Blender to Nifskope problem

[aharttsx]

Hello,

 

I'm fairly new to modding and such, and its my first time working with anything like both Blender 2.49 and Nifskope. I've been working on creating a custom mesh for an alternate beast form and have been using the tutorial I found at http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3790 for help. I'm at the point where I finished editing the mesh, imported the skeleton, and then exported the mesh+skeleton as a .nif. But when I open the exported .nif to Nifskope, the tutorial says to make several changes including some involving the BSDismemberSkinInstance, which appears to be missing from my .nif. Is there something that I missed doing or may have done incorrectly in Blender before exporting or some way i can re-create the BSDismemberSkinInstance? I wasn't sure if I could copy it in Nifskope from the original werewolf that i used to create my custom mesh and paste it and have it still work properly since the custom mesh has a longer tail and ears than the original werewolf (everything else is in the same place, position wise tho) I know enough in Blender to make the changes that i wanted to the mesh, but not much other than that (learning as I go along) so if anyone could explain in newbie terms that would be great. Thanks in advance for taking the time to help, any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[DizzasterJuice]

Hello,

 

I'm fairly new to modding and such, and its my first time working with anything like both Blender 2.49 and Nifskope. I've been working on creating a custom mesh for an alternate beast form and have been using the tutorial I found at http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3790 for help. I'm at the point where I finished editing the mesh, imported the skeleton, and then exported the mesh+skeleton as a .nif. But when I open the exported .nif to Nifskope, the tutorial says to make several changes including some involving theBSDismemberSkinInstance , which appears to be missing from my .nif. Is there something that I missed doing or may have done incorrectly in Blender before exporting or some way i can re-create the BSDismemberSkinInstance? I wasn't sure if I could copy it in Nifskope from the original werewolf that i used to create my custom mesh and paste it and have it still work properly since the custom mesh has a longer tail and ears than the original werewolf (everything else is in the same place, position wise tho) I know enough in Blender to make the changes that i wanted to the mesh, but not much other than that (learning as I go along) so if anyone could explain in newbie terms that would be great. Thanks in advance for taking the time to help, any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Unfortunatly I can't tell you exactly how to do it in blender because I use 3ds max but you have to make a new modifier BSDismemberSkinInstance then select all polys except the wrists and ankles, then make another branch for the wrists and one for the ankles. Then after export open it in nifskope, select the BSDismemberSkinInstance then in the Block Details window hit the partitions drop down and rename Body Part to 38, 32 and 34 in that order top to bottom.

[aharttsx]

Thanks for the reply! Trying to figure it out based off of what you said. I noticed there was already modifiers for armatures for each piece of the mesh (which is head, eyes, teeth, and body is into two pieces) that haven't been applied yet. I'm pretty sure they've been there when I first imported the .nif into blender, and I was never sure what to do with them so I never touched it. Do you think these are the modifiers I should work with?

 

EDIT: Not sure if its something I'm doing wrong or whatever, but if I try to apply that armature modifier I get an error saying "Modifier is disabled or returned error, skipping apply." - thinking maybe I should just delete it but not sure. Thinking maybe I need a different type of modifier because I don't think I can assign/link the mesh to the armature modifier (and if there's a way clearly I'm not doing it right >.<), but not sure which one- I'll try looking at some other blender tutorials and see if I can help determine the proper one.

 

Just to clarify and see if I'm understanding correctly, I have to add a new modifier and name it BSDismemberSkinInstance, then select and assign the appropriate parts of the mesh/skeleton? Though I'm not sure about when you say "select all polys except the wrists and ankles, then make another branch for the wrists and one for the ankles." because when I look in the original .nif in Nifskope each object/NiTriShape (head, teeth, eyes, body1 and body2) has its own BSDismemberSkinInstance and the vertex groups are slightly different for each NiTriShape, which makes me think that I'd have to create it for each part of the mesh instead of how you said it.

 

Hope this all makes sense :s, and thanks again for taking the time to help.

Edited May 9, 2012 by aharttsx

[aharttsx]

Did a little checking, didn't find any tutorials or anything else that helped, but I went back and looked at the .nif import/export to and from Nifskope/Blender to see if there was anything I missed. I found that some of the things stated in the tutorial are very similar to what you said :

 

 

