Exported Armor Issue

[JokerMachine]

I've been doing some small mods to get some practice, so far everything was working fine as I managed to succesfully add a helmet ingame with no problems. After doing that I managed to make a custom armor (nothing really big just an edit of the dwemer armor), rig it, make a custom texture and get it ingame with a small issue.

In third person view as close as you can be to the character without going into first person, everything is fine, however, as you start zooming out parts of the armor get semitransparent. The problem is also apparent in nifskope, but it is not present in 3ds max or in the helmet I made.

It's not caused by the custom textures since replacing them with the originals doesn't fix it, also they don't cause problems to the original dwemer armor. The shader property was copied from the dwemer armor, so I doubt it's because of it. I also doubt it might be caused by flipped faces, since a shell modifier didn't fix it.

 

Well I'm posting this since, I don't have any idea what might be causing it, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4430656/Skyrim_Armor-Issue.png

Nifskope render showing the most affected area of the armor, the arms and shoulderpads.

 

Armor Nif

Armor Textures

I attached download links from my dropbox folder for both the armor and the textures.

 

Again, any help would be welcome, thanks in advance. Also sorry if I don't make much sense at times, English is not my first language.

[Perraine]

Is that the mesh you tested in game?

It seems to be ok, except it has 3 extra "BSLightingshaderproperties" that aren't actually attached to any NiTriShape (nor do they seem needed?) so that could be one problem.

 

Also what DXT compression did you use for the files? I notice you are using an 'Alpha Property" in the mesh so you would be best to use DXT 5 compression for any file with an Alpha Channel, this would mean the Diffuse texture AND the Normal Map, try re-saving the files as DXT 5 (if you didn't already) and see if that helps

 

If that doesn't help ... It's more complicated than I can help with I'm afraid

[JokerMachine]

Yes it's, it's also the latest test I've made so far, those extra BSLightingshaderproperties are the ones exported by 3dsmax and shouldn't be there, I just forgot to remove them on that try (the mesh currently uses BSLightingshaderproperties copied from the dwarven armor). I doubt it's because of them, since I didn't forget to remove them in the several exporting attempts I've made before (Current version is separated in 3 Trishapes but that's to make it easier to rig, the problem also happens when I export the armor as a single unified mesh).

I used DXT 1 compression for the textures, so I guess I'll try that when I go back home, but the issue also happens using the original ingame dwarven armor texture. Also I already tried removing the Alpha property, it didn't do anything.

I did notice that Tangents and Binormals are grayed out in nifskope unlike the game's dwarven armor model, maybe it's that but I wouldn't know how to fix it.

[Perraine]

Generally, AFAIK, it's normally recommended to copy/paste ALL BSLightingShaderProperties from another, vanilla, armor into your new mesh, it seems to cure the 'greyed out' problem with some NiTrishapes properties. Also I assume you have both a**_0 and **_1 version installed?

 

Even if there is no difference between the two versions, I think the game requires that there is 2 versions installed and they MUST be basically identical (the same 'family' if you like) apart from the size of triangles/position of the vertices, your mesh probably wouldn't work, or would show up with weird/unpredictable effects, if you tried to pair it with one of the default meshes for instance

[JokerMachine]

Thanks for your help, but it seems the issue is kinda unrelated to that. Doing some testing I found it's related to NiSkinPartition, after noticing that deleting it solves the issue on nifskope. That led me to the exporter, disabling the "enable multiple partitions" also fixes this in nifskope, however the mesh appears transparent ingame (I might have missed something there but I doubt it), decreasing the bones per (partition) to 4, so it's the same as bones per vertex reduces the effect noticeably, it's still there, but barely only noticeable when completely zoomed out ingame. I can live with that :laugh: .

 

I fear it might be a bug with the exporter.

 

Again, thanks a lot for trying to help me :D. Now it's time to learn how to make a small quest to get it.

Currently the quest idea would be:

-Find a damaged papper parchment on blackreach.

-Bring it to Calcelmo for translation/analysis.

-Find it's some sort of recipe (Atronarch forge).

-It summons an hostile dwemer warrior.

-Defeat him (turns into an ashpile), loot armor.

-At some point it would be implied that the armor is Chimarvamidium (or a copy), but it would be left vague.

[Perraine]

I like the sound of the quest ...We need more useful/meaningful quests in Skyrim (no more of those bloody worthless kill giant X, kill dragon X, kill bandit leader X, stuff)