My First Model, why is it huge?

[Pelgar]

I'm in my fourth day of building a very simple model for FNV. Well it took about thirty min. to build the model, I'm actually in the fourth day of trying to get it into FNV.

 

I've been through miaxs-geck-manuals-on-3d-object-creation-for-fallout3 four or five times, figuring I missed something. Whenever I get down to copy/paste NiTriStrips from the copy of Nifskope with my model to the the Nifskope with spacehelm_go.nif which I'm using for a base, the headset I'm working on is HUGE and rotated about ninety deg.

 

I've imported the spacehelm_go.nif and my headset.nif into Blender together, my headset is smaller than the space helmet there.

 

I've searched for this problem for hours, the best I've came up with was someone with a similar problem in the Niftools forums. The answer was gibberish to me: "Always apply CTRL+ A, 1 to all objects (except armature) before exporting (APPLY SCALE AND ROTATION TO OB DATA)." It did seem to help the OP however. I would ask for clarification their but I'm not a member and the post is about two years old. If that answer could be of help here would someone tell me what that line means? Is that something to be done in Blender, Blenders Nif Exporter??? The (except armature) part is really baffling, the OP was asking about clothing, isn't that armor?

 

Another problem, my model has two meshes, collision and the headset mesh. Nifskope is showing three meshes in my exported Nif. The extra mesh has 295 triangles, the same as my headset, but Num Strips is 179 for the first and 162 for the second. Selecting either NiTriStirpsData in the Nifskope Block List hi-lights the headset in the Render View. Did the Blender Nif Exporter add an extra mesh? Should it be there? Should I delete it?

 

(Edit) If you don't have an answer for me, could you recommend another Blender to Nif. tutor. I wouldn't mind building this thing another five or ten times if I could gain a bit of insight into the process.

Edited April 25, 2012 by Pelgar

[Jeux]

I work in 3dsmax, and I have to scale the entire model (object and collision) to match game units. Don't know if this helps....

 

Here are my not-so-accurate observations, in customary units (sorry)

 

----usual stuff-----

 

cash register = 2 feet

 

trash can = 7 feet

 

average door = 14 feet

 

small building = 30 feet

 

medium-large building = 60-80 feet

 

two-story buildings = 60 feet?

 

-----skyscrapers-----

 

Tops Hotel = 150 feet

 

Gomorrah Main Building = 300 feet

 

Lucky 38 Main Entrance Building = 70 feet

 

Lucky 38 Entire Building = 750 feet

 

UltraLuxe Entire Building = 400 feet

[quacko]

Hey there,

if the answer on the post you mentioned about setting the scale and rotation of the object was giberish to you,

i would have to recommend looking up some basic 3d modeling tutorials and not just how to export your items

into the geck, as this is all pretty basic 3d modelling stuff.

 

But to give a bit more helpful answer (not much though since i havent got all day for this and an adequate answer would require a lot of time)

 

Import a similar vanilla .nif file into your modeling program and scale you'r object acording to this,

since its pretty important that the size of your mesh corresponds to the size of the vanilla meshes, BEFORE your export it.

 

I have two solutions for you on the rotation of the mesh.

 

The first is simply to rotate the mesh 90 degrees in you'r modeling program

and trying to adjust its placement and export it, rinse and repeat until it's placed where you want it to.

 

the second solution (and this is the one i recomend) is to learn how to set up your own skin modifier on the

object from scratch (or rigging it to the skeleton), since simply copying the skin modifier from another object can give you all sorts of unforseen problems.

(a little hint here though would be, that since its merely a helmet you'r working with simply set all the vertex weights to 1 on the headbone)

 

I hope this have helped you out just a little bit as i know how infuriating it can get,

grasping around blindly in something as vast as the world of 3d modeling ;)

and if i didnt have a lot of stuff on the schedule already

(im making a rather extensive mod myself at the moment, while writing a book and supporting the family)

i would give you a more extensive answer, but alas that that wasnt how it was suposed to go down :P

 

so in short, as i started out saying, look up some modeling and rigging tutorials for whatever program your using

(wich on a closer inspection was blender, personally i use 3dsmax so cant help you out on that part other than the universal modeling stuff)

 

other than that simply remember to have fun with it and try not to loose too much hair over the little setbacks ou'r bound to encounter here and there

(trust me there'll be more than the ones youve mentioned already) and youll get this working in no time ;)

 

and last yes clothing works in the exact same way as all other armors in the game.

[quacko]

oh yeah and just a little something extra (although im not sure how this works in blender, but i would guess its basicly the same as all other modeling programs)

its important that the scale and rotation editing of the object is done under your edit mesh modifier,

example; selecting all the vertexes of your mesh and scale plus rotaing them, instead of just selecting the object and scaling that,

otherwise it will look as though you havent edited it at all when it has been exported.

[Pelgar]

Many thanks to both of you Jeux and Quacko! The problems just keep coming. I tired to give both of you kudos, for at least letting me know I'm not alone in the world, but I just get a TesNexus is down message. I will give them as soon as the Nexus will let me. (Edit) Yet another problem solved, kudos given! Thanks again guys.

 

I am curious if the word armature means anything to either of you 3dsmax guys? I'm guessing no since neither of you corrected my misconception that it was referring to armor. In Blender armature seems to mean skeleton or possibly just the default pose of a skeleton. It's been several years since I've done any modeling, seems I will have to learn the current names for things.

 

Jeux, your not so accurate measurements will be very helpful if they are even somewhere in the ballpark. Your skyscraper measures remind me of a TV commercial for a small town furniture store that ran when I was a kid. The furniture store was in the only two story building in town and they referred to it as a skyscraper.

