Custom Armor Mod Problems

[hardarg]

Hey there,

 

I recently learned how to import my own custom meshes in the game.

Everything's going smoothly, until these problems came and had me stumped:

 

First, Skyrim crashes when I wear my custom armor, this didn't happen before with my old .nif file. The only recent changes I made was when I fixed some vertex weights and bone assignments to the mesh of the skirt. I've read somewhere that using skirtbones to armors causes the game to crash? Is this true? Has anyone had this problem?

 

Second, I'm currently using my old .nif as reference, I've been having clipping issues with my armor when I zoom out, however upon closer distances its like it wasn't there at all. I've tried adjusting vertices of the mesh as well as the weights but to no avail.

 

Lastly, I want to view my mesh playing the vanilla animations in 3ds max, but for some reason some parts of the skeleton explode all over the place followed by the weighted vertices of the mesh whenever I import the kf files to my scene.

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edited January 27, 2013 by hardarg

[Ragicka]

Have you been following the tutorials here? You are customizing a vanilla armor? I've had my own share of mistakes, but never had skyrim crash before. The only thing that comes to mind right now, since you worked on weights and bone assignments, is to make sure that the Bone Affect Limit is set to 4 (Skin tools/ Advanced Parameters).

 

I never heard of skirtbones causing problems, unless you forget to assign vertices. I've added front/back and left/right skirtbones to various armors and had no problems. They're quite useful.

 

The thing about loading animations in 3DS is that sometimes it'll mess up. Just keep importing the animation till it looks normal. And if you see the bones seem out of position, just move the animation slider and the bones will correct themselves. Use niftools 3.7.2 if you're not already, less buggy.

[hardarg]

Thanks for replying and for the link Ragicka, its an armor made from scratch minus cbbe, though I did use some vanilla meshes for skin wraps, anyways just saw one of the videos earlier, and am currently watching the tutorial series.

 

But before that though, I had done some further troubleshooting:

My game didn't crash when I had all the vertices that were assigned to the skirtbones, reassigned temporarily to a different bone (the pelvis in this case).

I've also tried removing the mesh skinned to the skirtbones in the nif file, and the game does not crash.

 

I tried your suggestion about setting the Bone Affect Limit, but the game still crashes when I use newly exported nif with the skirtbones. :(

Well it has been a year since I've had my niftool plugin, never gotten around to using it until recently though, hehe, I'll update to the latest version and see if it works.

Edited January 18, 2013 by hardarg

[hardarg]

Still having this issue: .nif with skirtbones to Skyrim crashes my game,

 

I did some testing and imported a vanilla armor with skirtbones, and then exported it in 3DS Max. Did the necessary changes with Nifskope, put into Skyrim, and tried the following:

1.) I load my save already wearing the armor, the game crashes.

2.) i made a new game, wore the armor, the game crashes.

 

It looks to me, the problem comes from exporting the nif, I already have updated to the latest niftools plugin.

Has anyone faced these problems before? :confused:

[Ragicka]

So just by importing and exporting a vanilla armor, and no other changes except texture edits, it crashes? Niftools import/export settings maybe. Are you using a custom body or skeleton?

 

Does it crash while in 1st or 3rd person, or is there no difference? I have read of crashes if skirtbones are used in the 1st person mesh.

 

I wouldn't mind having a look at it myself.

[harrisonM]

I having trouble getting my mods to load in game that I download from nexus its the weapon and armor mods they wont appear

[hardarg]

I use CBBE. but I haven't had problems so far with armors that don't use skirtbones. I've used the vanilla skeleton on it before, and recently went for a custom one, but still get the same result

 

I didn't make a 1st person mesh for the armor because I mostly play on 3rd. I tried wearing it in 1st person but the game still crashes.

 

The only solution I have so far is to just make use of the thigh, pelvis and calf bones, its really frustating that I had to recreate the mesh, just to get a good topology for an okay skin deformation, but it doesn't deform well and has a lot of clipping issues, compared to using skirt bones.

 

Thanks, I'll send you the nif files as soon as I get back to my computer.

[Ragicka]

I don't use CBBE (I use UNP), but shouldn't be a problem. Let me know what how it's setup (are you using sliders etc).

 

How are you getting the armors into game? Straight up replace a vanilla mesh or standalone with an esp file?

 

Edit: Do you have papyrus logging enabled? I'm no expert in the dark arts of crash log divination, but there might be something interesting there.

Edited January 28, 2013 by Ragicka

[hardarg]

I haven't had problems importing my armors to the game, other than an armor with skirtbones.

I've made two versions of the current armor I'm working on (its actially Aerith's dress to be precise), one using the skirtbones and the other without. I didn't experience any crashing when I used the latter.

 

The armor is standalone, and has an esp file.

 

Here's the Papyrus Log:

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:14AM] Papyrus log opened (PC)

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:14AM] Update budget: 1.200000ms (Extra tasklet budget: 1.200000ms, Load screen budget: 2000.000000ms)

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:14AM] Memory page: 128 (min) 512 (max) 76800 (max total)

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:38AM] VM is freezing...

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:38AM] VM is frozen

[01/29/2013 - 05:47:38AM] Reverting game...

Edited January 31, 2013 by hardarg

[Ragicka]

I renamed and replaced the fineclothes outfitf_0.nif with your haerithadventclotheswskirt.nif. Looks really nice. Had my character run from Whiterun to Solitude, fought off an ancient dragon and assassin on the way. Sold items to merchants, all the usual stuff. Played for almost an hour, no crashing so far but I'll have her set off for Riften in the am.

 

Does the log show any errors that would coincide with a crash?

 

The only thing that struck me about the files, so far, is the texture pathing. The nif is pointing to \hardarg\aerith\ but the included textures are in \hardarg, no aerith folder. Not a big deal, easily fixed.

 

The other thing about the texture pathing is that you have c:\program files.... I recommend shortening that to \textures\hardarg... The reason for that is not everyone installs to the C: drive. But I don't see any of that as a cause for crashing, so I'll keep looking.