3D Craftworks: Importing Weapons into Skyrim

[JDFan]

What model would you use for the 3rd person in that set-up?

3rd person would be the weapon NIf and 1st person would be the 1stperson weapon NIf (ie. for the DwarvenGreatsword model the 3rd person NIf would be Dwarvengreatsword.NIF and the static would use 1stpersondwarvengreatsword.nif )

@IS -- THanks for the assist got it all working in game now (including the blood spatter ) - Now just need to set it up for upgrading and smithing !

In Game Screenie Compilation ---

IS, any chance you'll cover the blood shader? i'll be making weapons with some radically different shapes than can be found in vanilla.

Charles --- best method i have found for getting the blood decals working is to make a separate model of the part you want the spattr to show up on (ie. on my Celtic Claymore I used just the blade -- export that as a NIF ( I use MAX ) then open 2 instances of NIfskope one with your blood mesh (the part you just exported) and one with a vanilla weapon that has the blood shader. (OR the Nif you are using already for your new weapon (do not delete the blood nodes when creating it from the vanilla Nif as IS explained in this tutorial as you will be replacing the mesh Data with your new data)

Then in your new model go into the NItrishape tree and find the Nitrishape Data node (this node contains the vertices of your model) - right click and Block -Copy branch ---- then go to the vanilla weapon NIF and right click on the bottom of the Block List (do not highlight a node) - and do a Block - Paste Branch (this pastes your new blood mesh data into the NIF

Now to hook it up go to the Nitrishape of the Edge Blood and click to highlight -- THen in the Block Details Find the Data Line (Just below the Collision Object line ) -- double click to open to edit and enter the node number for the NitrishapeData you just pasted (this swaps out the old Data for your new mesh Data) -- Repeat for the EdgeBlood01 Nitrishape - then delete the 2 old NitrishapeData nodes that you replaced and save the NIF

You should now have a working blood decal mesh on your weapon

[InsanitySorrow]

Hmmm seems us Blender users are going to have a harder time with this. I've just tried your method but exporting the mesh as a FO3 one since we don't have NIF support and well, this just crashes the CK.

I've also tried re-building the nodes after importing the shape as an OBJ file, but this doesn't seem to work, though everything looks correct in Nifskope

Edit: Used a combination of the above and the effects still won't show, I must be missing something here....

[JDFan]

Hmmm seems us Blender users are going to have a harder time with this. I've just tried your method but exporting the mesh as a FO3 one since we don't have NIF support and well, this just crashes the CK.

I've also tried re-building the nodes after importing the shape as an OBJ file, but this doesn't seem to work, though everything looks correct in Nifskope

Edit: Used a combination of the above and the effects still won't show, I must be missing something here....

Forgot to mention One thing that I also did which was to move each copy of the mesh just slightly (One I moved .01 X an .01Y and the other -.01X and-.01Y ) SO that there were not 3 meshes all in the exact position -- Not sure if that might be what caused the Crash on your but it might be possible (I know it can cause anomolies when rendering duplicated meshes that you accidentally Cloned and did not notice so might be worth a test !! ( I actually reversed the process when creating my NIF because I had the sword in 3 separate Tristrips to begin with (was made for OB at first and wanted the blade a bit shiny so had it separated ) and that was causing me problems as the game kept changing the other 2 parts to different txt entries (ie. Inv , BSX, PRn) when saving the NIF -- Another thing to test would be making sure the DATA node you are pasting matches the part you are connecting to (ie. IIRC the blood nodes are Trishapes so be sure you are not pasting from a tristrip (not sure if that would make a difference)

If you want to E-mail me a copy of your obj for the model ( JDFanning(at)SbcGlobal.net )you want to use for the blood spatter (or even that and the full model and I'll try getting it working on my end since I can load it into MAX and export as a NIf for you to test the procedure and make sure that works for you (to narrow down the cause) - then I'll send back a prepaste NIf with the data set for copy\pasting and a working copy for comparison and testing -- Also perhaps import from OBJ to a third Model to get the Data into a NIF and copy paste just the DATA afterwards into the blood node would be worth a try !

