Fallout Modelling - Mini Tutorial

[jaysus]

if you move the bones around i wont affect anything as every animation uses that skeleton and will revert the bones in its original state once you move just a lil bit...

youd have to change all animations to make changes to the skeleton work...

[Baelkin]

I have a few questions regarding armour models, which probably been asked and answered before, but I can't for the life of me find anything useful on the subject using the search function - so I've decided to ask them here as they are, in a way, related to the topic at hand (General modelling knowledge).

 

Anyway, the questions are related to the armour mod I'm working on as linked in my signature, specifically the Protect Gear armour, but I find them general enough that the answers might be useful for other modders.

 

First off, the pauldrons and other bits of the armour I'm working on are currently two sided - ie. they are closed shell objects with polygons in areas that the player essentially won't see (or is very unlikely to see like where they are attached to the shoulder).

 

As far as I know, the computer doesn't really care whether you can see the surfaces or not when it comes to rendering them, so what I'm wondering is if a model has polygon surfaces that the player will *never* see while playing the game, can you safely remove them without it bumming the game engine?

 

Secondly, I believe the total polycount on the most polygon heavy vanilla Fallout 3 armour models clock in at ~7500 polygons (fully triangulated), but is there a recommended polygon budget for a custom armour?

 

I'm pretty sure that the calculations required to render a higher polycount object increases exponentially, but would it matter much if your custom model had 50% more polygons than the vanilla armour models, or would you risk bringing the average gaming rig to its knees with more than a few instances of the model in the general area?

[throttlekitty]

Polycount is kind of relative; ideally you want it as low as possible, but it's also easier for modders to get away with using more. In Oblivion, I saw some scenes pulling 1.5 million polys on screen, and still going strong at 30fps. (although I did run across a few weapons with grossly high polycounts that really trashed my game when I looked at them, but this was rare to run across.) Fallout 3 uses some newer tricks for keeping the scenes running more optimal (rooms and portals), so interior performance is great. Things that are more likely to cause a large impact are excessive use of fancy shaders, or loads of layered transparency. I'm pretty sure I read that the Bethesda devs aren't given strict poly budgets, just general guidelines.

 

Yes, you can safely remove the unseen faces without causing problems. You could arbitrarily remove faces from any part of a mesh without the game getting unhappy with you for doing so.

[Baelkin]

Polycount is kind of relative; ideally you want it as low as possible, but it's also easier for modders to get away with using more. In Oblivion, I saw some scenes pulling 1.5 million polys on screen, and still going strong at 30fps. (although I did run across a few weapons with grossly high polycounts that really trashed my game when I looked at them, but this was rare to run across.) Fallout 3 uses some newer tricks for keeping the scenes running more optimal (rooms and portals), so interior performance is great. Things that are more likely to cause a large impact are excessive use of fancy shaders, or loads of layered transparency. I'm pretty sure I read that the Bethesda devs aren't given strict poly budgets, just general guidelines.

 

Yes, you can safely remove the unseen faces without causing problems. You could arbitrarily remove faces from any part of a mesh without the game getting unhappy with you for doing so.

 

Ah nice, thanks for the answers. I know it's pretty basic knowledge, but I think it's good to have it out there such that people can find it in case they were wondering about what is or is not allowed if one wants to make a working model. It took me a while to adopt the principle of "the computer doesn't care" when it comes to model design and "holes" in the mesh, at least as long as you adhere to certain basic principles when modelling and I bet other people have been wondering the same.

[TotallyNotToastyFresh]

Can someone please help me with this error? I've beentearing my hair out for the past hour trying to fix it;

 

""device position incorrect after block number 11 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 3830 ended at 3879 expected 3892"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 17 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 6620 ended at 6669 expected 6648"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 25 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 411991 ended at 412040 expected 412019"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 42 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 467701 ended at 467750 expected 467729"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 50 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 470802 ended at 470851 expected 470830"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 58 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 473903 ended at 473952 expected 473931"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 66 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 477004 ended at 477053 expected 477032"" 
""device position incorrect after block number 79 (BSShaderTextureSet) at 480214 ended at 480287 expected 480282""

 

This is for a custom weapon, I just made a retexture and replaced all the textures in the appropriate places and it still refuses to work. I get crashes ingame with this too.

