Adding a pistol into Holster Gear by fLokii

[arsenalw80]

Hi, I currently am trying to get a pistol(not as a usable pistol, just for aesthetics) into the holster of this mod http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/44625#

I used the M92 mesh from The stalker weapon pack to put in there since it fits well, But even though it shows up in nifskope it doesn't ingame, I'm a beginner too all of this so I'm sure I did something wrong.

 

What I did

 

Opened two instances of Nifskope(one for the holster and one for the pistol).

Used copy branch on the pistol and pasted it into the other instance with the holster and repositioned it into the holster.

Saved and everything.

 

What do I do after this? Am I missing a step here? My very basic knowledge of these programs is most likely the cause(I only started using nifskope yesterday) so if someone could point me to a tutorial or just tell me how to add the pistol into the holster, that'd be great.

 

Thanks.

Edited September 1, 2012 by arsenalw80

[Cerealkiller257]

Hey man, did you ever find a fix for this? Its been a while

[madmongo]

The basic procedure for something like this is first go into nifskope and remove all of the animations and collision and such so that you are left with just the weapon meshes. Save that to some new nif (you can delete this temporary nif later).

 

Now open up your handy-dandy 3-d modeling program. I use Blender, but 3dsMax works too. Just don't ask me how to do stuff in 3dsmax because I have never used it. Import your holster mesh. Next, import your modified weapon nif. I find it easiest to just join all of the weapon meshes together into one mesh at this point, since that makes moving it around and weight painting it much easier. Once it is joined into one piece, edit the mesh and move it to where you want it to be in the holster.

 

Now you need to parent the pistol mesh to the human skeleton (armature), and weight paint it so that it matches the weighting on the holster, so that it moves with the holster. Since something solid like a pistol doesn't deform when you move, unlike say a piece of clothing, chances are you will weight the entire mesh 100 percent to a single bone. Having the entire pistol as a single mesh means that you can assign the same bone weight to every vertex in the mesh very quickly and easily in Blender.

 

Once that is done, export everything (armature, holster, and pistol) to your new nif. It's a good idea to save everything in Blender before exiting that as well. After exporting, go into NifSkope and fix up all of the shader flags, because Blender never seems to set the shader flags properly when you export clothing/armor items.

 

Go into the GECK and create a new piece of armor/clothing with your modified nif, and you're done. If you want to get fancy, you can make a world model in Blender and use that for when someone drops the holster/pistol. Or you can get really fancy and have a script swap out the different holsters depending on whether or not you have the pistol equipped.

 

I haven't looked at the holster mesh, but I'm betting that the holster portion of it is weighted 100 percent to the thigh bone. If the holster has a waist belt, that will be weighted to the pelvis. You'll want your pistol to follow the holster portion, so weight it 100 percent to the thigh bone as well.

 

You can do the same basic thing to make a wearable rifle slung over your back. Just edit the rifle's mesh so that it is located on the back where you want it, and weight it 100 percent to the spine bone. If I recall correctly, the spine bone you want is just the one called spine, not spine1 or spine2.

Edited October 19, 2018 by madmongo

[dubiousintent]

Nice summary. Added as 'TIP: Mashing Meshes' to the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

-Dubious-

[M48A5]

I did this about 3 years ago with the Tomb Raider outfit using two Beretta 92s. See: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/images/41799

 

The procedure went like this:

 

First, import the holster rig into Blender, then import one of the pistols into blender. Join all the meshes of the pistol so you are working with a solid object. Manipulate the pistol into the holster and again join the holster and pistol meshes.

 

Import the second pistol and report the same operation. Export the new mesh and correct the unweighted vertex. Open the new mesh in NifSkope, set the shaders and check that the texture paths were correct.

 

Add the new mesh to the game. Since it was already a part of an existing outfit, I did not have to use the GECK at all.

 

It sounds easier than actually doing it. The hardest part was getting the pistols into the holsters.