"Now before we export, we have to manually remake the dismember partitions. This is a lot easier than it sounds.First, delete BP_TORSO, Create a new BP_TORSO (click New and type BP_TORSO), highlight appropriate verts, Assign. If the original mesh had multiple partitions then you'll have to make those too. I'm going to stop right here and explain how to do all of this first.Right. So, in the above image you can see where the Delete and Assign buttons are. You can also see the area you will need to click to type out a name for the New vertex group you created. The up/down little arrow button there shows all of your vertex groups - don't mess with anything that doesn't start with BP_ unless you know what you're doing because this is your weighting. The reason we're using BP_TORSO is because this is a name that the nif scripts will export properly as a part of your mesh as a dismember partition. If you're working with bodies, a few more names you will use are BP_LEFTLEG and BP_RIGHTARM. Once we've created the new BP_TORSO we have to assign the faces to it that belongs to that particular dismember partition. To find these dismember partitions we need to open up the original mesh in Nifskope. Once you highlight the Skin Partition Block it will highlight the faces of the mesh that you need to assign to that particular vertex group. Just try to get as close as possible to the original as you can. So for this one, we'd highlight from the base of the ankle up 4 verts, all the way around. Once we have it highlighted like it shows there in Nifskope in Blender, we're going to hit Assign for that Vertex Group. Though note, the particular dismember partition shown here would be BP_LEFTLEG. For Blender use, the main body torso is BP_TORSO, both wrists are BP_RIGHTARM and both shins are going to be the BP_LEFTLEG. I'm not going to go too in-depth on this part here. So, since there were 3 skin partition blocks in Nifskope, that means we need 3 skin dismember partitions here in Blender too. So, first hit New and type the appropriate name I mentioned above, then highlight the verts as shown in Blender when that partition is highlighted, and hit Assign - this is assigning a dismember partition. Just hit New again, and continue for any other partitions you need to create."

 

And later on, when it tells me to change some values within BSDismemberSkinInstance :

 

"BSDismemberSkinInstance

Partitions > Partitions> Body Part

BSDismemberBodyPartType (match to vanilla #)

 

If you check the partition in the original instead of something like BP_TORSO it will have a number. For the body it is 32. So you will replace BP_TORSO with 32. What we assigned BP_LEFTLEG is 38 and BP_RIGHTARM is 34, so assign those appropriately. If you're editing a different mesh, obviously you will need to check that dismember partition and see what number it uses and use that."

 

The tutorial section above seems to be the same thing you said to do once the .nif was exported into Nifskope. However, I took a look at the vanilla mesh to see what the bodypart values were since its a different mesh than what was being used in the tutorial, and all the values for each of the 5 NiTriShapes was 32, which according to the tutorial is the value for the Body. It was also stated in the tutorial that "The reason we're using BP_TORSO is because this is a name that the nif scripts will export properly as a part of your mesh as a dismember partition." which i did after deleting and recreating the BP_TORSO and then assigned each mesh object to it. I also checked the vanilla werewolf .nif in blender as well, and there was only the BP_TORSO, to which all pieces of the mesh were assigned to (checked by using the select/deselect button that selects/deselects all verticies assigned to the current vertex group since I'm not sure how else to check). So value wise (and if I can get the BSDismemberSkinInstance back in..) I think the only one I need is 32. As far as getting back the BSDismemeberSkinInstance, I'm still not sure why its not working, and now that I'm looking more closely at the tutorial when it says that "this is a name that the nif scripts will export properly as a part of your mesh as a dismember partition.", I'm wondering maybe if I'm not setting something correctly in the export options..

 

Also.. my apologies for a lengthy double post

Edited May 9, 2012 by aharttsx

[DizzasterJuice]

Naming all 3 the same 32 would cause some problems when wearing armor without gloves or without boots. The mesh will still work in game but you'll have a gap in the mesh at the wrists when not wearing gloves for instance but since it's for a new beast form I'm not sure that it matters because you're not wearing anything. Edited May 9, 2012 by DizzasterJuice

[aharttsx]

Still haven't been able to quite figure out how to get the BSDismemberSkinInstance back, I've been trying a couple different things and looking over the tutorial again (as well as searching for others) to be sure I haven't missed anything, but without any luck so far. Hoping its something that can be corrected and not something that I might have done incorrectly when importing the .nif prior to editing the mesh and have to start over.

[DizzasterJuice]

Again I'm not sure about Blender but in 3ds max the first thing you do after import is discard the BSDismemberSkinInstance because it never imports correctly and the last thing you do before export is build a new one.

If you want you can attach the file here and I can make one and attach it back.

[PopReference]

Still haven't been able to quite figure out how to get the BSDismemberSkinInstance back, I've been trying a couple different things and looking over the tutorial again (as well as searching for others) to be sure I haven't missed anything, but without any luck so far. Hoping its something that can be corrected and not something that I might have done incorrectly when importing the .nif prior to editing the mesh and have to start over.

Copy/Paste - Open up a vanilla .nif find the BSDismemberSkinInstance, right-click > Copy Branch, select you neew .nef, right-click > Paste Branch.

[DizzasterJuice]

Still haven't been able to quite figure out how to get the BSDismemberSkinInstance back, I've been trying a couple different things and looking over the tutorial again (as well as searching for others) to be sure I haven't missed anything, but without any luck so far. Hoping its something that can be corrected and not something that I might have done incorrectly when importing the .nif prior to editing the mesh and have to start over.

Copy/Paste - Open up a vanilla .nif find the BSDismemberSkinInstance, right-click > Copy Branch, select you neew .nef, right-click > Paste Branch.

 

There is no vanilla mesh, this is a "custom mesh for an alternate beast form".

[KaptTorbjorn]

He's saying just copy the BsDismemberSkinInstance branch from a vanilla nif mesh to your new custom one. That way you have your skininstance branch back.