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Need Help Creating a Helmet in Blender


Phant0m32
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I have limited experience creating static meshes in Blender based on tutorials I've followed and some research I've done, but I am still very new to 3D modelling and Blender. I'm interested in creating my own armor, so I decided to read the Tutorial on the CS wiki that details creating a cuirass in Blender. I figured it would be simpler to model a helmet than a cuirass, so I tried to follow along with the tutorial and apply the same procedures to create a helmet. But it didn't take long though before I was very confused.

I have one basic question to begin with:

What separates a static mesh... for instance a mesh for an interior wall... from a mesh used for a helmet or a cuirass? By that I mean, how does the game know what part of the body to put the mesh on?

Aside from this question, my others deal with how to go about creating a helmet in general. Basically, I want to know what the general steps are to create one.

This is just a guess based on my reading of the tutorial and limited experience with Blender, but here are the steps that I've come up with:

-Import the mesh for the body part? Such as headhuman.nif if creating a helmet for a human character?

-Delete the armature for imported body part?

-Import a skeleton?

-Parent the imported body part(s) to the skeleton?

-Model the helmet

-create a new UV map for helmet?

-Export UV map

-Create a texture based on exported UV map

-Export helmet mesh as .NIF file from Blender

-Tweak mesh in Nifskope as necessary and set up in CS/Oblivion

As I understand it, the tutorial suggests using duplicated vertices from the imported body mesh(in my case headhuman.nif) to create the helmet or cuirass. It also mentions that you shouldn't add new vertices using extrusion because the extruded vertices won't be part of the associated weight painting or the default UV map for the imported body mesh.

This part only confuses me more... why would you care about the UV map for the imported body mesh? Don't you need to create a new UV map specific to the helmet you're creating?

Also, I want to use extrusion to model my helmet. The tutorial mentions using knife cuts and subdivision to create additional vertices... but this doesn't seem as easy as using extrusion. Is it true that you shouldn't use extrusion when creating a helmet or cuirass? I mean... couldn't you just assign the new extruded vertices to the appropriate vertex/weight painting group if needed?

I would greatly appreciate some input on this. This is the first time I have tried creating anything other than a static object for Oblivion... and I'm very confused at the moment. :rofl:

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I'm sure others will suggest other ways but this is what I do:

1. if there is a similar helmet import it (including skin partition), if not import the imperial male head... or any other but that is the standard base head (including skin partition).

2. make your mesh - either editing exising helm or creating from scratch to fit the head

3. select the helm (each piece will have to be done individually if it is in multiple pieces)

4. go to weight paint mode

5. go to the editing panel (f9)

6. either select exisiting bone (vertex group, under links and material) named bip01 head or create a new vertex group and name it bip01 head.

7. paint all verts of the helm to 1 for that bone.

8. repeat steps 3 to 7 until done all seperate meshes if applicable

9. export to nif (including skin partition) - before exporting select all parts of the helm but NOT the skeleton.

10. you should be good to go - however you will want to create a ground mesh so before moving on:

ground mesh:

1. delete the skeleton (it will be named sceneroot (or similar) in 99% of cases)

2. select the helm (or if multiple meshes for the helm select each one individually and do steps 3 & 4 for each)

3. go into edit mode

4. go to scripts->hull-> select convex->select 0.100 for precision -> say okay

5. select all applicable helmet pieces and the hull(s) you made in steps 3-4

6. export to nif; in the collision options in the right hand side of the panel, select clutter, metal (if helm is metal if not select one of the other ones or edit later in nifskope), weapon body location: none, don't export skin partition

and now your really should be good to go... go test!

edit: to answer your specific questions:

1. duplicating the head to start with is perfectly fine... for many things the best, how good it is depends on the helm you're creating

2.extruding is fine (you are reweighting in my instructions anyways, also the UV map you will want totally different from the vanilla head so I have no idea why they would say that).

3. for a helmet no need to import a skeleton, the skeleton from a preexisting helmet or head (just the one bone bip01 head) will work fine.

4. what seperate a static mesh from a non-static: animation basically... for clothing/creatures rigging (weight paint/vertex weights) tells it how to animate when the skeleton animates, for other things morph animations, transform animations and for clutter havok is basically a form of animation - just one you don't have to do anything for (other than right settings on export).

Let us know if you got any more questions

Pacific Morrowind

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Thanks for the reply PacificMorrowind. I appreciate your taking the time to explain all of this in careful detail.

I have not worked through your suggested procedures yet... but I will certainly try it as soon as I have time.

The only thing I might have trouble with is weight painting... I've never done this before. I will probably have to do a little research in Blender wiki or something. Hopefully, the rest should go smoothly.

As a side note... I have read your tutorial on creating collisions within Blender. It was a good read and has proven useful. Thanks for writing it.

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with one bone weight painting is EASY - with mutliple weight painting becomes complicated.

for one bone just go into weight painting mode (where it says edit mode or object mode normally)

then just create the bone/select the bone as per last post

set all the numbers in that section to 1, except area of brush set large. then make all the model fully red by brushing around it (you will have to rotate, since wieght painting is just on the normal you can see... it doesn't go through the mesh to the other side.

Pacific Morrowind

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2.extruding is fine (you are reweighting in my instructions anyways, also the UV map you will want totally different from the vanilla head so I have no idea why they would say that).

That would be because I wrote the tutorial with 1. beginners and 2. cuirasses in mind. If you're making a very simple cuirass from an existing body piece, you can usually get by with using the upperbody's existing UV. This is what I did until I was far enough along to be ready for UV mapping with pinning and seams.

