Mesh Problem - Please help!

[enki666]

When my character equips a helmet from a mod, the mesh seems to have "holes" in it. Please see the attached pic.

 

I'm sure there's a tutorial for this sort of problem but since I don't really know what this problem is called (hence the screenshot), I don't know what kinda tutorial to look for.

 

I have a little experience with nifskope/blender/paint.net, so if someone could link me to a tutorial or perhaps give some quick instructions, it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[DrakeTheDragon]

This issue is called "clipping".

 

The helmet looks like something from a Silverlight Armor derivation, but there's many and I can't tell which one it is by the looks alone.

I also can't exactly tell what it is that's clipping through it there. Is it your head by chance?

 

Closed-face helmets usually replace the whole head mesh when equipped, but this one is an open-face one, so it only replaces your hair.

Now either the helmet mesh itself isn't properly "conformulated", that's what you call making it morph along with your head shape morphs, or your head mesh is a custom one, significantly bigger than Vanilla, and the conformulation can always only be done for "1" single head mesh. That's why helmets conformulated to human heads not necessarily work fine with Beast heads as well. There can only be 1 it's fitting to.

 

Maybe a list of the mods you're using, especially the one this helmet is from and the one your head mesh is from, if it's a custom race or something like that, could help in figuring out a solution to this.

[enki666]

Yes that's my PC's head clipping through :(

 

The helm is from the "warglaives and silverlight armor" mod and I'm using the ChanponC2 race from the MBP series.

 

I'm also using the "full" version of the helm, not the open-faced one. When I tried changing it to occupy the "head" slot, the helm will appear sideways :confused:

 

So based on what u wrote, I'll have to "conformulate" the helm to fit my PC's head then?

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, it should be conformulated already, but it's not fitting your head mesh.

If the head's base shape itself is not fitting the helmet's base shape already, no re-conformulation ever can fix that.

 

It's quite unusual the 'full' helmet still doesn't occupy the head slot, but if it's set up that way, then that's how it is. Maybe even the 'full' one isn't yet full enough to hide the complete head. Then a missing head mesh underneath 'will' show, and that's why it was set up differently, so the head still renders underneath.

 

The first step would be checking the base shapes, without any morphs applied, of both the helmet and the head mesh of the ChanponC2 race you mentioned. Maybe import them both into Blender or open them with NifSkope and mix them up, and check how they fit. If they already don't fit without any morphs, this needs to be fixed first. Maybe then the morphs could be left as-is even. If they do fit though, it's the conformulation which needs to be redone, using Scanti's Conformulator and the ChanponC2's head mesh's TRI file. Then you risk the new helmet no longer being conformulated to other head meshes though.

[Nephenee13]

The helmet from the Silverlight armor is not conformulated, so it will have clipping on some head sizes.

 

Nothing that can be done unless someone wants to conformulate it, of course.

[DrakeTheDragon]

It isn't? Really? I honestly wouldn't have expected that to be the cause here.

 

Oh well, then it's still basically the same steps.

 

1st make sure the base shape of the helmet (without conformulation there is only the base shape now, but whatever) and the base shape of the ChanponC2 race's head mesh won't clip already. This requires some modeling in Blender or similar to 'widen' it or whatever else is needed for it to better fit.

 

2nd, when it's fitting the base shape but you want it fitting all morphed shapes of the ChanponC2's head as well, use Scanti's Conformulator, select the helmet's NIF file as the mesh to conformulate and the ChanponC2 head's TRI file as the mesh to conformulate to, check the options to generate the EGM 'and' the TRI files, and you should be good to go already.

 

Requirement for the 2nd step, as the helmet surprisingly isn't conformulated already, is that there's only 1 single NiTriShape/Strips branch in the NIF, or conformulation can't work. That should be the case already, but it won't hurt checking it to play safe.

 

After conformulation the helmet should be fitting more or less without clipping to any morphed shape of the ChanponC2's head. It may still clip with different heads, as there can only be 1 it's conformulated to, but as it isn't conformualted to work with 'any' right now, at least nothing will be lost by conformulating it to 1.