Confused with making simple modifications to weapon meshes.

[OscarMuffin]

I'm having trouble making some small modifications to weapon meshes and getting them to work in-game. Mainly re-designing iron sights to suit my personal tastes. However, I'm having some trouble getting it to work. I use a couple of mods that remove the peep sight from the Cowboy repeater and Brush gun and all they seem to be is nif files that the game loads instead of the default ones. However I'm having to go through some complicated stuff using GECK and replacing the mesh of a weapon and then the 1st person mesh and blah blah blah. Then having to activate an esm to find out that the gun I've modified is invisible in-game and won't show in the GECK preview either. This is currently what I'm doing, if anybody could help me with this it would be great.

 

Extract nif and texture file of weapon using FOMM

Import nif into Blender 2.79 (I do have Python, PyFII and nif scripts)

Make necessary adjustments to mesh and export it to desktop as a Fallout 3 mesh

Check that adjustments have been made by opening it with Nifskope

Open GECK

Navigate to the weapon I want to replace the mesh on

Replace the model and 1st person model with my modified mesh

(worth noting that at this point my mesh appears invisible when previewing in GECK)

Save what I have done in GECK

Open the New Vegas launcher and activate the ESM that was created when I saved whatever I did using GECK

Open the game and find out that the weapon I modified is now invisible while retaining all functionality

 

And this is where I am stuck. Can anyone provide a link to a post or video that goes through the process for an idiot like me. Preferably without having to create or activate any new .ESM files similar to every mesh modification mod I have.

[dubiousintent]

Please see the 'Custom items' and 'Weapons' sections of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article. You will also want to check out the 'Blender' and 'NifSkope' sections as well. Additionally, make sure you use a "relative" path to your texture file in your mesh. (See the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files".)

 

-Dubious-

[OscarMuffin]

Please see the 'Custom items' and 'Weapons' sections of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article. You will also want to check out the 'Blender' and 'NifSkope' sections as well. Additionally, make sure you use a "relative" path to your texture file in your mesh. (See the wiki article "How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files".)

 

-Dubious

 

Thanks for the response buddy. Haven't seen those articles before but I'll go have a read.

[madmongo]

I don't use Blender 2.79 for Fallout New Vegas. Too many things in the nif scripts don't work properly and I have never tried to keep track of what works and what doesn't. Pretty much everything in 2.49b works, provided you download blender and the nif tools all from the same package (Dubious has a link to it in his articles).

 

Make sure you have your export settings correct for whatever you are exporting. There are different settings for weapons, armor/clothing, clutter, statics, etc. If I recall correctly, Use BSFadeNodeRoot should be selected for everything except armor/clothing/bodies/creature skins (those are all the same thing as far as the game is concerned).

 

Blender 2.49b usually exports weapons correctly. I have never had to go into NifSkope and fix things that it hasn't exported properly for weapons. Armors/clothings/creature skins/etc though usually end up with their shader flags set incorrectly and if you don't fix those in NifSkope the armor will be invisible in-game. I don't use 2.79, but maybe the nif scripts for that version don't set the shader flags correctly.

 

Check your collision meshes. I have a vague recollection that 2.79 might completely bork collision meshes.

[OscarMuffin]

Yea, I downloaded a 2.49b portable package that came with everything needed. Following a rather lengthy document I got it to work. Just need to figure out how to create the sort of file you can plonk in your data folder without having to use GECK to install it and create an ESM. Also been advised that it's possible to import the mesh files using 2.49 and then edit them in 2.79 which would be great for me as I find 2.49 a bit clunky and difficult to work with.

[madmongo]

I have had pretty good luck using obj format to transfer things back and forth between 2.49b and 2.79, but I generally only do it with statics or clutter items (non-animated meshes).

 

I have seen things get whacked out if you try to transfer back and forth using blend format, especially if saving in legacy blend from the 2.79 side. Don't use blend format to transfer things back and forth in either direction.

 

I do all animations and collisions on the 2.49b side. I don't have much faith in those transferring back and forth between versions correctly.

 

I wouldn't trust weapon animations to survive the conversion from 2.49b to 2.79 and back again. There may be a procedure that you can follow to make it work, but I don't know what it is.

 

If you are making a weapon replacer, all you need to do is use a nif with exactly the same name, placed in the same directory path as the original. In other words, if you are replacing the service rifle, you need your nif to be called ServiceRifle.nif and it needs to be in the folder data\meshes\weapons\2handautomatic\. If you scroll all the way to the right in the object window with your weapon selected you'll see the path and nif name that it is looking for.

Edited December 8, 2018 by madmongo

[OscarMuffin]

Tried that a lot but never got it to work. Been trying to alter the terrible iron sights on the Assault Carbine. Been placing the .nif in Data\meshes\nvdlc05\weapons\2handautomatic. I've tried both EXT for the normal one and Mags for the modifications on the GRA version.

[Mktavish]

If you can't get an esm to use a nif by replacing it in the loose folder directory.

Then turn it into an .esp , and with that as the active file ... open your object tree to where you want it found. Then open your loose file to where the nif is found. Then drag drop the .nif into the object tree.

Whether the nif works properly or not , IDK since I know diddly squat about blender / nifskope.

But that is the easiest way I have found to get an asset into an .esp , then turn it into .esm

 

Sorry if this was off base for what your problem is ... but your mention of wanting to be able to plonk it into the data folder for use made me think of it.