[LE] Nifskope problems, trying to make a helmet... SSE

[SqueakyWafflez]

Alright, so I've been sitting here for hours doing research and trying to understand how this all works.

 

The current problem I'm having is that my mesh does not show up on the head of the character after replacing the iron helmet.nif file, even though I've exported it to FBX in maya, opened it in outfit studio, copied the item weights, exported it without issue to a nif, imported the nif file into nifskope, and placed it over the iron helmet, and saved it in the position of where the iron helmet was.

What instead happens is it acts as though there is no helmet worn, and just removes the hair of my character.

 

I know that I'm SUPPOSED to be able to copy the NiTriShapeData from the original iron helmet to the helmet mesh that I want to replace it with, but in both Nifskope 2.0 and 1.1.0, there is NO NiTriShapeData inside the iron helmet, after extracting the BSA using BAE (Bethesda Archive Extractor from the SE Nexus)

 

I don't know what to do at all, I'm totally lost.

[SqueakyWafflez]

bump, any suggestions?

[FrankFamily]

I don't think there's sufficient information, the armor being invisible could be a number of things, from wrong body partitions to issues on the bslightingshaderproperty. If you share the nif or provide screenshots of how it's setup in nifskope then the issue might be more obvious.

 

You are not supposed to copy the nitrishapedata from the original mesh over to your new mesh, not sure where that instruction comes from or what anyone expects to accomplish with that. If you are looking at sse meshes there's no nitrishapeData or Nitrishape, instead just BsTrishape. Otherwise, it will be there, make sure are expanding the whole tree in nifskope.

Edited July 19, 2018 by FrankFamily

[SqueakyWafflez]

@FrankFamily

 

Thank you so much for getting back to me! Sure, I'll provide a link to the nif I've ended up with (it's just a textureless stock cone shape from Maya 2016, just to practice implementing meshes into the game at a future date)

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EPd47RnAqdj9j42_aoccJIDwf75W30l1/view?usp=sharing

 

and to help a bit more, I'll walk through simplified what I did from start to finish:
Create Mesh in Maya > Triangulate Mesh in Maya > Export mesh as FBX from Maya > Import reference helmet NIF into outfit studio > copy all weights from reference helmet to new helmet > Export NIF > Open in Nifskope > save in place of the original helmet.nif in the data directory(data>meshes>armor>iron>f/

 

It should also be noted that trying to copy all weights from the reference helmet to the new helmet in Outfit Studio did not change the color of the new helmet, so I went in with the brush at 100% with the head bone selected and manually painted it all red. It exported fine without error, but Im not sure if something went wrong there, or if that was incorrect.

[FrankFamily]

I asume there's no straigtforward exported to nif from maya? Anyway, that sounds correct. That particular cone mesh is the one giving you the invisibility issue? Have you tried giving it a proper shader block with textures? To rule out issues there. For testing the one from the vanilla helmet for example?

[SqueakyWafflez]

Yeah haha, I've tried plugging it in to the regular iron helmet texture, which of course made it look kinda goofy! But still, it wouldn't show up in game. I've even tried combining the iron helmet and my helmet in the same nif file, and oddly enough when I do that, the iron helmet will show up like normal without the cone on top of it, which is where I put it.

 

Well, there is a plugin made for Maya 2016 to export to nifs available here on the nexus, and I was able to successfully get it to export a NIF file, however upon trying to load it into Outfit Studio I get the error:

 

NIF Version Not Supported!

File: C:/Users/Username/Desktop/helmet.nif
NetImmerse File Format, Version 4.0.0.2

User Version: 0
Stream Version: 0

 

I've tried tossing the nif through SSE Nif Optimizer but that didn't really do anything either. It loads into NifSkope 2.0, but it still saves the file as Version 4.0.0.2 and won't be recognized by Outfit Studio that way either...

[SqueakyWafflez]

Something else I've just learned, I've noticed that when I hit Spells>Optimize>Remove Bogus Nodes, the NPC Head [Head] node is deleted. I knew it shouldn't be so I checked and the mesh had 0 bones, so inside BSDismemberSkinInstance I set Num Bones to 1, and then right when I click refresh on the bones, the mesh disappears, and resetting the Num Bones to 0 and hitting refresh brings the mesh back...

[FrankFamily]

Remove bogus nodes removes bones that no vertex has weight assigned to them so that's a problem. Somewhere in your workflow you are not doing that part properly, can't really tell where. I don't use outfit studio for assigning bone weights, I do that in 3dsmax. I only use outfit studio for quick fixing of clipping and such.

[SqueakyWafflez]

You were right, thanks so much! So I was doing something wrong there, I was able to successfully map the new helmet to the correct bone, and now it is set to 1 bones, attached to NPC Head [Head]. After setting the partition Body Part from SBP_32_Body to SBP_131_HAIR, it showed up in game!!