[LE] Exporting Models FROM the CK for Editing in Nifskope

[Punkn]

My million-dollar question of the month: I'm wanting to figure out how to export a house build (for example...let's use Calixto's House of Curiosities as a ref.) to open as the pieces "land" in the CK/Cells. IF this is even possible without the nightmare of having to position every piece manually.

 

If I'm still making zero sense, my goal is to basically take the house I've built and make it one single model instead of dozens (upon dozens) of individual pieces in hopes of reducing file size and the strain that's put on the CK itself whenever I work on the mod. I'm hoping that someone can shed some light on how I could go about doing this more easily that the copy-n-paste-branches nightmare that I'm worried I'll be left to deal with.

[NexusComa]

Pretty sure that would put even more strain on the CK and in game even more. Best way to remove strain in game is to use occlusion boxes. One trick I use when building in the CK with many objects is to highlight a bunch of what I'm not working on and use the 1 key (tap twice) to hide it. F5 brings everything back.

[Punkn]

Would it just be best then if I created the majority of the architecture in Nifskope as "Mashups" of sorts to help reduce system-strain and overall file-size?

[Hoamaii]

Well yeah, it'd sure make our lives easier if we could "glue" all meshes we need together to create a new one - but I haven't seen anyone able to do that.

 

In the CK, you can still select a good number of objects together in the render window by holding Ctrl and clickin on all the objects you need, then select "copy" and "paste" them together in some other cell (provided the CK doesn't crash in the maneuvre!..)

 

But in nifskope no way. Each object has its own collision node and you can't really move around collision in Nifskope. You'd probably need to import all meshes one by one in a 3D program, place them as you like, and create a completely new bkhRigiBody covering the whole thing - if anybody's managed to do that in Skyrim, I never heard of it. But you could ask Tamira, she ported a lot of Oblivion's modders resource houses to Skyrim, she sure does know a LOT more than most of us about houses and collision.

 

Good luck!

[cumbrianlad]

I agree with Hoamaii about all the main things in the posts.

 

You can, however move collision around using Nifskope... I've done it. I had to do it recently for the 'Ancient Nord Armor' cuirasse model, which is a total mess in the vanilla 'Go' model. This explains why you find ancient Nord boots, helmets and gauntlets in the vanilla game, but you can only ever loot the cuirasse from dead enemies. Take a look at the nif, if you're interested, Hoamii... it contains the nifs for every single piece of the ancient Nord set, all over the place, complete with collision. Wherever you try to place the cuirasse in CK, this results in the boots, gloves or helmet clashing with another object in the cell and pinging the cuirasse around the place until it settles somewhere nothing collides with any of the bits! I made a new nif, deleted all the extraneous nodes, rotated and translated the Cuirasse tri-shape so that it loaded on the same place in the CK and rotated and translated the collision to match. You just click the collision in the left-hand window and edit it from there, if I recall correctly.

 

In this instance moving collision isn't likely to help much, though.The only way I know to get collision from objects added in a 'Mash-up' is to import the entire BSfadeNode in and that strikes me as very bad for optimization. I just import the individual Tri-shapes of small objects into the main mesh for stuff like alchemy potions and the like, whilst keeping the collision of the object like a shelf that i'm placing them on. If the player hits one of my potion bottles the sword goes clean through it, but I don't much care about that. They'll probably hit the shelf or a wall at the same time.

 

I've also never heard of anyone making the new BHKrigid bodies like that.

[Hoamaii]

@ Cumbrianlad: my, you're right, you can apparently transform collision objects when they're in a NiNode block... I had never even tried that. And the game doesn't complain too much about that? Good tip, thanks!..

[cumbrianlad]

Hoamaii, I used it and can confirm it's fine. I needed to do it because I wanted a set of ancient Nord armour to be dotted around a dungeon. All was fine except for the cuirasse. I tried all sorts, moving it's position, adding don't havok settle, 'DefaultDisableHavokOnload' script... nothing worked. Sometimes it was a random place in the cell, sometimes it was in the void! that's when i opened the nif and saw what a mess it was!

 

Since I removed all the junk tri-shapes and collision in the armorGO nif and moved the collision, it now sits where I wanted it, on a shelf. It has collision working where it ought to. It's been game tested, so I know it's okay. No crashes, it's always exactly where it is supposed to be.

 

I haven't tried wearing it once it's picked up... must do that.

[maxarturo]

Just to elaborate on this, you can even move the collision by moving its "Vertex".

Had to do this with one wall mesh that its collision was way out of the actual wall borders blocking the path of npcs, and due to the fact that when i realised the issue is was too late to replace the wall mesh, i had to edit its collision and move every single Vertex.

[Hoamaii]

Well thanks, guys, that's very useful to know indeed!.. :smile:

I managed to successfully create and export collision shapes from 3DS - but transforming collision meshes directly in Nifskope would probably be way faster.

 

3DS collision exports give me a "bhkConvexVerticesShape", same as the ones you moved around in the Draugr armor .go. And Nifskope's notes about "bhkConvexVerticesShapes" goes: "A convex shape built from vertices. Note that if the shape is used in a non-static object (such as clutter), then they will simply fall through ground when they are under a bhkListShape."

 

No idea what a "bhkListShape" is or does. Do you?

[cumbrianlad]

Maxarturo, I didn't move it one vertex at a time. I moved the whole lot in one go by translating and rotating. It seems to work fine.

 

I could upload the vanilla and edited nif files, if you like.

 

I know you won't be at all suprised at how bad the original nif is! Like I said, it explains why Beth never put ancient Nord Cuirasse pieces in a dungeon for the player to find... only the boots, helmets and gauntlets. They must have known what a mess they made of the cuirasse 'GO' nif, but didn't bother to fix it!