

 

What I've tried so far now is to rig the mesh. I found a tutorial how to do it with blender 2.7 and that seem to work but I'm not sure about the constraints technique. I've added all bones I thought were necessary and I could integrate the bones into the mesh. When I try to export the mesh I get an error: NifOP is not named ??? I found nothing about it. I'm sure I'm missing something important to do it the right way. It is completely new to me. Perhaps someonne can help or look at my blender-file?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Tasheni

[DavidJCobb]

Would you mind posting the help you received, in case others find the thread through Google in the future?

Edited September 14, 2017 by DavidJCobb

[Tasheni]

Yes, of course I would do that but the help is in form of the incredibly talented Mihail who will take a look at the model - so I have no solution in form of advise or tutorial right now. There are in fact a lot of youtube tutorials outside, even in german, that covers the matter, but it's not so simple as just follow them and do it, I tried and give up. It takes a lot of time to learn how Blender works and a lot of practise to make things right. And I simply have not this much time. It takes all too long to mess around with ck, Tamriel lore, sound recording, implementing, testing. So I'm sorry I can't help with this matter.

[Di0nysys]

When doing anything Skyrim, you always want to reuse vanilla skeletons. Never make your own rig.

Per the course, the workflow for most skyrim skinned meshes is as follows:
1- Import a template actor + skeleton.nif into your modeling program (i use 3dsmax). If u want it to work for a human rig, then import nakedmale.nif along with the appropriate arms, legs, head, eyes, all with skin info intact. Import the skeleton.nif once.
2- Import ur mesh after having divided it into appropriate parts (head, body, arms, etc) (EDIT: you don't need to divide necessarily if ur doing creature meshes).
3- Use a Skin Wrap modifier (or Blender equivalent) to rip bone weights from the vanilla body onto ur custom meshes.
4- Apply a BsDismemberModifier onto the parts of ur mesh, mimicking the vanilla partitions. This can be picky at times. Following the vanilla partitions usually works fine.

5- In Nifskope, Do Spells > Make all skin partitions (18 for LE, 60 for SE).
6- In Nifskope, Do Spells > Sanitize > Reorder Blocks to make sure all nodes are ordered.

This should have u set to import everything into CK.
7- Granted u exported all the pieces correctly, use vanilla templates and swap in your own custom meshes in their stead.
8- Every human mesh must have a _0 and _1 equivalent for weight slider compat. If u want to bypass this, simple copy ur meshes and rename them. When pointing at ur meshes, always point at the _1 mesh. Else if your dealing with creature meshes, u can ignore this step.

This should be it.
(Addon- There's also the need to create ground meshes and first person models as well if ur doing armors. There's another process for that. Also, ditch Blender as fast as u can, 3DSMax is miles less headache inducing in terms of tutorials and exporter compatibility and reliability).

Good luck:)

Edited September 15, 2017 by Di0nysys

[Tasheni]

When doing anything Skyrim, you always want to reuse vanilla skeletons. Never make your own rig.

 

Per the course, the workflow for most skyrim skinned meshes is as follows:

1- Import a template actor + skeleton.nif into your modeling program (i use 3dsmax). If u want it to work for a human rig, then import nakedmale.nif along with the appropriate arms, legs, head, eyes, all with skin info intact. Import the skeleton.nif once.

2- Import ur mesh after having divided it into appropriate parts (head, body, arms, etc) (EDIT: you don't need to divide necessarily if ur doing creature meshes).

3- Use a Skin Wrap modifier (or Blender equivalent) to rip bone weights from the vanilla body onto ur custom meshes.

4- Apply a BsDismemberModifier onto the parts of ur mesh, mimicking the vanilla partitions. This can be picky at times. Following the vanilla partitions usually works fine.

5- In Nifskope, Do Spells > Make all skin partitions (18 for LE, 60 for SE).

6- In Nifskope, Do Spells > Sanitize > Reorder Blocks to make sure all nodes are ordered.

 

This should have u set to import everything into CK.

7- Granted u exported all the pieces correctly, use vanilla templates and swap in your own custom meshes in their stead.

8- Every human mesh must have a _0 and _1 equivalent for weight slider compat. If u want to bypass this, simple copy ur meshes and rename them. When pointing at ur meshes, always point at the _1 mesh. Else if your dealing with creature meshes, u can ignore this step.

 

This should be it.

(Addon- There's also the need to create ground meshes and first person models as well if ur doing armors. There's another process for that. Also, ditch Blender as fast as u can, 3DSMax is miles less headache inducing in terms of tutorials and exporter compatibility and reliability).

 

Good luck:)

 

 

Per the course, the workflow for most skyrim skinned meshes is as follows:

1- Import a template actor + skeleton.nif into your modeling program (i use 3dsmax). If u want it to work for a human rig, then import nakedmale.nif along with the appropriate arms, legs, head, eyes, all with skin info intact. Import the skeleton.nif once.

2- Import ur mesh after having divided it into appropriate parts (head, body, arms, etc) (EDIT: you don't need to divide necessarily if ur doing creature meshes).

3- Use a Skin Wrap modifier (or Blender equivalent) to rip bone weights from the vanilla body onto ur custom meshes.

I tried exactly this in Blender for a dog mesh but it seems that the mesh doesn't fit the vanilla dog skeleton. I have no 3DStudioMax. It's difficult for me to follow your further steps, but perhaps this info is good for others. Thank you very much so far for your instructions.

[Di0nysys]

 

I tried exactly this in Blender for a dog mesh but it seems that the mesh doesn't fit the vanilla dog skeleton. I have no 3DStudioMax. It's difficult for me to follow your further steps, but perhaps this info is good for others. Thank you very much so far for your instructions.

That's the way forward. You can't really bring in new skinned meshes without skinning bone weights. U can get 3dsmax off the adobe site for free. They offer a student license. Don't forget to also checkout youtube, there's a ton of tutorials on doing this as well.