Converting Meshs from other games, help

[SnakeSlippers]

Needing some answers from people who converted models from other games and such.

 

Looking around Fallout Nexus there isn't much resources I could use for what I need, now other games have everything. I'm talking about custom made meshes from people.

 

Which game is it better to get a mesh from? Quality wise, and which game is easiest to convert said mesh to FNV?

 

Oblivion, Skyrim, or Skyrim Special Edition

 

So if someone made a custom mesh model and posted it for each game, which would be the higher quality, better suited for FNV?

Edited February 5, 2018 by SnakeSlippers

[madmongo]

If this is for your own personal use, there's no issue. If this is for a mod that you plan on releasing on the Nexus (or anywhere else), then you can't use assets from other games, and you can only use assets from other mods if the mod author gives you permission to do so.

 

That said, the game engine for Oblivion is fairly close to the game engine for FO3/FNV. They changed quite a bit for Skyrim. In any event, the skeletons for the player and for NPCs is different for any of the TES games. If you are porting over armor or clothing, you'll need to unparent the mesh from its original armature and reparent the mesh to the FNV skeleton, and of course reassign all of the bone weights as you'd expect from doing that sort of thing.

 

Statics don't have a skeleton so those will port much more easily.

 

Some things just won't port. Skyrim armor that uses wings for example won't ever animate properly in FNV no matter what you do, because the FNV skeleton doesn't include wings. To make them work, you'd have to not only create a new skeleton/armature, but you'd also have to create a whole bunch of animations to go with the new skeleton. Otherwise, the best you can do is have static wings, which will look a bit funny.

 

Skyrim, being a newer game, has more detailed meshes in general, and mod authors have generally followed suit and have created similarly more detailed custom meshes. While this does make for higher quality 3d models, you can run into difficulty if you use a lot of higher quality models and textures in FNV since it's an older 32 bit game and it will only use 2 GB of memory no matter what. You can double that to 4 GB if you install the 4 GB patch, but that's as far as you can take it. Your PC may have gobs more memory than that, but FNV won't use it. So it's very easy to run the game out of memory if you use high resolution textures and high quality models.

 

I personally almost never use any textures larger than 1024 x 1024 for FNV unless I absolutely need a higher resolution due to the nature of the 3d model, just because of the memory issue. I also try to keep the triangle count as low as possible. If you use a lot of 4096 x 4096 textures, your game will look prettier, but it's also going to crash a lot more often. The texture caching system in FNV seems to leak memory. The more you stress it, the sooner it will run the game out of memory and crash.

[M48A5]

Skyrim Special Edition, being 64 bit, is about impossible to convert to a 32 bit game. So that leaves Skyrim and Oblivion.

 

The Oblivion body mesh uses an upper and lower body mesh. However it seems to be the easiest game to use to convert to FNV/FO3 since it has some mods that have been converted.

 

I am not aware of any FNV/FO3 mods that use any assets from Skyrim mods.

 

There is also a program and tutorial available on Nexus Mods that you can use to convert mod assets from Oblivion to FNV/FO3. I have tried it, but I haven't been successful in converting anything yet.

 

There is a skeleton available that will support wings for FNV/FO3.

[dubiousintent]

Good info. Added as 'TIP: Converting meshes' to "Conversions" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

@M48A5: Did find "The Skeleton" by Deedes (2014) under FO3 and FNV. Is that the one you mean? (Also found "Oblivion Compatible Skeleton" by TheTalkieToaster but it doesn't indicate wings support.)

 

-Dubious-

[M48A5]

@dubiousintent,

"The Skeleton" was the one of which I was aware. This is the first time I have heard of the one by TalkieToaster. I just checked and the converter I mentioned is NOT available here. I had forgotten that it came from LL.

 

I understand that we can now link to files there: https://www.loverslab.com/topic/27557-new-clothing-body-style-converter-beta-v089f-10-26-2014/

[SnakeSlippers]

Yea I know all about the legal mumbo jumbo about assets and this and that, I'm only talking about custom mods and I have been messaging authors for permission.

 

I'll only be porting over static items, food, tools, misc items. Anything that would fit into a Western game.

Skyrim models have been ported to Fallout, I actually seen them.

I also have a cannon model that I got from Skyrim with the author's permission. Just have to convert it down the road.

 

I won't be using any bodies, armors, wings, or anything like that from those games. Will be using animal meshes tho.

 

Didn't think about how crappy the Fallout engine is, how many crashes happen. And what would happen if you filled it with high quality models. But you see how many modded games with ENB and high def textures and it seems to run fine. I'll have to find a easy medium between the 2.

 

Skyrim Special Edition, being 64 bit, is about impossible to convert to a 32 bit game. So that leaves Skyrim and Oblivion.

 

The Oblivion body mesh uses an upper and lower body mesh. However it seems to be the easiest game to use to convert to FNV/FO3 since it has some mods that have been converted.

 

I am not aware of any FNV/FO3 mods that use any assets from Skyrim mods.

 

There is also a program and tutorial available on Nexus Mods that you can use to convert mod assets from Oblivion to FNV/FO3. I have tried it, but I haven't been successful in converting anything yet.

 

There is a skeleton available that will support wings for FNV/FO3.

Thanks for the help.

Edited February 5, 2018 by SnakeSlippers

[madmongo]

Skyrim Special Edition, being 64 bit, is about impossible to convert to a 32 bit game. So that leaves Skyrim and Oblivion.

