Help with NIFs

[niston]

Anyone here enjoys working with them and has the necessary setup to rescale them, including collision?

 

I'd also like to learn how to add connectors for wires. Tried combining a vanilla connector with some piece of machinery in outfit studio, but the connector doesn't work.

 

 

 

 

[DieFeM]

Recreating collision in 3ds max 2013 x64, aside of being a software almost impossible to acquire, requieres a certain knowledge to make it properly.

You can find the nif exporter plugin and its setup instructions in the game folder (this exporter let you export collisions), and you can find a 3rd party nif importer/exporter (that doesn't export/import collisions) just googling a bit, and some videos on Youtube on how to create the collision. So you can import the object with the 3rd party plugin without any collision, and then create the collision and export it with Bethesda's plugin.

 

There is a simpler alternative, but sometimes can fail, which you can do in the CK:

 

Put the object that you want to scale in the render window, change the scale to the desired size.

Find an static called StaticCollectionPivotDummy, and place it at the bottom-center of your object.

Select the pivot, then press and hold ctrl and select the object (so you select both objects, the pivot always first).

Right click on the selection and "Make Static Collection".

Find your static collection in the object window, right click on it and "Recreate Static Collection Meshes".

 

Now you have the scaled nif in your data folder, double click on the static collection in the object window to find out the nif path.

 

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Power conduits must be activators, and have certain keywords and actor values, the easiest way to make a custom conduit is duplicating an existing one and changing the nif.

Note that the nif file of a conduit has also some connect points that you'll need to copy from a vanilla conduit and adjust them to match the new mesh with the help of NifSkope in order to get the cable attached to the object in the correct spot.

Edited February 28, 2019 by DieFeM

[niston]

Yea, I've read about the 3ds max setup. I was hoping that maybe someone here does have it and wouldn't mind rescaling some two NIFs for me. I mean even if I had it, I wouldn't know how to use it. Have absolutely zero experience with 3d stuff. Took me a while to even figure out how to move stuff around in outfit studio, lol!

 

 

Gonna try figure it out with the StaticCollectionPivotDummy in CK, like you said. First need to find out how to put the NIF into the render window...

 

 

Re the connector, I tried looking in NifSkope at some NIFs that have connectors in them, and I saw there is a BSConnectPoint:Parents node in them. However, when I try to copy one of these nodes into, or try to add a new BSConnectPoint:Parents block to my NIF, that copied/new block always ends up at the last position in the node list/tree. The resulting NIF then causes a CTD whenever the build menu tries to show preview.

 

I can for the life of me not figure out how to move the new block to position 2, right below "BSXFlags" (as it is in those other NIFs). I found a tutorial that says "click on 0 NiNode, then insert" but that also creates a node at the bottom of the list, i.e. a sibling of the root node instead of a new child! I then looked at the properties of the ConnectPoint, to see if there was a parent property maybe, but there isn't afaict. Last straw, I then tried "attach parent node" on the ConnectPoint, but that creates a new NiNode parent and from what I can tell I am unable to select the existing 0 NiNode instead.

 

I have no idea how to proceed and no clue how the activator ties in. Like I said, all that 3d jazz is way above me.

 

EDIT: Found a much better tutorial. One has to right click on the 0 NiNode, then select Node->Attach Extra Data, and NOT Block->Insert! ConnectPoint::Parent can then be inserted below the 0 NiNode. Unfortunately, NifSkope doesn't show the connect point added in this way, for some reason completely unbeknownst to me. Specifically, the green circle does not appear after I define a new connection point, enter some coordinates and then do Array->Update. I tried moving the coordinates a bit, in case the green circle would have appeared inside the model, but no dice. So I have a really, really hard time (impossibru) lining up the connectpoint with the connector on the NIF.

 

Also, the numbers infront of the node names get all jumbled. NiNode is now 1, BSXFlags is 3 and the ConnectPoint::Parents is 0. Even tho their order in the tree appears to be correct (NiNode->BSX Flags, BSConnectPoint) and the game doesn't CTD on loading the preview, but lets me even place it. Small success? If so, it's being heavily offset by the fact that the game doesn't let me wire up the model at all, not even in the wrong place.

 

Very frustrating and confusing. And I've not even touched the subject of textures and material swaps... *Sigh* Anyone willing to do NIF work for monies, lol?!

 

 

Anyways... After rescaling those two NIFs, having connectors on them and getting the NIFs to work with interaction point animation markers, I'll be able to release my first mod :smile:

Edited February 28, 2019 by niston

[niston]

Scripted my way around the connector problem by (optionally) spawning a connector into existence and then placing it at an offset relative to my furniture, using David J Cobb's rotation library. The connector is a custom activator based on a vanilla conduit, but with zero radiance and, unlike the vanilla counterpart, it can be powered. I can then set the actor value for how much power it draws and registerforremoteevent for OnPowerOn and OnPower Off on the connector. If the furniture is moved, the connector position gets updated as well. If the furniture is scrapped, the connector gets disabled (as per Kinggaths recommendations re scrap crash) instead of deleted. It's far from perfect, but acceptable for now. I think further improvement would require F4SE.

 

The nice thing about it is, the same technique will -in the future- allow me to create objects with multiple connectors on them, while these connectors are all completely separate and can be powered and toggled individually. And it allows a furniture to have a connector (which must be an activator, which then means, as far as I understood, that a furniture cannot have a power connector per se because it is a furniture and not an activator). I suspect that connectors could be attached to pretty much anything that doesn't normally move, in this way.

 

So. My factory script can now optionally be configured to have a connector and require power. Pretty sweet.

 

Still have not solved the problem of rescaling the NIF to 50% it's size. SetScale() at runtime won't work, as it doesn't rescale the collision box either, so I don't think I can script my way out of this one.

Edited March 1, 2019 by niston

[niston]

If I have an industrial wall light (the colored versions), can I toggle it's illumination status/animation/glow from script? Can I do so even while the light is unpowered?

 

Thinking about adding some status indicators for the Factory script.

Edited March 2, 2019 by niston

[SandMouseAnarchy]

Hey Niston, have you tried right clicking somewhere and going to

Batch>update all tangent spaces, and then

Batch>update all bounds, then

Sanatize>reorder link arrays, then

Sanatize>Collapse link arrays, and then

Sanatize>Reorder blocks.

 

The "reorder link arrays" and "reorder blocks" should help get things arranged normally again :)

 

As for connect points, I've found that block>insert>bsconnectpoint: works fine (to get the connectpoint under the 0ninode - you go into 0ninode and down to extra data and add that new connection point you made by typing it's number (0), and then run through those right click settings I said up top :)

 

((after adding just a connect point using this method, Sanatize>reorder blocks should be the only one you need to click, but I haven't found a problem yet with just clicking through them all eachtime. Note that you should probably click through those settings again just before saving or exporting to be on the safe side :) ))

 

Cool to hear you found a workaround though :)