[LE] Invisible meshes on nif (Rigging)

[Myst42]

I'm messing with Skyrim models for the first time since I was told Blender v2.79b and a nif plugin are capable of importing/exposting Skyrim models directly.

 

Most of my work has gone well, but I'm having serious problems with rigging.

In Oblivion, the bone weight copy script would let me simply copy rigging from one model to several, and even select specific parts of a mode to perform the copy only on selected parts.

But this new "weight transfer" feature is messing everything up

 

First I discover one needs to remove all modifiers, including the skeleton in order to make the weight transfer work, or else, the copy does whatever it pleases.

 

Since I'm working on some Dragon Priest models, I didn't notice at first because of the hood, but later, I noticed the exported nifs have invisible areas, and it's note because of textures or normals, and I can't find a way to make sense of it being rigging either.

The only connection I found between the bug and rigging, was that it started to happen to an entire model after I tried to copy the rigging to it.

 

But the early symptom is this:

 

And the exporting, apparently went right, it's only the parts dont show up in game. Nifskope shows the entire mesh is still there.

Anyone knows anything about this?

Edited May 26, 2019 by Myst42

[Hanaisse]

The Blender nif plugin will work for v2.78 and lower however it was never guaranteed to work for 2.79 (and def not 2.8 ) and many people are finding oddities with it. I prefer to use Outfit Studio for all my rigging.

 

Having said that, have you checked that it's not maybe a partition issue rather than a rigging issue? Maybe post your nif file.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Hanaisse

[Myst42]

Having said that, have you checked that it's not maybe a partition issue rather than a rigging issue? Maybe post your nif file.

 

I can't make heads or tails on how to use outfit studio for rigging yet. The darn thing just hates my guts.

All rigging experiments I've tried with it have ended in nightmare tier anomalies and exploding parts everywhere.

 

I plan on doing more modelling stuff, but for now, I'm just trying to make some models as en expansion for Undeath, including a female lich and some outfit variations for lich forms.

I have the first robe outfit almost ready, except for the rigging, but for now, the problem is I cant fix invisible parts. Figured this would be a good place to start.

 

Nothing fancy about this nif, it's just the female draugr on a dragon priest skeleton, plus some remodelling work, and a few pieces of the robe, which were reweighted.

Back of the head looks invisible in game, as do all the robe pieces that were reweighted.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by Myst42

[Hanaisse]

It's definitely a partition issue.

 

 

 

The yellow highlighted area corresponds to the missing piece in your picture. That area is using SBP_30_HEAD partition. Your ArmorAddon and Armor records you created in the CK should include this Biped slot.

The other pieces of the armor you added to the draugr also use SBP_30_HEAD partition for some random reason (it doesn't need to be, I'd make it default SBP_32_BODY but that's just me). There's no harm in it being 30 but again, your records need to include that slot and again, that's why they're invisible.

 

One more thing while I'm here, all your NiTriShapes are named after bones, probably from copy/pasting blocks.

 

 

 

This is a big no no, it will eventually cause CTD's. Rename all the NiTriShapes.

(P.S.; She's really cool!)

[Myst42]

Thanks, I was getting to the notion that this is a "partition" issue.

Earlier this morning I noticed certain "bones" named SBP_30_HEAD and SBP_32_BODY, as well as SBP_33_HANDS, and they have matching rigging to the verticles that were invisible in game.

 

However, I'm fairly new to messing with Skyrim nif files, done plenty of stuff for Oblivion,but not Skyrim. On that notion is that I happen to have almost no understanding of wth a partition even is.

I thought it was for dismemberment functions, gore etc... but Skyrim only does decapitations on humanoid targets afaik.

 

Didn't think it would be an issue on creature models.

 

On this case I'm not even intentionally messing with body parts.

I just copy-pasted female draugr into dragon priest skeleton, and started modelling the dragon priest model to work with it.

Dragon priest model has 2 partitions: body and hands

Female draugr seems to have a lot more

 

So now, the ideal goal is to remove all extra partitions that do not belong to dragon priest nif.

For some reason it created stuff like BODY001 during the weight transfer process, and those have to go.

Problem now, is I have to reassign verticles to the correct partitions, and I haven't been very successful so far.

Tried simply using manual weight painting in blender with brush set on BODY and HANDS to mimic the distribution of the original dragon priest model.

But on export it have me a message about polygons not being assigned to a body part, even though I painted all of them properly apparently.

Only way around this that worked, was pressing a to select all and use the "assign" button below the bone list, but it didn't really work because some areas of the exported nif now expand into the center of the model, and also, even if that worked somehow, I'm afraid that assigned everything to the BODY partition, including stuff that should be HANDS, not sure if that's going to be of any consequence to the final result though.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Myst42

[Myst42]

Update; Just posting to say I THINK, I might have gotten it figured out.

 

If partitions do really work like bones on a normal rigging, then the deal is making sure the correct partitions exist on the bone list, no more no less.

 

In my case, the HEAD partition was invisible because the dragon priest armor addon does not include head body slot, however, I didn't want it to have a head partition, I just wanted it to work like the normal dragon priest mesh. Head partition needed to be removed.

 

But then there is another problem since I wasn't re-importing my own WIP meshes properly. One Import, export does fine, but Blender was actually creating new partitions out of nowhere on export. I checked the bone list and I had models with bones such as SBP_32_BODY01, 02, 03 and so on.

I dunno why would Blender commit such an atrocity, but it does. It replicates body partitions and randomly assigns weight to them. Updating the number of body partitions on nifskope doesnt seem to work either. Re-import an edited mesh, works fine with accepted partitions, but export again and partitions will multiply.

 

Somehow, the export function completely ignores whatever I'm doing and rewrites it.

I reweighted the partitions of a model to only have the 2 relevant bones, head and body as partitions, and on export, it still does whatever the hell it pleases, and has 5 partitions, all of them are iterations od Body

Reimport shows the truth about what happen to the model on export.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Myst42