Blender 2.83, blender_nif_plugin Easy Installation

[theearm]

So I think I have this worked out, I would love some feedback here as to weather this works for anyone else or not.

 

I have followed every guide I could find, but they all seemed broken for me, other than getting old versions of the nif plugin and PyFFI to work with 2.4b (which is unacceptable really) Note that I am still on Widows 7 because, reasons. perhaps this is why no installation guides worked for me.

 

Note that I just started using Blender a few weeks ago (I'm just primarily an audio guy) and I've forgotten everything I knew about Python a decade ago - except that HATE it. So consider this method beginner / noob friendly.

 

I'm tempted to go on a rant here, and say that the nif_tools dev team really needs to update their documentation as far as installing and using their plugins for us plebes who don't know their way around a python shell. They can't really seem to figure out a way to handle the user getting pyffi installed into Blender's Python- or no, I really think they just aren't confident enough to even bother putting together an installer, or some sort of proper and updated installation guide - or maybe even just too lazy. Anyways, that was a terrible attempt at a non rant.... From what I can tell, things are working pretty well, so well done devs. Your documentation is garbage however. So...

 

How to install nif plugins for 2.83 without touching a command line or python shell:

 

STEP 1a: Get the blender_nif plugin.

 

go to http://www.niftools.org . There you will see links for the blender_nif_plugin, and also pyffi. Click on the link to the blender_nif_plugin, which takes you to their github page - https://github.com/niftools/blender_nif_plugin

 

Click on the Clone or Download button, download the ZIP. Do not try and install this from within Blender like you would another plugin, It's not setup for that as the folder hierarchy is wrong. It does nothing. Might be a dumb oversight, but I'll give the benefit of doubt here since it's just a dev build honestly. Just extract the zip anywhere else temporarily. We really only want one folder out of that archive anyways, the rest is just github developer things you don't need.

 

 

STEP 1b: put the right folder in the right folder

 

In the extracted archive files, look for a folder named "io_scene_nif"

 

Just copy this folder (or you can drag and drop it) - but where to paste/drag it to? There are two locations where Blender plugins can reside, for the sake of my sanity in writing this guide, and to have a nice portable installation of Blender, we are just going to put this folder in the right place within the Blender installation folder itself.

 

I don't know where your demented mind installed blender, but if you installed it anywhere other than the default location, you are probably clever enough to adjust the paths here. The default location (at least for me) is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83

 

here you will see the Blender.exe with some other stuff, and another folder named "2.83" - let's go there, and we see 3 folders "datafiles", "python", and "scripts". Open "scripts" and we will see the "addons" folder.

 

We need to paste (or drop) the "io_scene_nif" folder into the "addons" folder. The full path is something like:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\scripts\addons

 

ok, on to step 2, or if you are curious, open up blender, go to prefrences > addons, search "nif" and try to enable the plugin. You will see that you get an error. That's cause we don't have PyFFI installed.

 

STEP 2a: get PyFFI

 

back to http://www.niftools.org. SO here we get into the absolute stupidity of the situation. You would think you'd just from here follow that PyFFI link, download a thing, install a thing and be done, but no...

 

the version of pyffi on their github page dosen't match what the blender_nif plugin uses! If you dig around, you'll see that they've dropped the PyFFI version from dev4 to dev3. Besides getting pyffi installed is a pain in the but anyways - so let's just cut out the BS, I don't even want to discuss the ways I got here to figure this out.

 

STEP 2b: "install" PyFFI

 

If we were clever enough, we could open up a command line, do some python thing such that it only effects Blenders python thing and install a thing to it by using pip, which is just a package installer. anyways, sounds neat, but I can't get it to work, (and you probably can't either) so all it's really trying to do is download a file, and put it into a folder, it's not like it's doing some registry bs or anything, it's not some magic - it's just a f***ing script! so were just going to use our operating system (windows) to do that instead, we aren't going to be fancy about it, just unwrap the round peg that we got delivered to us in square box, and put it the round hole, then make our sweet mods without having to revert to old versions of blender.

 

 

go here: https://pypi.org/project/PyFFI/2.2.4.dev3/#files

 

click on the link to PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3.tar.gz

 

Winrar or 7zip should be able to extract the . tar file. We just want to extract this, and grab the "pyffi" folder out of it.

 

copy/paste or drag and drop the pyffi folder into the right path -

 

so what's the right path here? SO if you were to successfully use pythons Blender, and pip to install Pyffi, it would probably just go here -

 

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\python\lib\site-packages

 

it might also work just in ~python\lib

 

 

So yeah just put the PyFFI package folder in Blenders python library.

