Making sunglasses, got a problem.

[Werne]

I've made aviator sunglasses for Fallout 3 following this tutorial, done everything that was said, the way it was said and I failed.

 

I aligned them to vanilla glasses, tutorial said no rigging (which sounds weird to me, but whatever), exported them from Blender, they looked good in NifSkope, exported them from NifSkope as obj, did the Conformulator part, opened GECK, made the glasses, updated facegen, saved, put on in-game and they're not on my face. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/facepalm.gif

 

They aren't floating in the air, they're not on the side of my head, not on my face, not even inside my character's body, they're nowhere to be found like they don't exist at all.

 

Then I tried rigging them and, well, let's just say that didn't turn out the way I expected so I'll just stick with no rigging.

 

What's weird though, it works if I don't do the Conformulator part but the glasses float turned sideways about 20 cm to the right of my character. And if I align them to be in the right place they start clipping through my face (yeah, you don't say http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif).

 

So, does anyone have any clue as to what am I doing wrong? I sure don't. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/sad.gif

[Ghogiel]

look at the NiTriStrips/shape, does rotation and translation say anything besides 0s?

 

also check this tutorial I wrote, the one you linked to describes nothing of pivots and translations prior to exporting the mesh, which just sounds wrong to me. http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/3ds_Max_exporting_custom_assets

 

it's max, but the steps are the same in every app, you just press different buttons to do the same thing.

 

And it makes no mention of using a NiStringExtraData prn. Which is how the object is actually going to be attached to the head bone sans actually skinning it.

[neomonkeus]

Interesting about the NiStringExtraData prn. Not sure if blender does that, but pretty easy to add in via NifSkope. Going to add that as an issue to be developed for the new scripts.

 

Edit : Found some stuff for it, in the export options is "Export_ob_PRN". You can apparently select any of the following options for the paired bone, all of which are apparently Fo3 compatible but I would be dubious about a few of them.

"BACK": "BackWeapon", 
"SIDE": "SideWeapon",
"QUIVER":  "Quiver",  
"SHIELD": "Bip01 L ForearmTwist",  
"HELM": "Bip01 Head", 
"RING": "Bip01 R Finger1"

Helm should be the user presented version that corresponds to the head. Either way, still have to poke at these, add some versioning I suppose.

 

Also read through your, looks good.

Edited February 6, 2013 by neomonkeus

[ziitch]

Yeah, you'll need a NiExtraString node named Prn that holds "Bip01 Head" as its value. That's used for attaching certain meshes to bones.

[Werne]

look at the NiTriStrips/shape, does rotation and translation say anything besides 0s?

 

also check this tutorial I wrote, the one you linked to describes nothing of pivots and translations prior to exporting the mesh, which just sounds wrong to me. http://wiki.tesnexus...g_custom_assets

 

it's max, but the steps are the same in every app, you just press different buttons to do the same thing.

 

And it makes no mention of using a NiStringExtraData prn. Which is how the object is actually going to be attached to the head bone sans actually skinning it.

Nope, just zeros. And yeah, I know about NiStringExtraData that attaches it to Bip01 Head.

 

I didn't look at your tutorial at first since it's about exporting from Max and now that I did, wow. 3DS Max is something else.

 

By the way, I noticed this part in your tutorial:

 

I also exported it as a NiTriStrip. By ticking the generate strips box. If this model used alpha transparency(or was rigged), I would have unticked that box, as very often stripifying causes alpha sorting problems.

You deserve kudos for this (but kudos have been given to you already), I scrapped many things because transparency would go to hell (like the helmet example in your tutorial). Tried exporting a wine glass I had problems with as NiTriShape, transparency works like a charm. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/dance.gif

 

@neomonkeus I know about those buttons and I selected "Head" before exporting which in turn made a Prn NiStringExtraData with Bip01 Head.

 

 

 

Anyway I figured out why my glasses disappeared, shader flags. Even though I exported as Default when I checked in NifSkope, SF_Shadow_Map was checked, don't know why. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/confused.gif

 

However, now I have a different problem. When I generate the egm with Conformulator, glasses look way too distorted in-game, like someone ran them over with a truck, put it in reverse, ran them over again and then repeated that process a few times. I'd upload a pic of it but my internet connection is screwing with me so I can't.

 

Is there a way to make them distort less or am I screwed? I hope I'm not screwed, that would be bad. http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/sad.gif

[neomonkeus]

You are better off using NiTriShapes as NiTriStrips do not give any performance gain and in cases can give negative perforrmance. Some light reading if you are interested - http://tomsdxfaq.blogspot.ie/2005_12_01_archive.html

 

There are inherent bugs with the alpha sorting implemented in the engine, using texture based alpha tends to have better results than material based, especially with alpha'd meshes within alpha'd meshes.

 

No experience with the conformulator, sorry.

Edited February 6, 2013 by neomonkeus

[Ghogiel]

as for glasses..... yeah I have seen the conformulator warp them in not so great ways.

 

I think I released some 3d glasses I made, not sure... nope. Anyway, yeah if the facegen morphs on the head are, not even extreme, it can warp things like glasses.

 

One old trick was to make a tri file of a cube. And then use that to create the egm for the glasses. The theory is that the cube has less inputs for morphs than a head mesh might. So hopefully it pulls the glasses in a more uniform way, keeping it's overall shape more closely, instead of making it wonky.

 

which might make a slight improvement

Edited February 6, 2013 by Ghogiel

[Werne]

@neomonkeus I used NiTriShapes only on rigged stuff but I didn't know strips were making problems with transparent objects I make till I read Ghogiel's tutorial.

 

I used to export stuff as shapes back when I started playing around with Blender but I had problems with objects disappearing completely whenever a part of that object goes out of the camera view in-game. Now it works fine though and I can't for the life of me figure out why. http://www.yourpshome.net/images/smilies/shrug.gif

 

One old trick was to make a tri file of a cube. And then use that to create the egm for the glasses. The theory is that the cube has less inputs for morphs than a head mesh might. So hopefully it pulls the glasses in a more uniform way, keeping it's overall shape more closely, instead of making it wonky.

I didn't know that, I'll try and see if that'll help because right now they go to hell whenever I use the egm and if I don't they clip with the face. :facepalm:

Edited February 7, 2013 by Werne

[neomonkeus]

I used to export stuff as shapes back when I started playing around with Blender but I had problems with objects disappearing completely whenever a part of that object goes out of the camera view in-game. Now it works fine though and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

 

I had similiar situation with issues regarding alpha sorting when creating a dynamic lamp post. The buib had alpha and emissive materials. This was encased in glass, again material alpha'd. Changing the view angle up and down would cause the object to disappear. The problem was solved by using texture based alpha. Here is some screens from the original testing - http://www.moddb.com/members/neomonkeus/images/dynamic-lighting1#imagebox

 

Getting it to animate emissive values was the next step, but although "supported" got broken down along the dev line, so on so forth and that is how you end up being the plugin developer........I'll expect your application on my desk by Monday :P