NIF and Maya 2011, a tragic story

[elitegoliath]

Ok, short and sweet. I have Maya 2011, and so far I cannot find any .NIF file support/plugins for the version. Also, I noticed that Maya seems pretty useless when it come to generating complete mods for the game, and depends on another program or 2 to do the textures and special effects and such. So, with all things considered, what should I do here? Learn a new program, get Maya 2012 and a secondary support program, what? Thanks in advance!

[GomuGomu64]

From what I've found, is that you'll need to export your Maya model to something that Blender can import, then export from Blender the .nif, and then import the .nif into Nifskope.

 

That be as far as me knowledge lies.

[elitegoliath]

Ok, so right now I am installing Maya 2012, and will throw the new plugin into it. I pretty much expect that I will ONLY be able to model mesh in Maya, and export it as an OBJ. After that, I assume that in Blender is where I make the grey mesh look all sorts of pretty. Attaching the different kinds of textures and maps and such, correct? Then after that, it goes into Nifskope? For which reason is Nifskope in the loop, to finalize it as a nif file after the process is complete? Edited March 30, 2012 by elitegoliath

[razorpony]

Nifskope gets thrown into the mix because Blender doesn't have proper nifscripts yet, so you have to export your mesh as a fallout 3 mesh then use Nifskope to change it to a Skyrim mesh. Fun stuff.

 

RP

[elitegoliath]

Haha, ok, that makes perfect sense. I suppose my only concern now is learning how to texture in Blender after modeling in Maya 2012. One thing I found is a plugin for 2012 that can export as a NIF, but I am unsure of how well it works. This is beginning to get a bit confusing, but I should manage. Any good tutorials that show this particular flow path?

[Urwy]

Blender is, like maya, another modelling program. However, you can use it to UV-map models and then use either Paint.net, Photoshop or Gimp to actually create the textures.

So if Maya can create UV-maps as well, you wont need blender at all. Just create and uv-map the model in maya and then export the OBJ to nifskope, where you can import the OBJ and attach the texture files to the mesh file.

 

Having said that, i personally use blender, and do not know if maya is capable of this. :whistling:

[elitegoliath]

Maya can totaly do UV maps. Now when you say create them, are you meaning that I will need to export the UV map apart from the mesh in a certain format? I am experienced in gather an unwrapped UV, throwing it into photoshop to texture, and I use CrazyBump to make normal and bump maps, but throwing them together in the format required for Skyrim is what is new to me. I will look for some tutorials, but if you have some in mind that would rock. I want to get some unique 3D models into Skyrim, and this is the only thing stopping me.

[jimhsu]

The UV that you get when exporting as an .obj should work fine. It's just the skinning part that is more problematic. Edited March 31, 2012 by jimhsu

[elitegoliath]

Oh, ok, well I will go ahead and look more into that then. If I encounter further issues I will revive this threat. I am still open to tutorials though, if you guys are savvy to some good ones.

[elitegoliath]

Ok, I have my custom mesh, and I learned how to lay out the UVs in a way that will make editing them in photoshop a breeze. Now, I assume i need 3 dds files correct? 1 which will be the texture, one for the normal map, and one for the specular map. Lets say I create 3 of these for my custom mesh, and I have my mesh uploaded into NIFSKOPE. I cannot figure out what to do with the 3 dds files I created for my mesh in nifskope. :/ Also, how does one create glow maps?