 

Done.

 

You can now enable the plugin without an error

 

You can now go through the absolute shitshow of figuring out the right settings for whatever game your modding assets for....

 

good luck!

 

 

 

( If I can get some number of people to confirm that this method actually works I think I will do a video tutorial and post it on youTube, but I dunno, my windows enviroment is so borked that I either found the easiest method currently possible or I've done some thing terribly dumb - just let me know, thanks!)

Edited June 4, 2020 by theearm

[jhukadf]

Yes, it works in W10 for Skyrim.

 

 

I am still tryng to do this to work for Syrim SE...

I can not import any .nif (SSE) in blender 2.83

 

 

I already read many, realy many tutos in net, but can not uses blender 2.83 to import nif meshes...

 

 

Im using W10, not 7.

 

 

Anyone can help me?

 

what i need to import a nif file?

blender.??? + nif plugin.??? + ??? ( for Skyrim SE)

Edited June 17, 2020 by jhukadf

[baka7kami]

This worked perfectly, thank you. Only problem I had was the pyffi folder. Took me a minute to realize you were referring to a specific folder inside the PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3 folder.

[theearm]

Yes, it works in W10 for Skyrim.

 

 

I am still tryng to do this to work for Syrim SE...

I can not import any .nif (SSE) in blender 2.83

 

 

I already read many, realy many tutos in net, but can not uses blender 2.83 to import nif meshes...

 

 

Im using W10, not 7.

 

 

Anyone can help me?

 

what i need to import a nif file?

blender.??? + nif plugin.??? + ??? ( for Skyrim SE)

 

The plugin does not work at all for Skyrim SE as far as I've seen.

[theearm]

This worked perfectly, thank you. Only problem I had was the pyffi folder. Took me a minute to realize you were referring to a specific folder inside the PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3 folder.

Great! glad it worked!

[Blinxys]

EDIT:

After several too many hours toiling with this.

Actually it may be easier than described.

 

All I did was:

1) Place the pyfii folder in both locations you indicated.

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\python\lib\site-packages
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\python\lib

2) Rezip the "io_scene_nif" folder from within PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3.tar.gz

3) Install as normal addon for Blender.

(Which results in an error "two addons with the same name")

 

4) From Windows File Explorer navigated to and removed files from user\roaming

5a) Searched for "nif" in Blender>Preferences>Addons

5b) and checkbox enabled it

 

Done Deal!

 

Import\Export show up in menus, now testing...

 

Thanks for the heads up in the right direction though!

Would not have got here without your indications.

 

Best regards!

Edited June 25, 2020 by Blinxys

[CrowTheMystic]

i love you

[theearm]

 

 

Done Deal!

 

Import\Export show up in menus, now testing...

 

Thanks for the heads up in the right direction though!

Would not have got here without your indications.

 

Best regards!

Great! glad you got it sorted out. Interesting that you were able to get it to install from the .Zip . They may have updated and fixed that issue - I'll check that out, perhaps update my instructions.

[theotherguy7]

This did it for me, thanks!

But yeah, figuring out the right settings indeed turns out to be an absolute shitshow like you said. For exporting edited nifs, especially. Just changing a mesh too significantly unleashes the wrath of the error messages. But hopefully it'll eventually get more updates, and I might still make good use of it in the meantime ^^

[Farodadestin]

So I think I have this worked out, I would love some feedback here as to weather this works for anyone else or not.

 

I have followed every guide I could find, but they all seemed broken for me, other than getting old versions of the nif plugin and PyFFI to work with 2.4b (which is unacceptable really) Note that I am still on Widows 7 because, reasons. perhaps this is why no installation guides worked for me.

 

Note that I just started using Blender a few weeks ago (I'm just primarily an audio guy) and I've forgotten everything I knew about Python a decade ago - except that HATE it. So consider this method beginner / noob friendly.

 

I'm tempted to go on a rant here, and say that the nif_tools dev team really needs to update their documentation as far as installing and using their plugins for us plebes who don't know their way around a python shell. They can't really seem to figure out a way to handle the user getting pyffi installed into Blender's Python- or no, I really think they just aren't confident enough to even bother putting together an installer, or some sort of proper and updated installation guide - or maybe even just too lazy. Anyways, that was a terrible attempt at a non rant.... From what I can tell, things are working pretty well, so well done devs. Your documentation is garbage however. So...

