Trouble adding/combining hood to helmet mesh

[45AARP]

I've been trying to add a hood to the gray cowl of nocturnal, but for some reason when I copy everything over in nifskope the gray cowl mesh doesn't appear in game, although the hood shows up fine. This has always worked for every other type of armor and clothing, but for some reason it isn't working like normal for headwear. I've tried copying the hood over into the gray cowl mesh, as well as copying the gray cowl mesh into the hood instead, but neither work. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with the bones, as the gray cowl mesh has no bones, but the hoods and most other headwear seems to have bones. I dont know much about meshes other than copying/pasting from nifskope, so does anyone know what is going wrong here?

[Pellape]

I do think you used the grnd mesh? The grnd mesh doesn't have any bones as it is only meant to be on the ground while no one is wearing it. Try to find the right one instead with bones.

[DrakeTheDragon]

It could also be you're mixing morphed and non morphed meshes, or two morphed ones even, while keeping their morph files (EGM/TRI) untouched. The EGM/TRI files with the same name as the NIF file always must contain only 1 single, and specially positioned, NiTriShapes/Strips block, or it'll mess up/not show up in game. If you remove the morph files (EGM/TRI) though, or change the name of the mix-up NIF so it no longer matches, then you can safely mix together multiple NIFs into one file.

 

However, you'll also have the problem of morphed meshes from NIFs with matching EGM/TRI files not being rigged to a regular armature like non morphed meshes from NIFs without such. It might need work in Blender or a similar modeling app to properly mix them in that case, as they need at least re-rigging and re-positioning, if their setup differs too much as explained.

[45AARP]

I finally got a chance to mess with it a bit more, but still didn't have any luck. I did try renaming as well as moving the nif to an entirely different folder form the .egm, but it still doesn't seem to show up. I haven't installed blender on my new computer yet, but looks like I might have to for this. I just try to avoid it when possible as I barely even understand the basics of working with it, and working with meshes is easily my least favorite part of modding.

[Pellape]

If you can't make that mesh to show up after you fiddled with it in Nifskope, I cant see how you can fix it with Blender? It might be something I do not understand though, I mean. I cant get meshes to work when I export them from Blender without fiddling with them in Nifskope in between.

 

Which mesh is it you are trying to change?

Edited March 10, 2021 by Pellape

[45AARP]

I'm trying to change the grey cowl of nocturnal, basically by copying over one of the hoods such as a mage's hood over onto it. Neither copying the mask into the hood's .nif or copying the hood into the mask's .nif works when doing it in nifskope, as they both result in the hood being visible, but no mask. Renaming and relocating them away from .egm files didn't do anything either. I haven't had a chance to try it in blender yet as I'm on a new computer and haven't gotten around to installing all that yet, as I very rarely used Blender since all I usually do is combine or remove things from existing meshes.

Edited March 15, 2021 by 45AARP

[Pellape]

Well Blender is fast to install and starts fast as well. I do not see that as a problem as it only takes a few minutes to do it.