More confusion with textures and new nifs

[hoodoo_man]

Hi everybody,

 

A week or so ago I posted a semi-incoherent frustrated rant about the structure of the new nif files and how badly the lack of an obj import/export filter for Nifskope had annihilated my workflow. It was a banging my head against the keyboard at three AM kind of thing. I would like to thank those people who were kind enough to make sense out of it and post some very helpful information.

 

I am still at something of a loss regarding the texturing system in Skyrim, though, and I hoped to ask some more coherent questions ;). Quick background--I'm mostly a modeller and texture artist, as well as other sorts of CG. My background is not in gaming--so maybe that's part of the problem. I spent a while modding Oblivion. Then, like everyone else, I discovered that you shouldn't try to make an entire worldspace-quest-remake on your own ;). The GPU on my good machine decided to eat itself at that point, and I had no time for modding for quite a while. I had just started on Oblivion again when I had to go and pre-order Skyrim ;).

 

So they released the CK late--but there's always Nifskope, right. And now there's a CK. But I don't really understand what they're doing. Am I completely off-base, or are cubemaps largely a dirty way to simulate a procedural texture? Or is that what they're doing with the node-shading? Either way, it doesn't seem very predictable. Have people had luck manipulating these, or is it best to stay away from them?

 

Also, I just opened a freaking iron sword in Nifskope and I still don't quite understand what I'm looking at. In oblivion, for something like a weapon, if you had a mesh and a texture you could open an existing NIF file, swap the trishape(s), re-assign textures and things were good to go. As I recall, there was a texture node attached to the Tri-shape node. Now I have to actually make sense of all that stuff on the bottom?

 

Am I correct in stating that it is the BSShaderTextureSet in the BSLightingShaderProperty, in the NiTriShape node that is holding the main (uv) texture references? Why bury them so deep? Also, the name of the file does not seem to matter, it is the position or value it is assigned to in the node that identifies it as a diffuse man, normal, specular, etc.? That's more useful--but also a lot more annoying :P . Do specular maps still work if they are just in the alpha channel of the normal map? Or do they need to be assigned their own value now?

 

Who is responsible for implementing the NIF format at Bethesda, and can I hurt them :dry: ? It seems to just keep getting more byzantine. Plus there's all that unutilized HAVOK stuff in there--which I don't want to go near. I model things. I make textures. Sometimes I do cool digital artwork combining my modelling/rendering and Photoshop skills. I'm purely an amateur. I'm technically just a writer who did a stint in CG and pre-press while my wife was doing her PhD. I really still don't quite understand rigging/weight painting that well and it confuses me. In the interests of becoming a better modder, though--could someone confirm this for me--a standard outside structure is a completely separate mesh in a completely separate worldspace from its interior--with the door acting as a teleport between them, correct? Or am I that confused now? :blink:

 

Also, is an "environmental map" essentially the same thing as a reflection map--or not? I can't tell. Are MIP's good or bad, I keep seeing opposite positions on this? But, most crucially, I would like to know what anyone has worked out regarding a basic geometry import/export format from Nifskope--or from a NIF, for that matter--if there is no obj or 3ds support? I've never looked, but I can't imagine there's dxf support, either. Do you have to go in and out of 3ds Max constantly? That just seems dicey compared to a simple geometry export. What if you just want to re-uvmap something? It seems like 3dsmax filters are overkill for that sort of thing--especially as touchy as they tend to be about settings--and the fact that they retain weight-painting data, so you could screw it all up without realizing it until it's a lot later than you would like ;). Especially if you're a crazy old dude who actually does most of his modelling in Rhino, because he actually likes NURBS--although version 4 could give you some wacky looking meshes when you converted. They would work fine--but anyone who looked at them would wonder what on earth you were thinking. . . .

 

Sorry, getting late/early again ;).

