fadingsignal

Thanks again for the reply! It ended up being that the armature was getting lost somewhere in the process. I put a couple hours into really dissecting a working model in Blender, and using the (amazingly useful) Outliner View, I was able to quickly figure out where things went wrong when comparing side-by-side. I made new vertex groups, and made a new armature to connect it all, and voila!

I'll go back through and screen cap my process and issues so that it's a little more clear, sorry about that! I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something obvious, or a resource specifically for jewelry. Update coming...

Hello! As a learning test, I made a modified necklace by simply replacing the amulet circle with a different shape. I followed the armor tutorial closely, since they are so close. For amulets there is only 1 skin partition block in the NIF (SBP_35_AMULET), which is the whole object, and 3 bones. I created a vertex group, and named it BP_BRAIN per the Fallout > Skyrim chart, but it never ends up in the NIF. All of the bones / weight copies from the original instance of the object and makes its way into the NIF just fine, but it's missing the BSDismemberSkinInstance block to tie it all together, so it just ends up being invisible in game. I cannot for the life of me figure out what to do, and I scoured Google / forums trying to find a specific amulet tutorial for Skyrim, to no avail. I spent 6 hours going in circles, it feels like such a ridiculous thing to be stuck on, but I don't want to quit trying to make mesh mods yet (though I'm getting quite close ) Thanks!

Hi! Just wanted to share how I resolved this. It did turn out to be the stray partition. I found a thread that pointed out how the limit of 18 bones was a limitation of old engines, and that the max for Skyrim per partition is just over 60. Making a tiny change to the Python export scripts fixes this, so you only end up with three clean partitions. I wanted to try, just for process of elimination and to satisfy curiosity, and it fixed it for me! I know that this usually shouldn't matter, maybe something about my model is a little bit odd. Either way, case closed, thank you! http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4090 From the link:

Hi Hanaisse! It's a bit of an honor having you reply! Your guides have been immensely valuable during my learning process. Good to know about the 2nd skin partition being OK, thank you for the tip. The reason I assumed that was the issue is because only the body itself is going crazy; the legs/arms where the partitions are is perfect and that was the only anomaly I could find comparing to a working NIF line-by-line. Anyhow, I copied the weight directly from the male body using the Bone Weight Copy scripts per your tutorial, so I'll just have to try again. I don't want to ditch the armor I made, but it sounds like I may just need to start from scratch and make sure nothing got screwed up along the way! Thanks much!

I went through the very well-layed-out tutorials here (thank you again!), did everything by the numbers, got my armor into the game (simple combo of two armors as a test), but keep getting an exploding jagged mesh in-game. I traced it down to a problem with the Skin Partition Blocks. See, Blender is exporting two BP_TORSO instances, one of which contains only a couple of vertexes on the arm, but it is invisible in Blender so I cannot fix it! I deleted the BP_TORSO vertex group entirely and did it over again, and the mystery stray still comes out with it. It seems the Blender file is corrupted or something. I can start over, but I came a long way just to get something in game, so I wanted to see if there is a way around this for future reference. Can anyone help? I am determined!! Images showing the problem: 1. Body is fine http://i.imgur.com/ZjSGNmu.jpg 2. Arms are fine http://i.imgur.com/u3IJ6YM.jpg 3. Legs are fine http://i.imgur.com/78RBGVS.jpg 4. Wait, what is this mysterious Skin Partition Block? http://i.imgur.com/L5jYdqL.jpg 5. Mystery vertex group that is not anywhere to by found in Blender http://i.imgur.com/79j9Nu2.jpg 6. Side by side with the vertex groups in Blender http://i.imgur.com/6oO265e.jpg 7. Lastly, using the Outliner to try and find any strays, but alas, nothing http://i.imgur.com/aDYAJNV.jpg Thank you!

Turns out my Skin Partition Blocks are all scrambled because the new mesh data is different, which makes complete sense. I feel like there is some RTFM action I need to do here, I would delete this post if I could figure out how

Hey everyone! tl;dr Do I always have to go through the entire multi-step, laborious process of copying bones / editing weights / partitions / etc. every time I so much as touch an armor or clothing mesh? Details: I'm moved from the texture mod realm into the mesh realm, and from my old 3D days have picked up Blender pretty quickly. To keep it easy on myself, I started with weapons, and have that pretty much nailed down. Obviously, armor is different. From what I've read, and my experiments, it seems there is no way to edit an existing mesh without completely re-doing the skeletons/rigging, skin partitions, dismember data each and every time, even if you are just deleting a single face. I tried to do a simple mesh "switcharoo" in NifSkope the way I do with weapons (export a 3DS file via Blender, import in NifSkope on top of the NiTriShape node you want to replace, which keeps all other node data intact). This looks fine in NifSkope, but in the game the armor mesh explodes into infinite shards everywhere. The mesh swap out was a simply change to a belt. I went node-by-node, property-by-property and all of the skeleton data is 100% same as the original NIF -- is there some sort of "binding" of the mesh to bones that happens within a 3D program that is not visible within NifSkope? It's no wonder a lot of armors are just mash-ups done in NifSkope alone! Thanks!

Hello! I'm a Papyrus noob, and am in the middle of reading the tutorials, but wanted to add a little detail to a mod I'm working on. Basically, when a specific AI package executes on an actor, I want an item to appear near them. The item should only respawn if it was taken by the player (as to avoid a stack of the item growing every time the AI package is executed.) Alternately, this item could simply respawn by itself around the time the scheduled AI package occurs, to keep it simpler. What would be the best way to accomplish this? Let me know if you need more details. Thank you!

Thanks, yeah I think there must simple be a script somewhere that places the texture into the skybox and uses the Game Settings (size, etc.) to move it around. I'll do some more digging and report back if I find anything! Thanks all for the replies, please do let me know if something turns up

Thanks for the warm welcome and the cookies!!

Hello everyone! This is my first question post, so please forgive me if there is any sort of protocol that I may have missed. I used the search function in the hopes to find an existing topic, but alas, found nothing. I recently finished and released a texture mod for the moons in Skyrim (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54349/?), but want to experiment a bit more, and am having trouble finding anything related to them in the Creation Kit. They don't have meshes, and are just flat planes with static images rendered onto them, but I want to find whatever those objects are in CK to study them. There are several mods I'd like to make related to the moons, their movement, appearance, etc. but am limited to re-texturing at the moment (as all mods available apparently are.) Are they part of the skybox or some other environmental object? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hello! I just wanted to introduce myself. I've always been aware of TES games through friends, but my real introduction was by playing Skyrim back in January (and continues on hundreds of hours later.) Oblivion is next on the list, and it will be interesting to take a step back and catch all of the references made in Skyrim. I'm a little "late to the game" (har har), but having a long background in software development, product management, and design, I've become pretty obsessed with making mods. I came to TES Alliance for the community, but also to find more technical information, and learn more about the lore and histories. I've really fallen for the detailed universe of TES, especially since I can now interact more with it via modding (if that makes sense?) Anyhow, you can check out my first mod here, "Skygazer Moons - Masser & Secunda Ultra HD 4k", the first in a series of night sky upgrades for Skyrim. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54349/? This is a beautiful website, and I am continually impressed with how deep the knowledge runs in the community. Cheers!