The vanilla UV for heads would be awful for a helmet. :thumbup: Most torso UVs wouldn't be that bad for a main cuirass piece.

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That would be because I wrote the tutorial with 1. beginners and 2. cuirasses in mind. If you're making a very simple cuirass from an existing body piece, you can usually get by with using the upperbody's existing UV. This is what I did until I was far enough along to be ready for UV mapping with pinning and seams.

The vanilla UV for heads would be awful for a helmet. :thumbup: Most torso UVs wouldn't be that bad for a main cuirass piece.

ah I understand... hope no offense taken? On cuirasses I can totally see the point to that. I never did that step... jumped from no seams to the seams on a cuirass.

Pacific Morrwind

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I've run into some more trouble it seems. I tried my best to follow the procedures PacificMorrowind mentioned, but my results were not good.

As far as I could tell, I was able to create the helmet mesh, weight paint it, UV map and texture it, and finally export it. But, as soon as I tried setting my helmet up in the Construction Set... it was obvious something went wrong. After I defined my helmet as a piece of armor in CS, I tried adding it to an NPC, but the following error message appeared:

"Could not find parent node extra data for BASE myhelmet.nif"

After the error message appeared, I checked the preview/render window in the CS for the NPC equipped with my helmet... and the helmet shows up but it isn't even on top of the NPC's head. It's off to the side!

I really have no idea what went wrong... but here are some random details and thoughts that I hope provide some clues:

Just to clarify, I am trying to make a helmet for the imperial male model/race.

Perhaps I'm not setting things up right and importing the proper models. I tried importing the headhuman.nif, and the skeleton.nif into Blender when making my helmet.

I assume that the headhuman.nif is imported only to serve as a guide when making the helmet... to help you make it fit the desired head properly. But I'm not sure what purpose the skeleton is supposed to serve... perhaps to help with weight painting?

Also... do I need to parent my helmet mesh to anything... such as a skeleton or the imported head mesh?

When I tried to weight paint the vertices of my helmet mesh, I couldn't find any reference to the bip01 head bone. PacificMorrowind mentioned that for a helmet, there was no need to import a skeleton... that the skeleton from an another helmet will work. So I also tried importing some of the Bethesda made helmets... and I don't see any skeleton after importing them... just the helmet mesh/object. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place... or perhaps my import settings were wrong...?

So to weight paint my helmet... I created a new vertex group named bip01 head and weight painted my entire helmet mesh from this new vertex group.

If it helps... I posted a picture of my helmet in Nifskope HERE. I know... it's not impressive. But I'm not too concerned about the appearance of my helmet(headband) right now... I just want to learn how to sucessfully get one in the game. Also(referencing the picture)... what is that vertical white line shown in the render window? I've never seen this before... and the Bethesda helmets don't seem to have it either...

And SickleYield -

I hope you don't take offense to anything I have said about your tutorial. This topic is not intended to bash your tutorial. I'm sure the problems I'm having are my own doing... and I thank you for taking the time to share some of your knowledge on the wiki.

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I've run into some more trouble it seems. I tried my best to follow the procedures PacificMorrowind mentioned, but my results were not good.

Oh yes looks like I wasn't quite clear there. It does need to be parented to a skeleton but you don't need the whole skeleton, you just need the one bone, so:

In blender select your headband

-then import a vanilla helmet with the setting "import skeleton only and parent selected"

- now export again and it should work fine

Unrelated to that but on in your screenie there I saw you texture path... and it needs to be changes to textures/rest of path... if you have the stuff before textures the textures will only load for people with the exact setup as you... good thing to get in the habit of fixing.

Pacific Morrowind

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I tried importing a default helmet(skeleton only... parent to my selected helmet). I don't get any error messages when setting the helmet up in the CS now. Instead, the CS just crashes to my desktop now as soon as I either click the preview window for the NPC equipped with my helmet... or if I try to drop an NPC with my helmet in the render window. What is going on here? Perhaps I should just upload the file for you PacificMorrowind....

As for the texture path... I'm nowhere near the point where I can release my meshes for the public yet lol... so I'm not worried about that. But I will remember your point if I ever become good at this.

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I tried importing a default helmet(skeleton only... parent to my selected helmet). I don't get any error messages when setting the helmet up in the CS now. Instead, the CS just crashes to my desktop now as soon as I either click the preview window for the NPC equipped with my helmet... or if I try to drop an NPC with my helmet in the render window. What is going on here? Perhaps I should just upload the file for you PacificMorrowind....

As for the texture path... I'm nowhere near the point where I can release my meshes for the public yet lol... so I'm not worried about that. But I will remember your point if I ever become good at this.

sure... I probably forgot to mention a step that is automatic for me and hence I don't think of it as a step.

Pacific Morrowind

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Instacrash on preview is nearly always a skeleton problem. Go back to your Blender scene and delete every skelly you can find. Switch to wireframe (z key) and check for floating bones that might be concealed inside another mesh as well. Save with no skeleton.

Then redo the import skeleton/parent to selected and try the export again.

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Instacrash on preview is nearly always a skeleton problem. Go back to your Blender scene and delete every skelly you can find. Switch to wireframe (z key) and check for floating bones that might be concealed inside another mesh as well. Save with no skeleton.

Then redo the import skeleton/parent to selected and try the export again.

You were right about this SickleYield. PacificMorrowind also came to the same conclusion after looking at my files. I finally got the helmet working now.

I still have much to learn, but it's great to finally understand the basic armor creation procedures/process. I can't wait to make something nice as my modeling skills improve.

I thank both of you for taking the time to offer some help. unworthy.gif

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