How to combine a hood and a specific hairstyle in Oblivion?

[Olafur55]

Hello, I'm a newbie when it comes to modding, and I've tried to do so with NifSkope, combining the two .nif files into one, but in game only the hood shows, not the hair. Anyone can give me a tutorial on how to do so? I could provide files if needed.

I've also tried doing it with Maya, as it's the only software I knew beforehand, but when loaded into the game it shows a massive "wtf missing meshes" error or something like that.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Hmm, well, first of all hair meshes aren't "rigged" in Oblivion, so they clip through clothing and won't bend when the head is turned or tilted. Also they're "mounted" through a specific way to the head node and not rarely even positioned differently inside their NIF.

 

Hoods, on the other hand, are rigged like clothing. They bend, twist and fold during movements of the head. Not rarely their NIF is like an entire skeleton of nodes with all bone nodes but the head and neck ones removed, so a floating hood high above the 0 point, quite unlike what hair meshes often look like.

 

 

So the first thing to do before combining a hair mesh with a hood would be to properly "rig" the hair mesh so it becomes a clothing item, a "wig", if you like. Or you take a ready-made wig instead right away.

Wigs have a few drawbacks compared to real hairs though, especially when it comes to the hair shader effects not affecting them and the like.

 

But you can't convert the hood into part of the hair mesh instead, as the whole thing will have to remain a single mesh, 1 material, 1 texture, everything affected by the hair shader as well, and all shape morphs have to be re-created, too, which might or will create quite undesirable effects.

 

 

Then you must take care of clipping, when you combine the wig with the hood. Usually hoods are smaller/not as wide than/as hair styles. Sometimes you'll even have to cut hair strands away or tuck them in or similar edits, until they fit under the hood.

 

All of this must be done in a modeling app. NifSkope alone won't do. The result, however, no matter what modeling app you used, will usually have to be run through some vital validation/optimization/clean-up steps in NifSkope, before the NIF can really be used inside the game. This step though depends on the choice of modeling app, and I for one know only steps for import from Blender myself.

 

 

I did something like that in the past myself already for the hair of my main character's female companion and some hoods.

 

Turning this:

 

Into this:

 

This one already was a wig to begin with though, so I saved quite a part of work. And I don't know much about how to convert an actual hairstyle into a wig either.

[Olafur55]

Thank you for your response. I suppose I'm better off finding a wig rather than going through the hassle of trying to convert a hairstyle into one. I already thought that the answer lied in having the hair simply be a static textured mesh within the hood, but I didn't know how to approach it. If I have more questions, I'll be sure to ask.