Natterforme Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Ok so I have a quick question. I am making an armor mod for Oblivion. The model is currently weighted correctly to be usable in Oblivion without any stretching problems or the like. My question is, if I wish to port this armor mesh to Skyrim, will the bone weights have to be redone? Or will parenting the mesh to a Skyrim skeleton maintain the proper bone weights? The reason I am asking this is because, right now at least, in order to import new meshes into Skyrim, we have to go through the labourous process of changing the data properties in nifskope every time we export a new model. If we find problems with our bone weights( stretching, disappearing meshes, etc.) we have to go back into our 3D programs and try again, only to have to reexport the meshes again and the reassign all of the properties. If the mesh is able to maintain its bone weights regardless of a new Skyrim parented skeleton, this would have several advantages. We could be able to test new meshes and textures in Oblivion first, which has a much faster turn around for fixing mesh problems between the game, nifskope, and blender for example. If we can remove problems more quickly through Oblivion as a test game, we can then simply import it into our preferred program of choice, export it as a Fallout file, and then work the nifskope property magic without fear of distorted meshes. I doubt that this will work but it seems that porting Oblivion material is a lot faster than trying to make new Skyrim materials. Why can we just make everything as if it was in Oblivion and then 'port' it to Skyrim? If you want things that only Skyrim can have that cant be tested in Oblivion like an animations or whatever, at the very least you could make your mesh stable before trying to work out whether or not your problems are Skyrim based or user-error based( i.e. wrong texture paths, bad bone weights, animations, etc.). Since we wont be publishing the new Skyrim material for Oblivion, I dont see why we cant use Oblivion or Fallout to be a testing ground for new armors, weapons, animations, and other things. What do you guys think? ^^ -Natterforme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nivea Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 (edited) Suppose the problem is that (unless I a misunderstanding you) skyrim uses a different skeleton with different weights, then Oblivion or Fallout (just as Fallout uses a different skeleton and weights then Oblivion) so the weights even if transferred wouldnt matter because you have the wrong skeleton for each game. Your only real option is to try to test your rigging in your Blender/ect the best you can by moving bones around to see what stretches or deforms, its not easy and its not fun but that really seems to be the only way... God knows how many times I have exported my cloaks and armors only to find somthing messed up and have to go through that process again. At least you can skip making the _1 mesh until the end and just test on the _0 one, that saves some time. Edited March 19, 2012 by nivea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Natterforme Posted March 20, 2012 Author Share Posted March 20, 2012 Yeah, I have only been focusing on _0 meshes for now. Thank goodness the heads, legs, and arms do not have _1 meshes :O. I would think that parenting the new skeleton would still keep the mesh together though. I cant imagine that you would need to reweight everything just because of a new skeleton. I mean, the universial skeleton in Oblivion was different from the default but they could be used interchangably. Or, at least, that was my impression. :/ -Natterforme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nivea Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 The universal skeleton uses the vanilla skeleton as a base, it just adds new nodes to it for say wings to be animated or boobs that bounce. Each new game has new/removed nodes to it, unless you edit the Skyrim skeleton (if you even can do this in Skyrim) to included all the missing nodes it might work but thats a very big Might.Something was done like that for FO3, but that was a couple games ago on the same engine Skyrim could be the same or the "new" engine could make it not possible. http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=13881 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 (edited) will the bone weights have to be redone? No, the weights will be fine. If you rename the bones in the oblivion nif to match the corresponding Skyrim ones, they will be intact. However you will still no matter what have to reposition, correctly proportion and pose your oblivion outfit to actually fit the skyrim rig, Which might sound slightly hard but not really at all if you know what you are doing, think about this> you can simply make a new bind pose for the Oblivion rig with it's arms down towards the sides and that takes care of half it, and you can reuse that scene to import all your oblivion meshes to get that roughly in the right place for any oblivion outfit. But you will have to do it by hand really as proportionally the rig is kinda different. Same principles, but in max...You can probably work out an easy way to rename the bones, someone could make a maxscript that renames the appropriate bones to their skyrim counterparts, and then back again. pretty simple.. for someone who knows how enough about maxscript. the basic work flow would be as follows>make a scene and position the Ob rig in a similar manner to Skys rig, arms at the sides etc. Save this as the base scene. Import Ob nif. rename bones, hopefully with a script that does it in one go, or you are going to be doing the replace name in the standard max tools per bone :\. Save that scene to a new file, not over the base scene. Open fresh scene with SK rig. Merge in your mesh from the scene you just saved. Reposition mesh to best fit the sky rig. The skinning actually transfers over very well. I did this with this model I made on the Ob rig: http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/wipz/CumberlandArmorWIP.jpg http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/wipz/armor2.jpg All I did was add to the skinning by utilising the pauldron bones that oblivion does have. Hardest part was fingers. It's easy to match the knees and elbows to the rig fairly well, it's all about placing the mesh right at the joints, and the hand pose is kinda different, so best thing would be to really look at tweaking the OB skeletons bind pose to match the SK one as best you can and it would save on hassle with posing the hand right. Edited March 21, 2012 by Ghogiel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Natterforme Posted March 22, 2012 Author Share Posted March 22, 2012 If I am not mistaken, a modder already made a skeleton nif for Oblivion armor meshes that has been placed in the arms down position. I believe it is a modders resource so that we can skip at least one or two steps. What do you guys think? -Natterforme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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