MAX, Nifscope, and mesh troubles

[Solaias]

I need some help here, I am having trouble getting a mesh into the game.

 

I thought I would help with the EVE project as I can model, the modelling part is easy (for me anyway) but I am buggered if I can get things into the game. I thought I may have trouble with this part, so I have used a randomly picked mesh and have tried to import it, and then export it again to make sure I could do this part correctly. (Good job I did really. ^^)

 

I think I have the import and export from Max sorted, but it's the nifscope bit that is causing me to pull my hair out. I'll list what I have done both in max and in nifscope so any errors can be seen.

 

I imported the whole HGEC body into max with animations, skin data, and skeleton data included, then saved this file out as a tailors dummy I can reuse again.

 

I then imported the Blades Cuirass without skeleton, animation or skin data. I didn't reshape the mesh as this would be wasted effort for just testing mesh import and export. I did remove the old body sections from within the cuirass so the only body inside it would be the HGEC one.

 

I deleted the feet and hands from the HGEC body as these are not needed. I then selected the upper HGEC body section and copied the skin modifier. Then selecting the Upper section of the cuirass pasted the skin data back again.

 

I then selected the HGEC legs, copied the skin modifier, selected the Cuirass skirt section, and then pasted the skin data.

 

I deleted the no longer needed legs.

 

I tried to attach the cuirass to the body, but when I did the body lost it's mesh smoothing, so I undid that again. I also tried attaching the body to the Cuirass but then the cuirass lost it's smoothing, I undid that as well. I think this may be a part of the problem, but not sure.

 

I then exported the nif (Yeah I know the breasts are still sticking out of the front of the Cuirass, but hiding them will be easy later with the magic of 'soft selection' in Max. ^^) as a "nif with animation", and had the following boxes UNTICKED. (Anything not mentioned was ticked, there are less to list if I go the unticked route.)

 

--

 

Skeleton only

Cameras

Lights

 

Collapse transforms

Zero transforms

 

Remove extra bones

 

Add user prop buffer

 

--

 

Bones per partition was set to 18

Bones per vertex was set to 4

 

Priority was set to 0.0

 

Assuming that is all OK, the next problem I have is Nifscope. I loaded the new Cuirass into nifscope and it displays fine.

 

The problem I am having is with the transferring over of the nitristrips between the two .nif files. I haven't a clue where to start. I can see Nitristrip data for the cuirass, but when I load the HGEC upper body, it does not seem to have any. (Unless I am looking for the wrong thing, or at the wrong mesh.)

 

The mesh itself, as I have said, shows correctly in nifscope, but once moved to the game directory the meshes are invisible. (Captain Renaults floating head is quite funny tho. ^^)

 

Help!

[alex2avs]

ok...a little question. did you weight paint the mesh ?

Usually in Blender , after altering clothing , armor and so on you need to apply weight paint.

By not doing so , the mesh will appear invisible in-game.

[Solaias]

ok...a little question. did you weight paint the mesh ?

Usually in Blender , after altering clothing , armor and so on you need to apply weight paint.

By not doing so , the mesh will appear invisible in-game.

In MAX, afaik, the weight data is within the skin modifier data, so when I copied the skin modifier from the upper body to the cuirass it should have transferred over.

 

This is the first time I have done this for Oblivion though, I am used to modding X3:Reunion so I could be missing info pertinent to Oblivion. In fact now I think about it you could be right because I didn't actually alter the meshes, I just banged them together to test importing and exporting. In that situation, where I didn't even touch the HGEC upper body, that should have been showing in game even if the cuirass wasn't.

 

The problem with using MAX and not Blender is that there are hardly any tutorials for modding oblivion with it, and those that are around are patchy with their information.

 

I'm kinda hoping that someone who uses MAX will see this and know what I have done wrong as the process is totally different at some of the fundamental levels between the two programs. I know this because I looked at some blender tutorials to see if I could work out how to do this in MAX by converting the process over, but they are too different from each other for the blender tutorials to help me.

 

I could swap to blender so I am using the same package that most do, but I really don't want to learn a whole new modelling program if I can help it. Not only that, but MAX is more adaptive to different situations than blender, reconfirming a mesh in MAX would take me about half an hour (to do it right anyway), in blender it would take me a lot longer from what little I saw of it last time I tried to use it.