[charlescrowe]

3rd person would be the weapon NIf and 1st person would be the 1stperson weapon NIf (ie. for the DwarvenGreatsword model the 3rd person NIf would be Dwarvengreatsword.NIF and the static would use 1stpersondwarvengreatsword.nif )

@IS -- THanks for the assist got it all working in game now (including the blood spatter ) - Now just need to set it up for upgrading and smithing !

In Game Screenie Compilation ---

Charles --- best method i have found for getting the blood decals working is to make a separate model of the part you want the spattr to show up on (ie. on my Celtic Claymore I used just the blade -- export that as a NIF ( I use MAX ) then open 2 instances of NIfskope one with your blood mesh (the part you just exported) and one with a vanilla weapon that has the blood shader. (OR the Nif you are using already for your new weapon (do not delete the blood nodes when creating it from the vanilla Nif as IS explained in this tutorial as you will be replacing the mesh Data with your new data)

Then in your new model go into the NItrishape tree and find the Nitrishape Data node (this node contains the vertices of your model) - right click and Block -Copy branch ---- then go to the vanilla weapon NIF and right click on the bottom of the Block List (do not highlight a node) - and do a Block - Paste Branch (this pastes your new blood mesh data into the NIF

Now to hook it up go to the Nitrishape of the Edge Blood and click to highlight -- THen in the Block Details Find the Data Line (Just below the Collision Object line ) -- double click to open to edit and enter the node number for the NitrishapeData you just pasted (this swaps out the old Data for your new mesh Data) -- Repeat for the EdgeBlood01 Nitrishape - then delete the 2 old NitrishapeData nodes that you replaced and save the NIF

You should now have a working blood decal mesh on your weapon

I'm a blender 2.6 user i used a similar method tho, exporting my .blends into the .3ds format instead of .nif.

Hmmm seems us Blender users are going to have a harder time with this. I've just tried your method but exporting the mesh as a FO3 one since we don't have NIF support and well, this just crashes the CK.

I've also tried re-building the nodes after importing the shape as an OBJ file, but this doesn't seem to work, though everything looks correct in Nifskope

Edit: Used a combination of the above and the effects still won't show, I must be missing something here....

try using the .3ds export function in blender. this seems to have helped me a lot.

Forgot to mention One thing that I also did which was to move each copy of the mesh just slightly (One I moved .01 X an .01Y and the other -.01X and-.01Y ) SO that there were not 3 meshes all in the exact position -- Not sure if that might be what caused the Crash on your but it might be possible (I know it can cause anomolies when rendering duplicated meshes that you accidentally Cloned and did not notice so might be worth a test !! ( I actually reversed the process when creating my NIF because I had the sword in 3 separate Tristrips to begin with (was made for OB at first and wanted the blade a bit shiny so had it separated ) and that was causing me problems as the game kept changing the other 2 parts to different txt entries (ie. Inv , BSX, PRn) when saving the NIF -- Another thing to test would be making sure the DATA node you are pasting matches the part you are connecting to (ie. IIRC the blood nodes are Trishapes so be sure you are not pasting from a tristrip (not sure if that would make a difference)

If you want to E-mail me a copy of your obj for the model ( JDFanning(at)SbcGlobal.net )you want to use for the blood spatter (or even that and the full model and I'll try getting it working on my end since I can load it into MAX and export as a NIf for you to test the procedure and make sure that works for you (to narrow down the cause) - then I'll send back a prepaste NIf with the data set for copy\pasting and a working copy for comparison and testing -- Also perhaps import from OBJ to a third Model to get the Data into a NIF and copy paste just the DATA afterwards into the blood node would be worth a try !

multi-piece meshes are particularly painful to import. you almost have to have 3 different versions to do it correctly for a 2-piece mesh with blood.

[JDFan]

So you were able to get the blood working correctly using the .3ds format then ?

[charlescrowe]

with a bit of finaggling, yes.

[InsanitySorrow]

Hmmm what's the difference between the two formats?, Wondering why one works better than the other.

