Custom mesh invisible in NifSkope.

[EPDGaffney]

So, I imported a tunneller mesh into Blender 2.78 using the default importer options. I made all my edits and was very careful not to break the rig or mess with the hierarchy or merge vertices. It looks quite different to the original, as I wanted, but animates beautifully in Blender 2.78.

 

I have attempted a few export options to get it into Blender 2.49. The results tend to be that all the shading is flat but otherwise things appear to be in working order. I haven't attempted to look at it with the textures showing as I don't really care about that right now, but if that's a mistake, do tell.

 

I have tried to export it as a .nif many, many times. I have clicked Fallout 3 and Creature, and that gave me an invisible mesh in NifSkope, so from that point I've tried several minor alterations and never got any other results.

 

I have a few years of modelling experience, so I'm not having trouble with that. It's just getting this stuff imported/exported that is taking me all my time. I'm grateful for any help.

[dubiousintent]

I'm not clear on why you are using Blender v2.78 at all. (Not my area of expertise.) But that might be your problem. I've read that not all the necessary component plugins work with all versions, and the advice has always been that for Fallout you should use the older version of Blender instead of the newer one. Have you tried building it all using the Blender v2.49b package, which includes the exporter plugin that is compatible with that version? With the older games, the latest version of any tool is not necessarily the correct choice.

 

-Dubious-

Edited November 3, 2017 by dubiousintent

[EPDGaffney]

Besides Mongo, most people seem to suggest using 2.78 for production and 2.49 for the exporting. However, no-one really goes into detail on this procedure, so I just guessed my way through and I'm not getting anywhere.

[dubiousintent]

From the "Getting started creating mod using GECK" article:

 

The "workflow" on Blender for Nif files is considered more complex than with the others because it often takes you into the Nifskope tool.

 

and

Once you have the 3D model textured (UV mapped) and maybe have generated a normal map for it as well, then you need to export everything. First, read the Working with DDS/DXT Files article by Gary "Buckaroo" Neely to understand the choices in DXT codec to choose among. Blender and the NIF tools don't export a lot of things properly, so then you have to go into NifSkope (which comes with the NIF tools) and fix it. (The proper weight of "bones" in skeletons, along with "shader flags", is almost always wrong, for instance.) Be sure to check that the path given in the mesh to the texture file is in "relative" format. (See How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files.) The default format of the mesh editor's paths may not be "relative".

 

What the proper settings are depends upon exactly what you exported. Perhaps the wiki articles "Fixing Invisible Meshes for Fallout 4" or one of the tutorials in "Blender - Read This 1st" will be of more specific help.

 

-Dubious-

[madmongo]

I can't help you with 2.78. I do everything in 2.49b because it all just works (well, mostly).

 

If you can get it into 2.49b correctly, I can help you get it into nif from there. Click on Fallout 3 and Creature, as you have done. Also, uncheck Use BSFadeNode Root. If you have Use BSFadeNode Root checked, the nif won't work correctly and may even crash the GECK or the game.

 

At this point, the mesh should show up in NifSkope correctly, but it will be invisible in-game. If it's not showing up in NifSkope correctly, then maybe something is wrong with the parenting to the armature or something is seriously futzed with the bone weighting.

 

To make the mesh not invisible, you need to fix the shader flags. If there is a way to get Blender to export the shader flags correctly, I haven't found it. The following applies to both creature meshes and armor/clothing meshes (they all kinda work the same).

 

For creature skins and regular armor parts, the type needs to be set to SHADER_DEFAULT and make sure SF_SHADOW_MAP and SF_REMAPABLE_TEXTURES are both checked.

 

For the any visible human skin body parts (arms, legs, etc) the type needs to be set to SHADER_SKIN and make sure SF_SHADOW_MAP and SF_FACEGEN are both checked.

 

Blender usually sets the rest of the flags correctly.

 

Save your nif and everything should be visible in-game.

 

Make sure you have both the armature (skeleton) and all mesh parts selected before exporting to nif. Blender only exports the parts that you have selected. If you are ending up with an empty nif, it could be that you didn't have the mesh selected when you exported.

[EPDGaffney]

EDIT -- Solved (sort of), See Edit 5 below.

 

I really appreciate the help, Mongo.

 

And unfortunately, Dubious, I've been over all that a thousand times. But thank you.

 

So, these are my export settings:

https://prnt.sc/h613cq

 

It's still invisible in NifSkope and it doesn't seem to give me the blocktypes I'm meant to have:

https://prnt.sc/h614hm

 

I don't really know much about NifSkope and it tends to feel (for me at least) extremely unintuitive compared to other 3D software, so it's hard for me to tell what's even wrong in most cases, this one very much included.

