LE CHSBHC converting troubles

[stonedhippos]

i converted the dawnguard vampire armor to CHSBHC BBP and now all of the variants of the armor (red,black,grey) only show up black. i have looked over the armors over and over again but nothing seems to fix the problem. i am new to this so i doubt i will be able to fix this w/o some advice (hence i am posting here). for example, in the screenshot, my character is supposed to be wearing the red variant of the armor.

[Mujuro]

Do you have each of the NiTriShapes pointing to the appropriate textures?

[stonedhippos]

Do you have each of the NiTriShapes pointing to the appropriate textures?

how do i check that?

[Mujuro]

Open up the .nif in nifskope, traverse to the desired NiTriShape, expand it. Then:

1. Look for BSShaderTextureSet and click on it
   
2. In Block Details, expand "Textures"
   
3. When the above expands, you'll see the current textures assigned (typically diffuse + normal, sometimes you also will have glow and metallic depending on what you're looking at)
   
4. Make sure they're pointing to the desired textures
   
5. Repeat the above for each piece, including any relating to body weight sliders (e.g., _0/1.nif)
   

[stonedhippos]

so i checked the textures and it turns out it wasn't pointing to all of the textures that are for the armor. however, even after fixing that, the only color available is black.

[Mujuro]

It sounds like you may not have converted everything properly. How did you go about the conversion? Also, I'm not familiar with the armor itself, so showing me the screen cap doesn't really help me much. When you say having different colors, are you talking about availability of the armor SET in different colors, e.g., a black version vs. a red version, or are you talking about a certain piece of the armor being red and another piece being black (covered by the same NIF but in a different trishape)?

 

Also, are you sure you have the armor set up properly in the CK? As in ARMO pointing to the correct ARMA and ARMA pointing to the correct NIF?

 

To clarify: Let's say you want the same general set of armor available in-game but you want 3 different sets -- red, gray and black. If this is the case, you'll need, for each set:

• ARMO record for each piece that points to a corresponding ARMA record (e.g., black gloves, gray gloves, red gloves)
  
• ARMA record that points to the corresponding base NIF in similar manner
  
• NIFs that point to the correct texture set for each color (e.g., black gloves point to black base diffuse, even if they're all using the same normal map, etc.)
  

Edited August 12, 2012 by Mujuro

[stonedhippos]

yes, when i said 3 different colors, i meant 3 different sets of armor with 3 different colors (like the guard armors). i'm sorry if i sound like a noob at this, but how do i check the records in the CK?

 

also, when i converted the armors, i did it by going through the tutorial by Cherry Hotaling for converting armors to CHSBHC.

Edited August 13, 2012 by stonedhippos

[Mujuro]

No problem, we all start somewhere. Assuming you did the conversion properly, it should not just be a matter of getting them into the CK and have the pieces each point properly. Open up the CK:

1. Scroll down in the Object Window to Armor (ARMO) records.
   
2. Verify that for each piece of the armor, there are THREE different entries (one for each color you want).
   
3. Open up each of them and see what the Armor Add-On (ARMA) entry is.
   
4. Open the ARMA record (next subtree right under Armor in the Object Window) and verify that it is pointing to the proper NIF associated with the color (I'm assuming you have ALL of the NIFs for your 3 sets and they are pointing to the correct textures). Note that you "should" also have a separate ARMA entry for each of the 3 colors.
   
5. If the ARMA record isn't pointing to the correct NIF(s), click edit and select the correct NIF(s).
   

 

If you're talking 3 sets, each of a different color, and that each set has gloves, boots, cuirass by way of reference example, you should have 3 ARMO records for each of gloves, boots and cuirass, one for each color. Same thing for ARMA, and your ARMAs should point to the associated NIFs for those colors. So extending this same example, you'll probably have 2 cuirass NIFs per color (e.g., CuirassRed_1.nif, CuirassRed_0.nif), and they should each be pointing to the appropriate textures (e.g., CuirassRed.dds as your "primary" diffuse). I'm not familiar with your specific set of armor, so I don't know offhand if all 3 sets use the same normal/metallic reflection map, etc., despite the color differences.