Making a static weapon for an armor mesh

[Roni8501]

I'm trying to make a static version of a NIF-Bashed gun I made for use in a custom armor for a quest mod character. Despite being very familiar with NifSkope and good enough with Blender to make the regular, usable gun, I am apparently not intelligent enough to figure out how to turn that into a static variant that'll actually show up in an armor mesh. Any help?

[GamerRick]

I would think that you could use NifSkope to copy the branch from the gun mesh and paste into the appropriate branch of the armor mesh (just the geometry without collision). Then you would need to move and rotate the gun piece until it is where you want it. I have done this with static meshes, but they are a lot simpler than armor meshes.

 

Oh, and I have no idea how to use anything but NifSkope.

Edited May 9, 2021 by GamerRick

[Roni8501]

That is the first thing I tried, and it does not seem to work.

[madmongo]

How familiar are you with making armor and rigging things in Blender?

 

The first thing you need to do is make a copy of your nif. Edit your nif copy with NifSkope and remove all of the weapon-y stuff. Get rid of the collision, get rid of all of the various weapon nodes, etc. If it's not part of the weapon mesh itself, get rid of it.

 

Now load up your armor mesh in Blender, and then import your stripped down copy of your nif, making sure to set the import options in Blender so that it will not import animations.

 

It's probably a good idea to join all of the bits of your weapon into a single object in Blender. This will make moving the weapon around easier and will also make the rigging easier. Rotate and move the weapon around until you get it where you want it.

 

Now you need to rig the weapon to the armor's armature (skeleton). Parent the weapon to the armature. You don't want your weapon to bend and deform with the armature, or that is going to look funny, so figure out where the weapon will attach to the armor. If you are attaching it to the back or the chest you'll probably want to use one of the spine bones. Go into weight painting, select the bone you want to attach the weapon to, press F to select face mode, A to select all, set the weight paint value to 1, and press shift-K to assign that value to all vertices.

 

Go back to object mode, select all, and export. Make sure you get the export options correct.

 

Go into NifSkope and fix the shader flags for your weapon and armor, because Blender never sets those correctly for armor.

 

Look up tutorials on making armor for FO3 or FNV if you have never done rigging or made armors before (or clothing or bodies or creature skins, it's all the same thing as far as the game engine is concerned).

[Roni8501]

How familiar are you with making armor and rigging things in Blender?

 

The first thing you need to do is make a copy of your nif. Edit your nif copy with NifSkope and remove all of the weapon-y stuff. Get rid of the collision, get rid of all of the various weapon nodes, etc. If it's not part of the weapon mesh itself, get rid of it.

 

Now load up your armor mesh in Blender, and then import your stripped down copy of your nif, making sure to set the import options in Blender so that it will not import animations.

 

It's probably a good idea to join all of the bits of your weapon into a single object in Blender. This will make moving the weapon around easier and will also make the rigging easier. Rotate and move the weapon around until you get it where you want it.

 

Now you need to rig the weapon to the armor's armature (skeleton). Parent the weapon to the armature. You don't want your weapon to bend and deform with the armature, or that is going to look funny, so figure out where the weapon will attach to the armor. If you are attaching it to the back or the chest you'll probably want to use one of the spine bones. Go into weight painting, select the bone you want to attach the weapon to, press F to select face mode, A to select all, set the weight paint value to 1, and press shift-K to assign that value to all vertices.

 

Go back to object mode, select all, and export. Make sure you get the export options correct.

 

Go into NifSkope and fix the shader flags for your weapon and armor, because Blender never sets those correctly for armor.

 

Look up tutorials on making armor for FO3 or FNV if you have never done rigging or made armors before (or clothing or bodies or creature skins, it's all the same thing as far as the game engine is concerned).

There we go, it worked! It's been awhile since I was first trying so I don't know exactly what I was messing up, but I think I was screwing up the parenting. Thanks!