 

A lot of people seem to think that anything made with a 64 bit program can't be compatible with stuff made by a 32 bit program. That's not true. What matters is the data format that the programs use. If the format is the same, then the data will work for both the 32 and 64 bit programs. There's nothing special about the data created by a 64 bit program. It's just data.

 

32 bit programs can't access more than 4 GB of memory. This is because 2 to the 32nd power is 4 GB, so if all you have is 32 bits available to specify a memory location, it has to be in the lower 4 GB of memory. This is why FO3 and FNV will never use more than 4 GB of memory (2 GB without the 4 GB patch) no matter what. The programs just aren't capable of accessing any more memory than that.

 

A 4096 x 4096 image with 16 bit color resolution is 32 MB of data. If your screen is displaying 100 different things with textures that size, that's 3.2 GB of data just for the textures. Since a 32 bit program can only handle 4 GB of data, you can see how trying to display a lot of high resolution models is going to run the game out of memory very quickly.

 

Skyrim SE is basically a 64 bit port of Skyrim using the updated Creation Engine that they developed for FO4. For porting objects from one game to another, we don't really care about that. What we care about is whether the nif file format changed between Skyrim and Skyrim SE. There are plenty of programs (like Paint.Net which I use for graphics editing) which come in 32 and 64 bit versions, and both use the same data format to store their data, so it doesn't matter whether you use the 32 bit or the 64 bit version.

 

For Skyrim SE though, they were playing around with the Creation Engine for FO4 development, and they made changes to the nif format for FO4. I don't know how many of those changes (if any) were made to the nif format for Skyrim SE, but if you can't easily import meshes from Skyrim SE into Blender, it's because the tool set hasn't been updated to handle the data format difference. It's a data format difference, not a 32 vs 64 bit difference.

Edited February 6, 2018 by madmongo

[SnakeSlippers]

The way I understand it at this moment, Skyrim SE nifs would be pretty much pointless as almost every single one of those nifs are already in Skyrim. Oblivion is low quality, so if I can find the same nif from Oblivion on Skyrim, I might as well just use the Skyrim version.

 

Now do you know how many new items I would be able to add into Fallout without major problems? I haven't seen a limit on that. I know the mod limit. But adding custom items I never heard of a limit on that before.

 

My mod would be deleting 80% of the original games assests and replacing or adding in my own. I'm working on a Western mod so there's no cars, laser weapons, robots, etc.

 

Example of new items I'm talking about just so there's no confusion. Say original game has 40 different kinds of food. Then my mod would have 80 different kinds. It'll be like that for everything, almost. I have to flesh out a Western somehow.

Does anyone know if there is a limit for stuff like that? But remember say that 80 is really 40 replacing in game food, and adding 40 new ones.

[madmongo]

I've added a lot of items to the game and I haven't hit any sort of limit yet. I'm sure there must be some sort of limit but I haven't found it. I've added about 2500 items to my game and haven't had any issues.

 

There is a 16 MB per mod limit in the GECK for items, NPCs, etc. This limit does not apply to landscape textures and navmeshes. It basically applies to anything with a reference ID. You'll note that everything in the game has a 32 bit reference ID. Purified water for example is 000151A3 hex. The first two digits are your mod number in the load order, so if your mod is the 7th mod to be loaded all item codes will be 07xxxxxx. This leaves 6 hex digits for the remainder of the item code, which seems to be an offset into the mod. 6 hex digits maxes out at FFFFFF which is 16MB minus 1. As soon as your mod gets to be larger than 16 MB and you add an item, it breaks your mod. The GECK will not show you any errors at all and you won't know that your mod is broken until you try to load it into the GECK again or you try to load it in the game, at which point it will crash the GECK or the game. And at that point there's no way to fix it since it won't load in the GECK, so you can't go in and try to delete the last item you added or anything like that. Basically, at that point, you are screwed. Better hope that you have a backup of your mod from before it exceeded the 16 MB limit because otherwise your mod is completely bricked.

 

Bethesda/Obsidian obviously weren't using the GECK to create FNV since Fallout.esm is larger than 16 MB and doesn't have any issues. The GECK won't pack new items into the mod under the 16 MB limit, but whatever Bethesda/Obsidian were using does.

 

What I've had to do is split up my mod into multiple mods. I have one mod that just adds new resources and that's all it does (I actually plan on releasing that soon as a modders resource). Then for every world space I've created, I've had to add two mods, since one mod alone ends up exceeding 16 MB by the time I've added the new worldspace, heightmap, landscape objects (trees, cacti, rocks, etc), interiors, and everything else. If there is a way to pack it all into one mod and not have objects break using the GECK, I haven't found it yet. Believe me, if anyone knows of a way to do it, I would love to hear it.

 

Since you are using the existing FNV worldspaces that probably won't be an issue. Just keep an eye on the the size of your mod. If your mod gets to be larger than 16 MB and you add a new ingestible or a new static object or misc object or any other kind of object, or if you place an item in the world somewhere and create a new reference ID, you've just irreversibly broken your mod.

[SnakeSlippers]

I have heard about the 16mb limit breaking the mod. I read that somewhere. Never paid attention to it while making my mod tho. I'm going to start my mod from scratch anyways so I'll keep a eye on it. I might just do it in parts tho.

 

Maybe all landscape and building placement in one, clutter, NPCs, etc in another, I'll see when I do it.

 

You could try using FNVEdit to remove items, I used it to change my Western mod into a Winter one by removing any changes made that wasn't landscape. The mod loaded up fine and I seen no issues. It's not fun tho and it's time consuming but it's better then being screwed. Maybe go in remove a couple items till it's 15mb and see if it loads up in GECK.