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Trying to start editing meshes -- correct way of importing/exporting creature .nifs into Blender?


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I'd like to edit the mesh for various creatures, but I am unsure of the correct import/export settings I should use in Blender, and also if I should import the skeleton as well. I can only find a couple tutorials that really cover importing/exporting meshes in detail for Oblivion, but they are armor tutorials. Not sure if it would fully apply to what I want to do.. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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First off, the only version of Blender working with the NifTools import/export scripts for Oblivion is v0.49b. Others correct me, if I missed some newer development in this regard!

 

As for me, basically every time I import anything from NIF into Blender I start with only the armature skeleton ("skeleton only, parent selected") first, then select it and import the meshes ("geometry only, parent to selected armature").

I usually stick to the default options, but I think for some time now I also use "re-align bone tail and roll". You basically have to check for yourself, with which state of imported armature you can work better in your case.

 

And yes, for editing creature models I would definitely import the skeleton first as well, because you'll definitely have to do some rigging and/or bone weighting later when you're done. The bones inside the model NIFs are only references to the bones inside the skeleton.nif, and there's no guarantee they can be used as a proper armature themselves on their own. But I'm no creature modder and know only what I learned myself through trial&error.

 

 

The remaining literature, since the NifTools page containing them all went poof, is either scarce or highly dated by now, but maybe this will serve as some sort of reference still: https://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Blender/Custom_Creature

Another one I found was way too old and would've rather confused than helped at this time and day.

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