 

How to install nif plugins for 2.83 without touching a command line or python shell:

 

STEP 1a: Get the blender_nif plugin.

 

go to http://www.niftools.org . There you will see links for the blender_nif_plugin, and also pyffi. Click on the link to the blender_nif_plugin, which takes you to their github page - https://github.com/niftools/blender_nif_plugin

 

Click on the Clone or Download button, download the ZIP. Do not try and install this from within Blender like you would another plugin, It's not setup for that as the folder hierarchy is wrong. It does nothing. Might be a dumb oversight, but I'll give the benefit of doubt here since it's just a dev build honestly. Just extract the zip anywhere else temporarily. We really only want one folder out of that archive anyways, the rest is just github developer things you don't need.

 

 

STEP 1b: put the right folder in the right folder

 

In the extracted archive files, look for a folder named "io_scene_nif"

 

Just copy this folder (or you can drag and drop it) - but where to paste/drag it to? There are two locations where Blender plugins can reside, for the sake of my sanity in writing this guide, and to have a nice portable installation of Blender, we are just going to put this folder in the right place within the Blender installation folder itself.

 

I don't know where your demented mind installed blender, but if you installed it anywhere other than the default location, you are probably clever enough to adjust the paths here. The default location (at least for me) is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83

 

here you will see the Blender.exe with some other stuff, and another folder named "2.83" - let's go there, and we see 3 folders "datafiles", "python", and "scripts". Open "scripts" and we will see the "addons" folder.

 

We need to paste (or drop) the "io_scene_nif" folder into the "addons" folder. The full path is something like:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\scripts\addons

 

ok, on to step 2, or if you are curious, open up blender, go to prefrences > addons, search "nif" and try to enable the plugin. You will see that you get an error. That's cause we don't have PyFFI installed.

 

STEP 2a: get PyFFI

 

back to http://www.niftools.org. SO here we get into the absolute stupidity of the situation. You would think you'd just from here follow that PyFFI link, download a thing, install a thing and be done, but no...

 

the version of pyffi on their github page dosen't match what the blender_nif plugin uses! If you dig around, you'll see that they've dropped the PyFFI version from dev4 to dev3. Besides getting pyffi installed is a pain in the but anyways - so let's just cut out the BS, I don't even want to discuss the ways I got here to figure this out.

 

STEP 2b: "install" PyFFI

 

If we were clever enough, we could open up a command line, do some python thing such that it only effects Blenders python thing and install a thing to it by using pip, which is just a package installer. anyways, sounds neat, but I can't get it to work, (and you probably can't either) so all it's really trying to do is download a file, and put it into a folder, it's not like it's doing some registry bs or anything, it's not some magic - it's just a f***ing script! so were just going to use our operating system (windows) to do that instead, we aren't going to be fancy about it, just unwrap the round peg that we got delivered to us in square box, and put it the round hole, then make our sweet mods without having to revert to old versions of blender.

 

 

go here: https://pypi.org/project/PyFFI/2.2.4.dev3/#files

 

click on the link to PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3.tar.gz

 

Winrar or 7zip should be able to extract the . tar file. We just want to extract this, and grab the "pyffi" folder out of it.

 

copy/paste or drag and drop the pyffi folder into the right path -

 

so what's the right path here? SO if you were to successfully use pythons Blender, and pip to install Pyffi, it would probably just go here -

 

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\python\lib\site-packages

 

it might also work just in ~python\lib

 

 

So yeah just put the PyFFI package folder in Blenders python library.

 

Done.

 

You can now enable the plugin without an error

 

You can now go through the absolute shitshow of figuring out the right settings for whatever game your modding assets for....

 

good luck!

 

 

 

( If I can get some number of people to confirm that this method actually works I think I will do a video tutorial and post it on youTube, but I dunno, my windows enviroment is so borked that I either found the easiest method currently possible or I've done some thing terribly dumb - just let me know, thanks!)

 

So I think I have this worked out, I would love some feedback here as to weather this works for anyone else or not.

 

I have followed every guide I could find, but they all seemed broken for me, other than getting old versions of the nif plugin and PyFFI to work with 2.4b (which is unacceptable really) Note that I am still on Widows 7 because, reasons. perhaps this is why no installation guides worked for me.

 

Note that I just started using Blender a few weeks ago (I'm just primarily an audio guy) and I've forgotten everything I knew about Python a decade ago - except that HATE it. So consider this method beginner / noob friendly.

