export/import trouble

[quacko]

Hello fellow rocketeers,

 

I have recently taken up a mod i had started making little over a year ago (damn time flies at times), but put on hold due to

the release of skyrim and following a few real life events that kept me from working on this, but now the time seemed right to pick it up again,

the mod is due to release the first build in about a week or two, with most of the scripting and modeling done all i need to do is make a few textures, and of we go.

BUT i did plan on releasing a few more armor pieces with the mod, but for some reason that i simply cant get my head around, i suddenly cant export my rigged meshes

from 3d studio max and into the geck, without it being invisible when i load it.

The thi is that i have done this on several armor pieces (and a creature) already that work fine, and for all intents and purposes the pieces i export now, also seem to look

alright in nifscope, but when i use them in the geck, they are simply invisible, they re there, i can see that the armor pieces are loaded in the list on the lefthand side of the renderview,

and the textures are loaded aswell, but the mesh simply isn't there to look at...

well.. this is actually where things get funny, because i exported a hood and in nifscope i tried to not copy over the, NiSkinData and the NiSkinPartition but only the NiTriShapeData,

wich ofcorse resulted in an all crumbled up mesh, BUT i could see it, even though all other settings was exactly the same as the previous attempts, it was viewable, and all attempts

since have done the exact same, as soon as the mesh is rigged correctly tthe skeleton it becomes invisible and when it is not it IS visible but (ofcorse) crumbled and thus unusable.

and here i should point out, that it doesn't crash the geck when i load it, as it usually does when the mesh is exported wrong, it is simply invisible...

 

So any thoughts as to what my prblems could be would be greatly apreciated, cause im seriously starting to question my own sanity over this, and small bald spots are starting to form all over my skull... :P

 

oh yeah and i should point out that weapons are not an issue at all, the still export perfectly to the game...

oh and one last thig the tutorial i use as a reference when exporting is this: http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/3ds_Max_armor_to_Fallout_New_Vegas

 

so again any thoughts on the subject would be hugely appreciated.

[DizzasterJuice]

You probably need to replace the NiMaterialProperty. Just copy and paste one from a vanilla armor mesh.

 

"crumbled up mesh" - You have to rebuild the BSdismemberSkin whenever you change anything, they CAN NOT be copy and pasted. The skin modifier CAN be copied and pasted. Just make a clone/copy (not clone/instance) of your mesh then hide it, when you're done with changes unhide the copy and copy and paste the skin modifier from the copy to your new mesh.

 

The export settings for armor are a bit wrong in that tutorial.

Under "Export":

uncheck everything. You don't have hidden nodes or collisions in armor.

Under "Mesh":

uncheck Extra Nodes on Mesh and Vertex Colors and check Flatten Hierarchy. Unless you're using vertex colors in max.

Under "Skin Modifier":

Check Remove Extra Bones - Very important if you're using skin modifier from your body mesh to rig your armor mesh.

Uncheck Generate Partition Strips - unless you want your armor model stripified (you don't) then you would also check generate strips.

Under "Misc.":

Uncheck Add Accum Nodes

 

The rest of the selections are correct.

[quacko]

THANK YOU!!! yo are seriously my savior!

those settings where exactly what i needed and it works perfectly again, so again thank you, as i said i have exported

several rigged items when i started up the mod a year back, so i did know what i had to do to rig the meshes, i merely used it as an example

since i found it strange that the mesh showed up WHEN the rigging was screwed up, but not when it wasn't.

But anyways thanks again, now i can finally make things perfect... or thereabout :P

[quacko]

dammit!

 

I thought it worked perfectly, but alas...

the meshes are viewable ingame now, until i get too close to them and then they go invisible again, until the camera backs far enough away again.

so any insight on this new development would again be gretly appreciated, and spare me some of the remaining hair left on my head :P

[Guest Messenjah]

I thought I posted here but go onto Fallout and look through my tutorial:

 

Fallout to Blender and Back.

 

I explain how to import/export models and explain shaders. If you still have a problem, message me directly.

[quacko]

Hey thanks man i tried to message you here, but it said that you could recieve any more messages there so i'll just post it here.

 

i apreciated the help, but im sorry to say that it didn't get me any futher with my problem, although the shadow frustum map did havem going for a while :P

but i have though learned that it is apparently just a problem with that certain mesh, since all my other stuff still exports as it should,

so if your busy its not that big of a problem as such ay longer.

but i am a curious sort so if you hd an idea as to what this problem could be it would be cool to get my curiosity sated on this subject (and it could ofcorse end up saving some grief further down the road).

so without further ado, the problem now at hand with this particular mesh is that it when i load it up in the geck it looks fine, i rotate it and it looks fine.

but then when i start to zoom in on the object (a hood simply rigged 100% to the headbone in this example) when i get to a certain distance from the hood

(about halfway in from the initial camera position) it disapears, until i zoom far enough out again.

i can also see when i load up the game that it is the exact same thing there, it loads fine from a certain distance but disapears at closing in,

and ofcorse the hair is gone so the item is obviously still equipped.

i considered it being the .dds texture file that was the problem, perhaps screwing up the the scaling of mipmaps or whatnot,

so i tried loading with a random other texter i knew worked, and the peoblem is still the same. and i should probably also mention that i have had the same problem at en earlier point in this modding process,

where i was putting a number of nicknacks on a creature, where some of the nicknacks dissapeard in the same way,

so i at that point threw it as a poly count problem, and then removed the problematic bits and pieces and all was well,

but the mesh in question here is fairly lowpoly, and i have imported much more complex meshes than this one without any poblems.

 

so if this is something that you'd be interested in trying to figure out i could send you the workfile and you could try to take a look at it and i would think any feedback on it would be cool,

but then again it should be purely for the sating of curiosity, since as i said it is not a probem i have with any other meshes...

 

anyways, thanks again

now back to work

[Guest Messenjah]

Makes me wonder what it might be. I've never had a mesh do that to me yet. :\ If it works, it generally just works. If you want to upload it somewhere and post a link, I might take a look at it at some point when I have time. I do lack time these days though. :(

[quacko]

don't sweat it, as i said it's not really that much of a problem anymore,

it was just if you where hugely curious and werent tied up and all that stuff, but thanks anyways,

 

cheers