Nifskope Basics

[TheDoctor1300]

I actually have two problems.

 

1. I made my mesh for Fallout New Vegas but, exported as a Fallout 3 NIF file and I'm not sure if that's a problem or not.

 

2. I'm sure this is a really simple problem but, I've never really messed around with NIFSkope and I'm not sure what it is intended for, application wise. My mesh currently is all white when I loaded it up, I tried adjusting the material for it to be green, and loaded in my mesh piece by piece, color by color. After that, I tried putting it in the Creation Kit and now it won't appear when I try and load it.

[EPDGaffney]

What type of mesh is it? Fallout 3 is indeed what we use, but other stuff needs to be selected depending on what the object will be used for in-game.

[TheDoctor1300]

The one I'm trying to put in game as of now is suppose to be a static it's going to have an animation that's suppose to activate when the player enables it too.

 

EDIT: I do know I have to use NIFSkope to animate it, so no need to worry about that.

Edited January 4, 2018 by TheDoctor1300

[EPDGaffney]

Which version of Blender and NifSkope are you using?

 

You need to make the collision in Blender and then export it with the object in order for it to be an activator.

 

I have never actually exported a .nif with a collision mesh as yet (well, not completely functional collision at least) as I've primarily worked with NPCs and Creatures and Armours, which all generate collision differently based on vertex groups.

 

For your export settings, you click on Fallout 3 first and then modify the settings afterwards. For stuff that isn't clothing/armour, NPCs, or creatures, you want to click on Use BSFadeNode Root. My understanding is that when you export, Static is for walls and stuff that can't be moved by the physics engine, Anim Static is for stuff like that but with animations (so, I think this one is what you want), Clutter is stuff that can be picked up with Z (or clicking the right analogue stick on a controller), Weapon is similar to Clutter but must be different in some way, and Creature is for stuff with a skeleton that generates collision based on the vertex group names.

 

There are some other settings there that I've never touched and which are probably required for what you want.

 

Failing that, you can

1. Open up a mesh in NifSkope that already has the collision you want (irrespective of size, as you can scale uniformly in NifSkope). Note that you can browse archives with NifSkope, referring to BSAs, which is where all the meshes for the game are kept. If you want, you can use BSAopt to unpack that archive, but do not under any circumstances unpack it in your New Vegas folder. Be very careful.

2. Open your custom mesh in another instance of NifSkope.

3. Right-click on your mesh and click Block-->Copy Branch.

4. Right-click on the vanilla mesh's BSFadeNode Root and select Block-->Paste Branch.

5. Right-click on the vanilla mesh and select Block-->Remove Branch.

6. Scale if necessary. Move/rotate the mesh if necessary. This is done by right-clicking the mesh and selecting Transform-->Edit. You can use that menu and sometimes it displays results immediately, whereas other times you need to apply the transformation afterwards (right-click mesh and click Transform-->Apply).

7. Make sure you save it as a new mesh and don't overwrite the old one.

 

Also, I saw in a tutorial that applying rotation and scale in Blender after doing collision can actually ruin that collision for the NIF exporter, so do that before doing collision and don't do it after. Also, as I said in that thread, scale in Edit Mode and it should avoid the need altogether anyway.

 

Edit: The BSFadeNode Root setting should stop it being invisible in the GECK, which would be the opposite on rigs with a skeleton. As for the textures, you need to make sure that each Object in your mesh has one material only. In the correct version of Blender for this, what you see is not what you get, unless you're looking at the render of it. So, for each object you go into Edit Mode, press A once or twice to make sure every vertex is selected, and then in the Buttons Window in the Editing panel, select and assign the material you want for that object. If anything needs a different diffuse map/normal map/whatever map, you need to make it a separate object for the exporter to work (in Edit Mode, select the vertices in question and press P).

 

An image to illustrate what I mean about assigning materials:

https://prnt.sc/hvtvbx

Edited January 4, 2018 by EPDGaffney

[TheDoctor1300]

I decided to read up on this at the geck tutorial page and apparently it says I need to do something with NiTriShape. I don't have a NiTriShape option available to me. Actually, many of the tutorials I looked at say to copy the BsShader over to my meshes NiTriShape Branch and I can't find that. I've checked and it's definitely not there. Did I export it wrong?

[EPDGaffney]

Well, how about this. Simpler than anything else, can you send me your .blend? I can give you my e-mail, you can message me, or you can upload it here, or if you don't want to do that, that's your call.