 

So what it comes down to is that I was seriously psyched about upgrading some of my old, unreleased stuff, and trying some new stuff in Skyrim--but the changes (and possibly the changes in Nifskope) have blown my old workflow to shreds, and there seems to be an awful lot of stuff hanging out in NIF files these days that may or may not do anything that I'd rather not re-learn by trial and error like I did the first time. So if anyone can give me some serious guidance across some of this transition--or even any advice--I would be grateful.

 

Thank you,

 

Hoodoo_Man

 

P.S. I guess if anyone has an interesting project and is looking for a modeller--not an animator!--and/or texture guy and you could bring me up to speed with the new stuff added, I'd probably be willing to sign on. If it was interesting :cool: . I can also write quests pretty well, but I haven't even had a chance to look at papyrus yet. This transition is way harder than it seems like it should be :wacko: !!!

[Tamira]

o. k. again I do not understand everything you wrote. :wink:

But it may help on your way to understand Skyrim nifs if you take a look at the tutorials on TES Alliance:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/tutorials/category/40-3d-craftworks/

[hoodoo_man]

Sorry about that again. It's either the fact that I write these when I'm frustrated, or that I just can't deal with going from being a pretty good 2D & 3D CG guy and thinking that continuing projects in Skyrim would not require that much of a learning curve--and now I am a clueless noob ;).

 

Or it could be the "wall of text" thing--maybe you find it intimidating ;).

 

Thank you again for your response. TESAlliance has been a great resource I was unaware of. Much better than whatever passes for a CK Wiki these days, or the UESP. I have been pouring over stuff from there and other places for a little while. It just seems like NIF files got unnecessarily complicated.

 

It seems like the forums here are devoted to more specific questions, and mine are still too general--I also used a lot of technical modelling-type jargon in this last post to try to explain why I was so frustrated. Apparently it did not work :P.

 

Mostly, what it comes down to is that OBJ and/or 3DS (but I like OBJ because ANYTHING will read it), are useful formats because they only preserve the mesh, and the UV mapping as far as I can tell. You can have OBJ preserve nothing but the geometry transformations--it's how morph targets are made sometimes. So if I want to alter the existing geometry and texture of anything that is already in a NIF file--it makes it very easy to extract the geometry, which retains its vertex order unless you do certain things to it. I can completely re-map said geometry for a different texture--change the UV mapping completely, or make alterations that don't affect the vertex order, and then you used to be able to pop it back in fairly easily. This basically allowed you to make these kinds of changes while being pretty confident that you had NOT disrupted anything else important in the file--except maybe the collision mesh.

 

Other than that, I was just trying to figure out if I'm basically understanding the new texture system correctly, or if I have gotten way off base somewhere. For that matter--could someone explain how the textures on characters work--or rather WHY they work that way? What's up with having what amounts to two diffuse maps--i.e. the body1.dds texture AND the body1_sk.dds texture? What did that accomplish, other than causing me and probably countless others an afternoon of scratching our heads?

 

Once again, thank you very much for attempting my "wall of text" and responding. You have done your best to be very helpful and I appreciate it. I have gotten some use out of the old version of Nifskope for this. I had also been under the impression that using OBJ export/import was a common modding trick at one point in Oblivion, so I figured someone had come up with a work-around by now. The response by neomonkeus was a little more what I was looking for--but I appreciate any attempt to help at this point.

 

Sorry if I've come off prickly or irritable, or god-forbid rude ;). It's mostly frustration. I understand 3d graphics pretty well--I know I do. So opening a simple NIF file in Nifskope with a list of nodes and texture types handy, I still felt like a drooling idiot. It's not an experience I am accustomed to. So that's probably most of it. I probably need about an hour to talk to a Nifskope guru and maybe I won't feel so stupid--but you never know :wink:. . . .

 

Thanks for the link to TES Alliance, and just for responding though--I really do appreciate it.

 

Hoodoo Man

 

 

o. k. again I do not understand everything you wrote. :wink:

But it may help on your way to understand Skyrim nifs if you take a look at the tutorials on TES Alliance:

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/tutorials/category/40-3d-craftworks/