 

.Nif file is HERE, if someone could DL it and see what's what I'd be very grateful.

[Napalm42]

How exactly would you come about changing clothes though, I'd like to make a new Pre-War hat that looks like a woven fedora i have, and id like to make an outfit consisting of Jeans, My favorite band T Shirt and a white overshirt, open so you can see the logo.

[Baelkin]

How exactly would you come about changing clothes though, I'd like to make a new Pre-War hat that looks like a woven fedora i have, and id like to make an outfit consisting of Jeans, My favorite band T Shirt and a white overshirt, open so you can see the logo.

 

There's no difference between making clothing and armour. They work exactly the same in-game, so all you'd have to do is make the model of the hat and the outfit (Jeans, T-shirt and white overshirt on the same model) and implement them using the general guidelines for making armour found in this thread.

 

If you are in doubt as to where to start, doing the hat first is a good excercise in getting to know NifSkope as headgear require little to no skinning.

[Napalm42]

ty mehn:)

[R4za]

Hiya all. Thanks for writing these!

 

I've been using these tutorials (R4byde's in particular) to try and edit existing armor and hair meshes in blender, then get them back into the game. I get stuck on the stage of pasting the new .obj's data over the nitrishape of the original mesh, though, and I have two quick questions:

 

-The hair and armor meshes I've opened start out with nitrishapes instead of nitristrips (the tutorial seems to say original weapon meshes have nitristrips - haven't played with one of those yet). Does this mean I should be trying to copy the nitrishape from the edited obj without stripifying it? Should I turn the original mesh's parts into nitristrips first (and optionally somehow turn them back after pasting over them)?

 

-The actual paste over process isn't working for me. When I try, it pops up a warning telling me

"Nif versions differ!

Current File version: 20.2.0.7

Clipboard Data version: 20.0.0.5

Results will be unpredictable..."

 

And sure enough, if I continue from there I get the error:

""array Extra Data List much too large. 1852138323 bytes requested""

 

And it does something that looks like merging the to-be-pasted-over nitrishape/strip with the one listed above it in the original mesh instead.

 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[Baelkin]

-The hair and armor meshes I've opened start out with nitrishapes instead of nitristrips (the tutorial seems to say original weapon meshes have nitristrips - haven't played with one of those yet). Does this mean I should be trying to copy the nitrishape from the edited obj without stripifying it? Should I turn the original mesh's parts into nitristrips first (and optionally somehow turn them back after pasting over them)?

 

Whether a model is a NiTriStrip or NiTriShape in NifSkope doesn't seem to make much difference, at least I haven't really experienced any complications while working with a model converted from one to the other. It might mean something, but I can't for the love of something nice tell you what, so unless otherwise stated you should just convert between the two as necessary. I prefer using NiTriShapes but I think both will do (Vanilla models are both Stips and Shapes as far as I recall).

 

-The actual paste over process isn't working for me. When I try, it pops up a warning telling me

"Nif versions differ!

Current File version: 20.2.0.7

Clipboard Data version: 20.0.0.5

Results will be unpredictable..."

 

And sure enough, if I continue from there I get the error:

""array Extra Data List much too large. 1852138323 bytes requested""

 

And it does something that looks like merging the to-be-pasted-over nitrishape/strip with the one listed above it in the original mesh instead.

 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

 

From what I have experienced with NifSkope, older versions of the NifTools plugin can cause this error though I'm not sure why you get it when importing a .obj file as these files should be entirely independent of NifSkope version. If you are making a new Nif file, importing the .obj into that and then trying to copy/paste into a different Nif file then that might be the cause of the problem, though it shouldn't matter unless you are using an older NifSkope version. At any extent, if you havnen't tried it already, try installing the latest Niftools plugins for Blender and export the model directly as a .Nif file and copy/paste from that rather than import from .obj as that should solve any NifSkope version inconsistencies that you are experiencing.