ktra4966 Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Hello all, I'm attempting to get back into modding Fallout and I'm having a lot of trouble making small edits to power armor. My attempt for now is simply to move some vertices around and after following several tutorials I always come up with the same issue, my mesh shows up in CK but is invisible in game. I'm using all the same textures as the original mesh. I've tried a few different methods from using an obj file and OutfitStudio to weigh it to just making edits to the full mesh in 3DSMAX. I've even extracted the power armor torso and made no changes to test if I can get it into the game to no avail. After coursing through a ton of videos and threads I just can't figure it out so I'm here. Has anybody experienced this issues before? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandMouseAnarchy Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Oh man, so much yes...I'm working on a power armor mod at the moment, and at every turn I've had random problems like this popping up and there just isn't all that much info online about power armor specifically. So presuming you have the right version of max and niftools -What do your nif export options look like in 3ds max? Flatten hierarchy should be ticked, tick zero transforms and set transforms to 0.00. A lot of the time, I think info gets kept in the 3d and corrupts things later down the road - I've found that I always have to reset Xform on my meshes, (if the pivot point doesn't match the root node things get really broken) then set to editable mesh, NOT editable poly, and then I export as obj (to try and get rid of extra info) then reimport and re-export as nif. Smoothing groups can be a problem too, so I always use auto smooth (180) and that seems to do the trick. Next in nifscope, make sure the mesh is converted to bstrishape, unless you have added segment data via outfit studio. Converting to bsTriShape seems to get rid of a lot of annoyances, but if you want dismemberment to work properly then definitely add segment data. Let me know if you're still having the issue after checking those things, I might be able to help seeing as I seem to be solving these same problems all the time :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perraine Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Power Armor has it's own skeleton and it's own deforms = It's actually classed as a separate "race" by the game, so if using Outfit Studio or 3DS you'll have to use the correct skeleton and deforms in order for it to work. Plus I've heard some say there is an extra tool that's required (Elrich.exe?) in order for the meshes to work correctly when exported from 3DS (it's installed automatically under "tools" when you install the CK I think?) But that could just be for 'animation' files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktra4966 Posted March 13, 2019 Author Share Posted March 13, 2019 I really appreciate the help from both of you. Unfortunately it's still not working though. I'm using 3DSMAX 2010 and everything looks like it's working exactly as some of the tutorials suggest. Tutorial example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JTbDT82TE4&list=PLNaHr_zsRvzL8_Xb4VbAMxcz7KuXR0BAw&index=19 I'm thinking it has something to do with the path or the CK itself though as PA models with no changes at all aren't working either. They show up in the CK preview window using the proper textures and all but don't show in game when equipped. Is there a specific place you have to put models before importing them into CK? I have tried putting mine either on the desktop or in the Fallout data folder following their path like Data/Meshes/Actor/PowerArmor/CharacterAssets/Mods Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandMouseAnarchy Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 I have all my files under Meshes\Actor\Powerarmor\SMCharacterAssets\ and it's OK, but I think the path has to be in Actor\ for sure :) I'm not too sure about max 2010, I would love a copy but the earliest version have access to is 2014, I think 2010 will be fine though :) So, are you just replacing a vanilla mesh with a custom one or are you making a new entry in CK? And are you skinning/weighing in max or outfit studio? (a test you could do is to remove the skin information from your custom nif - if the mesh is OK and floating under the player then it's a skinning issue, if the mesh still isn't there then it could be a problem with the mesh itself, maybe a problem exporting, maybe corrupt data being left in) Does the armor appear on the frame furniture but just not when worn? - Or is it not there on the furniture or when worn? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktra4966 Posted March 14, 2019 Author Share Posted March 14, 2019 I'm taking the T51 body armor and attempting to make tweaks. At this point I've figured out it's not max or nifskope, it has to be something I'm doing either when extracting the files or putting them in CK. The reason for that is I tested a file that I extracted and imported into CK without any edits but had the same issue. If I replace the T51 body in CK with the T45 from the packed file it works fine, when I extract the T45 and reimport it into CK it doesn't show up in game. In CK I'm going into the object mod for the T51 body and changing the model from there. I can just select my model and it even comes up fine in the viewport. I'm not sure if that's where I should be doing it but like I said before it works when just swapping models from within F4, but anything outside of the packed file (even models extracted directly out of it) don't work. I hope I'm not explaining this in a confusing way. I'm racking my head against a wall trying to figure this out. Oh and it makes the piece disappear on both the frame furniture and when worn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandMouseAnarchy Posted March 14, 2019 Share Posted March 14, 2019 (edited) Ahh I think I see what you're doing now, when I first started trying my power armor mod I tried experimenting with the ap_BodyMod and changing the OMod models in there, but there seems to be some bugs with the vanilla attach point, or atleast as far as I tested. A lot of my problems came from a, trying to use vanilla attach points, and b, object templates... Most of the time when I made an edit to a piece of power armor there would be a lining, or other Omod in the object template that had overwritten my custom Omod. For example, if you change the bodymod, but then have lining C then lining C's model will overwrite the bodymod. And all OMods will overwrite the normal apparel model (somehow)Took me ages to figure out that one, to test, you could try stripping the object template down to just your custom OMod and go from there. With my t45, if I leave any vanilla entries in the object template my changes won't show, but the x01 shows my changes whether I edit the object template or not, I think that could have something to do with levelled lists and in the game picking a random version of the armor to give to the player. I've also had a few problems with straight up exporting from archive and then importing straight to ck, some things work, others fail terribly. It might be a good idea then to test an Omod with a model that you know absolutely will show in game - the setdressing teddy bear works great and will always show up for me :)*Edit* wouldn't ya know it, after saying teddies always show for me, I was working on an outfit, threw a teddy in an Omod as a test and it inexplicably didn't show, it turns out that (now, for me anyway) the bslightingshaderproperty has to be named, even if the bstrishape uses a bfx node. No idea what's happened there, but make sure those bsLSP's are named :) Edited March 14, 2019 by SandMouseAnarchy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktra4966 Posted March 17, 2019 Author Share Posted March 17, 2019 Great news! After taking a break for a while and coming back with a fresh mind I found out what was wrong. Sure enough it was extremely simple. When you add anything from outside of the packed files you have to archive it before going in game. File>Create Archive. That simple. Oof. I really appreciate your help guys. This issue almost made me quit lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandMouseAnarchy Posted March 17, 2019 Share Posted March 17, 2019 That's interesting! I've never heard of that 0.0 is File>Create Archive in CK? I have an annoying piece of armor that refuses to show, I'll have to try that one :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktra4966 Posted March 17, 2019 Author Share Posted March 17, 2019 Yeah it's right there in CK. I'm not sure how exactly to link one to your mod yet, but what I did was use the MidwesternPA mod and replace the archived mesh file with mine for now. The archive tool will automatically add any outside models used in your mod to the file after clicking "Create Archive". Now I've found a new issue that has to do with losing the mesh smoothness. I'll make a new post about it but long story short is if I save a model I am working on in Max and come back to it, it loses it's smoothness. Without the smoothness it looks pretty bad in game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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