 

I'm tempted to go on a rant here, and say that the nif_tools dev team really needs to update their documentation as far as installing and using their plugins for us plebes who don't know their way around a python shell. They can't really seem to figure out a way to handle the user getting pyffi installed into Blender's Python- or no, I really think they just aren't confident enough to even bother putting together an installer, or some sort of proper and updated installation guide - or maybe even just too lazy. Anyways, that was a terrible attempt at a non rant.... From what I can tell, things are working pretty well, so well done devs. Your documentation is garbage however. So...

 

How to install nif plugins for 2.83 without touching a command line or python shell:

 

STEP 1a: Get the blender_nif plugin.

 

go to http://www.niftools.org . There you will see links for the blender_nif_plugin, and also pyffi. Click on the link to the blender_nif_plugin, which takes you to their github page - https://github.com/niftools/blender_nif_plugin

 

Click on the Clone or Download button, download the ZIP. Do not try and install this from within Blender like you would another plugin, It's not setup for that as the folder hierarchy is wrong. It does nothing. Might be a dumb oversight, but I'll give the benefit of doubt here since it's just a dev build honestly. Just extract the zip anywhere else temporarily. We really only want one folder out of that archive anyways, the rest is just github developer things you don't need.

 

 

STEP 1b: put the right folder in the right folder

 

In the extracted archive files, look for a folder named "io_scene_nif"

 

Just copy this folder (or you can drag and drop it) - but where to paste/drag it to? There are two locations where Blender plugins can reside, for the sake of my sanity in writing this guide, and to have a nice portable installation of Blender, we are just going to put this folder in the right place within the Blender installation folder itself.

 

I don't know where your demented mind installed blender, but if you installed it anywhere other than the default location, you are probably clever enough to adjust the paths here. The default location (at least for me) is C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83

 

here you will see the Blender.exe with some other stuff, and another folder named "2.83" - let's go there, and we see 3 folders "datafiles", "python", and "scripts". Open "scripts" and we will see the "addons" folder.

 

We need to paste (or drop) the "io_scene_nif" folder into the "addons" folder. The full path is something like:

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\scripts\addons

 

ok, on to step 2, or if you are curious, open up blender, go to prefrences > addons, search "nif" and try to enable the plugin. You will see that you get an error. That's cause we don't have PyFFI installed.

 

STEP 2a: get PyFFI

 

back to http://www.niftools.org. SO here we get into the absolute stupidity of the situation. You would think you'd just from here follow that PyFFI link, download a thing, install a thing and be done, but no...

 

the version of pyffi on their github page dosen't match what the blender_nif plugin uses! If you dig around, you'll see that they've dropped the PyFFI version from dev4 to dev3. Besides getting pyffi installed is a pain in the but anyways - so let's just cut out the BS, I don't even want to discuss the ways I got here to figure this out.

 

STEP 2b: "install" PyFFI

 

If we were clever enough, we could open up a command line, do some python thing such that it only effects Blenders python thing and install a thing to it by using pip, which is just a package installer. anyways, sounds neat, but I can't get it to work, (and you probably can't either) so all it's really trying to do is download a file, and put it into a folder, it's not like it's doing some registry bs or anything, it's not some magic - it's just a f***ing script! so were just going to use our operating system (windows) to do that instead, we aren't going to be fancy about it, just unwrap the round peg that we got delivered to us in square box, and put it the round hole, then make our sweet mods without having to revert to old versions of blender.

 

 

go here: https://pypi.org/project/PyFFI/2.2.4.dev3/#files

 

click on the link to PyFFI-2.2.4.dev3.tar.gz

 

Winrar or 7zip should be able to extract the . tar file. We just want to extract this, and grab the "pyffi" folder out of it.

 

copy/paste or drag and drop the pyffi folder into the right path -

 

so what's the right path here? SO if you were to successfully use pythons Blender, and pip to install Pyffi, it would probably just go here -

 

C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.83\2.83\python\lib\site-packages

 

it might also work just in ~python\lib

 

 

So yeah just put the PyFFI package folder in Blenders python library.

 

Done.

 

You can now enable the plugin without an error

 

You can now go through the absolute shitshow of figuring out the right settings for whatever game your modding assets for....

 

good luck!

 

 

 

( If I can get some number of people to confirm that this method actually works I think I will do a video tutorial and post it on youTube, but I dunno, my windows enviroment is so borked that I either found the easiest method currently possible or I've done some thing terribly dumb - just let me know, thanks!)

It will very useful if you save your sarcasm for yourself and explain better how is this done, you bore me really..