 

Blender 2.49 was a bit confusing for me, coming from newer versions of Blender and having used Maya before that, so I didn't do too much fiddling with the model in there as none of my hotkeys worked and that sort of thing. But I've managed to find the outliner just now and my file looks very different to the one I have for this model in 2.78, and I don't actually see an armature in 2.49.

 

Another weird thing is in 2.78 I have vertex groups, but they don't appear to have any vertices. I haven't worked with vertex groups much, so it's possible I'm not remembering correctly, but the way I thought it worked was I could right-click a vertex group and have it select what's assigned to it, but in this case I get an error message that states Not Yet Implemented.

 

Breaking news: I tested the tunneller via that vanilla file importing into 2.49 and then exporting, and it works (I think I forgot to select the model last time I did that test, as you mentioned, Mongo). This means the issue is as I suspected, occurring before I get it into 2.49 from 2.78. I think it's imported correctly, judging by the outliner for that tunneller in 2.49 and my new monster in 2.78. So I need to try some other exporting options and post back. In the meantime, if anyone else uses Blender 2.78 for this stuff, I'd love to hear from them.

 

Thanks for any and all help.

 

EDIT: PROGRESS.

So, I've found out that you can simply save a .blend file as a legacy mesh and open it in 2.49. It works perfectly in Blender but it won't export. It tells me this:

EXPORT ERROR.

'Scene Root': Cannot export envelope skinning. Check console for instructions.

 

I haven't looked into it yet. I'm just posting here because I've learnt that in general, if some software gives me an error and tells me I can look at something to tell me how to fix it, that is probably going to take a lot longer and be much more difficult than that sounds.

 

But I do think this is going to work. An important caveät would be that as far as I can tell, this legacy method does not keep the animations intact. As I'm not using any animations, that won't be a problem for me. The rig appears to work just as it did in 2.78, so I'm feeling fairly optimistic.

 

EDIT 2: As expected, turning off envelopes did not fix the problem.

EXPORT ERROR.

Non-uniform scaling on bone 'Bip01 Foot.L' not supported. This could be a bug... No workaround :-( Post your blend!

I press on.

 

EDIT 3: If I delete that bone, I get the message on another bone, and if I delete that, same thing, so it's safe to say it probably applies to all bones. I was able to export the model perfectly without the skeleton however, as a static. Going the other way, exporting just the skeleton, the same error message is got. I have of course applied rotation and scale, which did not change the error message. I have a couple of other things to try, like FBX directly into NifSkope. If tht doesn't work, I want to test importing a .nif into Blender 2.78 and then opening that as a .blend in 2.49 and exporting it back out as a .nif, see what I get with that and maybe narrow down the problem to something I did during modelling or a problem with the importing/exporting methods.

 

EDIT 4: I have attempted to import the tunneller into 2.78, then save as legacy, open in 2.49, and export, and all the error messages are the same. So I'll forget about legacy for now. Next is either more export options from 2.78, or maybe deleting the rig once in 2.49 and skinning the mesh to a rig I import directly into 2.49. I wish I knew exactly how people normally make their stuff in 2.78 and get it into 2.49, because if something is made from scratch in 2.78, and 2.49 is used only for importing/exporting, you aren't doing any skinning in 2.49.

 

EDIT 5: The way I eventually got this to work was by opening that legacy mesh in Blender 2.49, deleting the skeleton, importing the tunneller right there so that the two meshes were atop one another in 2.49, parenting my mesh to the tunneller's skeleton (Ctrl-P --> Armature --> Don't create groups), and deleting all the meshes that had been brought in with the tunneller. This left my mesh with the tunneller's skeleton, and thank God for small favours, something carried over my weights and everything animated perfectly. I believe it's the vertex groups but I don't know for sure.

Edited November 6, 2017 by EPDGaffney

[YanL]

 

 

Non-uniform scaling on bone 'Bip01 Foot.L' not supported

 

Select one bone, press A twice to select everything. Now press crtl + A and click in Scale and Rotation to ObData. Export now.

Edited November 5, 2017 by YanL

[EPDGaffney]

Thanks, YanL. I've already applied rotation and scale, which is what has always fixed similar problems for me, but in this case I get that error message anyway. There's another possible error message I found in the source code which is the same except that it does tell you to apply rotation and scale, so they must have been able to tell the difference.

 

Incidentally, your suggestion to select an individual bone and then all bones would imply to me that you're in edit mode. I didn't think you could apply rotation and scale in edit mode, and it's not working for me. Is there something else I'm meant to do?