 

Quacko, I agree that in most modeling programs the size/rotation would be done in vertex edit mode. I'm not sure that is the case in Blender however because I've solved my scale/rotation problem and it was done in object mode.

 

(The solution)

If anyone else has this problem; Blender Ctrl-A = Apply objects size/rotation to object data. This only works in object mode. The post I read said to Ctrl-A, 1 it. When you hit Ctrl-A in object mode an Apply Object popup menu comes up. The first choice is Scale and Rotation to ObData, I assume that being the first choice is where the 1 came in.

 

Quacko said:

if the answer on the post you mentioned about setting the scale and rotation of the object was giberish to you,

i would have to recommend looking up some basic 3d modeling tutorials and not just how to export your items

into the geck, as this is all pretty basic 3d modelling stuff.

 

I honestly don't see how "Apply Ctrl-A, 1 to all objects..." applies to 3d modelling in general, seems very Blender specific to me. Gibberish was probably a poor choice of words on my part since I did know that Ctrl-A was a hot key combo that did "something". It was simply very frustrating that the fellow didn't mention what it did or where to use it. The frustration level grew as hour after hour passed, with search after search turning up no answers as to what that "something" was.

Even though I have now solved that puzzle it seems very odd that I would have to specifically apply what I'd done to the meshes to the objects.

Please don't get me wrong. I appreciate your reply especially since you took time from a heavy workload to share it.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Pelgar

[quacko]

well pehaps i sounded a bit to sharp with that reply, it really wasnt my intention,

i had just gotten out of bed and wrote that up right before i had to get the kid up and off to school,

wich probably also is why i kinda missed that it was the ctrl-alt, 1 that was messing you up,

i thought it was simply the concept of the scale and rotation thing, as i said i had hardly gotten eyes yet at this point.

 

so apart from my unintentionally snide remark i hope it was at all helpful, altho it seems you got the problem

fixed on your own afterall.

and with that said id still recommend you look intop the rigging of an object from base if you plan on doing more elaborate

armor pieces, i say this cause when i went through several tutorials myself on getting my models to work in fallout

a scary number of people sugested that you simply copy the skin modifier from another armor piece and that should work wonders,

and in short it will most likely look realy bad when the model moves AND it will in many cases as i also stated earlier

give way to numerous other potential problems if the vertex count of the objects doesnt correspond exactly to each other

(and this is besides the fact that its generally considered bad pracsis)

 

oh and one last thing now that my head has been booted and is now up and running sort of correctly again,

the thing about adding the scale and rotation thing also can be done when working with 3dsmax,

but its usually not really essential on my part because i do all the editing on the vertex-poly-soone level,

but if you edit it in object mode, you can use the (i think its called, but as i said i dont personally use this feature)

xform modifier wich should do the same as the add scale/rotation thing you mention in blender.

*Edit* for the 3dsmax crowd reading this, it was the xform modifier that will actualy add the changes you've made

to the object if you made the changes in object mode and not the vertex-polygon-whatever level

 

anyways, good to hear you got it working, and thanks for the kudos and now its back to the treadmill for me again,

so kick ass, chew bubblegum, and make sure to stack up on the gum beforehand, otherwise this just doesnt make any sense at all.

Edited April 26, 2012 by quacko

[Pelgar]

Well Quacko, I sure am glad you wrote back and cleared that up! I went back and read my original post and would probably have taken it exactly as you did had someone else wrote it. After this I will probably never use the word gibberish again!

 

Just to be clear I do know what scale and rotation are, I even have a vague understanding of translation! Just kidding, I have a pretty firm grasp on translation too.

 

I am taking your advice on rigging. So far I've found nothing FNV or even Fallout 3 specific. I'm trying to work my way through an old 2008 Oblivion tutor right now. With it being written for a different game, different Blender version and different Nif import/exporter it's a bit tough to follow. It would really be nice if tutor authors would use a few descriptive phrases instead of simply press this and click that. When this and that no longer exist it becomes almost impossible!

 

 

Again, if anyone knows of any tutors that would be helpful here, please let me know.

[quacko]

well ill try to see if i cn find something useful for you a bit later, although i wont promise i can find anything useful,

especially since i have never opened up blender, but ive had my hands on more than my fair share of modeling tutorials in my day,

so i would say that by now i have a fair grasp on what to look after in a useful tutorial aswel as a useles one.

so ill try to get back to you within a couple of hours.

[quacko]

well a quick browsing on google and i came up with this little vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mFge8E20zU

you canofcorse skip the creation of the skeleton part since you will be using

the premade skeletons in the game, but from quickly jumping through the video

it seemed like a pretty thurough walkthrough on setting up the skinning of a character,

just remember even that setting up a full character is the exact same process as the armor pieces or

if you would move on to making creatures.

ofcorse im not sure what version of blender you're on or him for that matter,

but the basic principles should still be the same and give you at least a basic idea of how it works :)

 

and as for the exporting of you're items ive got this page here i personally used,

granted it is for 3dsmax, but im guessing that the settings in section six would be similar to the settings

you would need to export it from blender.

*Edit* it would probably help more if i remembered to post the link :P http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/3ds_Max_armor_to_Fallout_New_Vegas

 

Well i think that pretty much sums up the help i'll be able to give you on this subject, so again i hope it was at all usefull to you

and if not, well, then just tell me and ill give myself a kick in the crotch later ;)

Edited April 26, 2012 by quacko

[Pelgar]

Thanks once again Quacko! I will check out the tutors shortly. I wish I could give you another kudos. Hey, doesn't matter if the tutors help or not, absolutely no crotch kicking, FIRM RULE.

 

I have made a major Blender discovery. Ctrl+1 does not equal Ctrl + the normal keyboard 1. It only works if you do Ctrl + Num Pad 1. This discovery has made the tutor I'm following now make a lot more sense!