Never had chance to look at this yesterday, I'll take another shot later, also need to setup my glow maps and write a tutorial for that, busy me

[InsanitySorrow]

I owe you two some cookies

I am going to add some additional steps to my tutorial for this, but this is what I did using Blender:

1. Exported the blade as a 3DS file instead of the OBJ file
   
2. Went through the steps in my tutorial, made a new node just for the blade and imported the 3DS file
   
3. Then followed JDFan's steps and swapped out the NiTriSthapes data
   

[charlescrowe]

hooray for forum problem solving.

glad to see chrysamere can be soaked in blood now

[InsanitySorrow]

Oh yeah, nice to see such a fine blade covered in blood , Also glows too

[JDFan]

Oh yeah, nice to see such a fine blade covered in blood , Also glows too

Glad to see you got it working -- Still wonder what the difference in the Blender's obj and .3ds format is that makes the difference but at least there is a solution available !

[InsanitySorrow]

I noticed the 3DS format holds a lot more information, when I imported into Nifskope I have the scale, position and model name from Blender, with OBJ I get none of that data.

[JDFan]

I noticed the 3DS format holds a lot more information, when I imported into Nifskope I have the scale, position and model name from Blender, with OBJ I get none of that data.

Well - hopefully they'll get the exporters for both MAX and Blender working fully so we don't have to use it for long but the community has always been [retty good at figurng out a way to work around it till that happens !

[Johnn123]

I got the spear in game! Now how do I export the 3rd person nif and the static nif? I want to set it as a separate item in the CK.

[InsanitySorrow]

The 3rd person model is pretty much the same as the 1st Person one. Though the vanilla weapons are a little less detailed.

The 1st Person NIF is the one you want to add to the Static list in the CK, I posted a couple of pics earlier.

[JDFan]

The 3rd person model is pretty much the same as the 1st Person one. Though the vanilla weapons are a little less detailed.

The 1st Person NIF is the one you want to add to the Static list in the CK, I posted a couple of pics earlier.

HAve you tested yet to determine which model is used for various times (ie. inventory model, third person view, first person view, world model, etc. ) -- Was wondering since it might mean that only one of the models needs the Blood nodes added if the second version is never used for things that would need the blood spatter showing !

[InsanitySorrow]

I've not looked at that closely yet, but going by what I've seen so far I'd say the 1stPerson NIF is used for the First Person view and most likely the inventory model. Which would make sense since you'd want more detail there.

The other model is used for everything else as far as I can see, I tested Chrysamere with the scabbard being on just the 1st person model and when I dropped it the game used the other model without the scabbard.

[Johnn123]

So can I use the 1st person nif for the 3rd person model, or is there nifskope work that has to be done? Sorry I didnt see this info posted anywhere

[InsanitySorrow]

Yeah you can, I can't see any differences between the two NIF wise.

[charlescrowe]

HAve you tested yet to determine which model is used for various times (ie. inventory model, third person view, first person view, world model, etc. ) -- Was wondering since it might mean that only one of the models needs the Blood nodes added if the second version is never used for things that would need the blood spatter showing !

1st person model is used in the inventory view and first person, as well as the player-specific model. NPCs use the 3rd person model, which is also the model used when it's on the ground.

[JDFan]

1st person model is used in the inventory view and first person, as well as the player-specific model. NPCs use the 3rd person model, which is also the model used when it's on the ground.

Strange -- wonder why they split it up this way -- could see it if the one model was using a different type of collision (or no collision) or one was a lower resolution if it was not being viewed up close or without effects like the blood effects etc. but when they both seem to be the same not sure what the reasoning would be. Can the same NIf file be used for both or does that cause problems in game ? (I've been setting them up using the corresponding original but wonder if there is the need to repeat everything a second time with the copy\paste if you could just use the same Nif file.) - Time for some testing I guess.

[InsanitySorrow]

lower resolution.... [sNIP]

This is it as far as I can tell, the 3rd person model is usually missing a few details, can't tell how much lower the poly count is but doesn't seem to be much.

[Johnn123]

Ok sweet thx guys, I'm gonna try and set up a new weapon in game them

[InsanitySorrow]

Post here if you have any trouble.

[Johnn123]

Ok, I got it! Thanks for the help all!