[SOLVED] Armor help, 99% there but Blender exporting a weird duplicate Skin Partition Block. Help!

[fadingsignal]

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!

Edited July 22, 2014 by fadingsignal

[Hanaisse]

The current Blender export scripts only allow a certain # of bones per vertex group, so if you have more bones, it will automatically create a 2nd skin partition. There is nothing wrong with this. Meshes work fine with multiple skin partitions named the same (SBP_32_BODY), I do it all the time.

 

If you're having "exploding jagged meshes" it has nothing to do with the 2nd skin partition. It's bad weight painting that you'll need to redo.

[fadingsignal]

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!

Edited July 21, 2014 by fadingsignal

[fadingsignal]

The current Blender export scripts only allow a certain # of bones per vertex group, so if you have more bones, it will automatically create a 2nd skin partition. There is nothing wrong with this. Meshes work fine with multiple skin partitions named the same (SBP_32_BODY), I do it all the time.

 

If you're having "exploding jagged meshes" it has nothing to do with the 2nd skin partition. It's bad weight painting that you'll need to redo.

 

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:

 

I've had this issue a long time ago, and on occasion I see ppl reporting that they get weird and chaotic partitions when exporting from blender. The issue is caused by the limit bones in partitions being 18, which was the limit as far as I've read, for older games. Skyrim supports up to 60 or 62 (cant recall the exact number)

 

To go around this, open the nif_common.py in notepad (usually in C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.49b\.blender\scripts\bpymodules), and search for "= 18" (sans quotes). You should find it 4 times, replace 18 by 60, save, relaunch Blender, and you will now have the limit set to... *drumroll*... 60! xP

 

I know the limit is 60 or 62, because I did a custom skeleton + mesh for the Vampire Lord, in which I added 8 more bones, and had to split the VL mesh into an extra partition, because I was 2 bones over the limit. For properly exporting hands for example, you need a total of 36 bones to have them in a single partition as in the vanilla mesh.

 

Edited July 22, 2014 by fadingsignal