 

If you exported it wrong, that means you have collision in your Blender file and it didn't work/get into NifSkope, or you have a material assigned in Blender and that didn't export. Is that true on both counts? Are you using one of the older versions of Blender we recommended?

 

NiTriShape and BsShader are in NifSkope, and the former could be NiTriStrips rather than Shape. Without the Shapes or Strips, you shouldn't actually see any model in NifSkope, to my knowledge. The Shader one is contained with the BsLightingShaderProperty and without it you can't have textures (to my knowledge). None of this will be seen anywhere in Blender, to be clear.

 

Also, I know a lot more about collision than when I wrote my last message. As long as the correct collision shape is there, I can more or less direct you to getting the results you want via the properties in NifSkope, once we're at that stage (which we don't appear to be yet).

Edited January 6, 2018 by EPDGaffney

[TheDoctor1300]

Sure, I'll send you my .blend file. I did end up re-doing it in the recommend older version of blender because when I loaded the legacy file into NifSkope I was missing a face but, the redone version isn't missing anything now, so that's no longer a problem. I don't mean to pester you with this either. I've just never used NifSkope and most of it is practically Greek to me, so if I get to be too much of a nuisance, let me know so I won't seem troublesome.

Edited January 6, 2018 by TheDoctor1300

[EPDGaffney]

I'm a 'puzzle-solver'. I get as much out of this as you do, so don't worry about that. As long as you're polite about whatever you don't understand or whatever you need, I'd like to say most of the people here will help you just about for ever. And at least for me, I feel sort of responsible to help people with issues that made me want to break things on my journey to where I am now. Things like NifSkope in particular.

 

That out of the way, if you wanted to mail me it:

(there was an e-mail address here; it's gone now)

Edited January 6, 2018 by EPDGaffney

[TheDoctor1300]

I've sent the email. You can do as you please.

[EPDGaffney]

Fortunately for you, I know a lot of the reasons things aren't going great for you with this.

 

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First, is this how you expect the model to look:

https://prnt.sc/hwqxzw

 

Because if so, the first thing you need to do is to look at it in Textured Mode rather than Solid Mode. You'll see the normals are facing the wrong way, unless I misunderstand your plan somehow (but being a Dr Who fan myself, I don't believe I am misunderstanding):

https://prnt.sc/hwqyld

 

Just select the whole model in Edit Mode and press Ctrl-N to bring up the Normals menu, where you can tell it to Recalculate Normals outside. Should sort you out there.

 

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Next, you have two materials here, and one object. This won't work in NifSkope or the game. If you want it like this, you'll have to separate them into separate objects, though I honestly would not expect that little black portion to need to be visible, let alone use a separate texture.

 

To separate the objects, in Edit Mode, in the Editing Panel of the Buttons Window, make sure nothing is selected yet, choose one of the materials, and click Select:

https://prnt.sc/hwr033

 

Press P to separate it:

http://prntscr.com/hwr11t

 

If you leave Edit mode, you'll see you now have two separate objects.

 

If you'd rather use the green material for everything, select everything, choose the green material from the dropdown menu and this time hit Assign instead of Select.

 

Note that this is the correct procedure and though it can get confusing, in this version of Blender, something that appears to have one material may actually have another in its data, especially after doing a UV map. Use that Select button to see what faces have what materials actually assigned to them.

 

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You will need a UV map as well. You can approach this many ways, but if you've never done it and just want to get it done, a quick fix that should fortunately work really well for this model (owing to its composition of almost entirely hard edges), is to make sure nothing is selected and tell Blender to select all sharp edges. Make sure you're in Edge mode and do this:

https://prnt.sc/hwr3e8

 

A menu comes up that tells you to choose an angle. I used 150 to get that selection.

 

Now press Ctrl-E to bring up the Edge menu and click Mark Seams. Should get somethling like this:

https://prnt.sc/hwr49e

 

Now select everything (in Edit mode still) and press U to bring up the UV menu, and click Unwrap. Your model will turn white (if in Textured view), and then in order to see your UVs you'll need to go to the UV window:

https://prnt.sc/hwr54q

 

If you made your mesh into two separate objects, you'll need to repeat the process on the other object to UV-unwrap that little black-material section.

 

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Your model is white because these materials have no textures. This may export as is and let you assign textures in NifSkope but I'm not absolutely certain. Here's a video on adding textures:

 

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Last is collision, but I'll let you handle all this first, as I've still never made my own collision in Blender (I've just edited the collision of other imported NIFs to fit my models), though I know a lot about how to make NifSkope change the behaviour of collision that's already there until it suits your needs.

 

Mind you, it will export without the collision, so try it if you like.