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Blender 2.49b to Nifskope (Fewer Bones Than Before)


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Hello everyone,

 

   I'm not a great modeler or anything, but for sometime I was modifying armors for personal use by importing a .nif into Blender 2.49 then saving it as a .blend, then opening the blend in 2.62, editing it and then saving. Then opening it in 2.49 adding materials, copying bone weights, parenting skeleton and then exporting it as a nif.

 

This worked fine for me. So I had some misfortune with my PO recently and the end result was me losing all my programs and having to redownload all of them.

 

I go to do what I've always done and get int he game and my character looks all distorted when she puts the item on and so I know it must be the bones. I look and notice that even though right before export, the clothes had 21 bones and the body had 11, when I exported them, they both only had 4.

 

I've tried uninstalling everything that had to do with Blender 2.49 and switching to the older version of supporting software (PyFFi, Python, Nifscripts) thinking maybe that was what I had originally before the PC problems, I tried updating to the very latest of each that was Skyrim useable.

 

Nothing works. I saw someone mention needing to change min and max values for Bonepartitions or something like that which I thought was weird since I never had to do that before, still tried it and that didn't work.

 

I am following the same tutorial I always have and making sure that my export settings are identical to the screenshots given.

 

I'm at the end of my rope with this. I have no idea what could be the problem so I am posting here in hopes someone will know what is wrong and or what I am doing wrong.

 

 

Thank you sincerely,

 

   Tons

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Hello Tons! Welcome to TESA. :)

 

Now that's an interesting problem I've not heard of before. First of all, make sure you do have the latest supporting programs that work together (Python 2.6.6., PyFFI 2.1.11., and NifScripts 2.5.9.). Secondly, make sure your export settings are correct per the fig. at the very bottom of this page.

 

Make sure your clothings is properly weight painted (unused bones can be stripped during export). You could try re-doing the weight painting.

 

If that's not helping, upload your .blend and exported .nif file somewhere and I'll take a closer look at it. (or you can PM them directly to me.)

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The old export scripts did have a problem where the maximum number of bones they could export was set at 18. If you tried to export a model with more than 18 bones it would create one partition with 18 and then another partition with the extra bones. You needed to change the settings in nif_common.py to allow for the extra bones used by Skyrim armors. That issue should be fixed in the newer scripts though.

 

If you are set on using the old programs make sure you get all the correct versions otherwise they won't be compatible.

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I apologize for the delay in my response, but things got busy and then I decided to go through the whole process for the 4th or 5th time just to be sure.

 

For this mesh, I decided to split the mesh so that I could use two different normal maps with two different settings so I imported it twice and then cut them in half. I'm sure there is likely an easier way to do this, but I didn't think this would be an issue for me to do as I had done it many times before.

 

I also had tried changing the SceneRoot/Parent name so I could copy the dismemberment branch from the original .nifs but that just distorted things.

 

This file is just one example of the issue, on the other things I had tried to do, the same thing would happen. I even tried doing it without altering a thing and still, the exported .nif always has less bones in the dismemberment branches than the original.

 

I included all folders showing my work so it should be easier to see the process and steps taken:

 

Mesh Work

 

 

Thank you guys again for taking the time to try and help me.

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I can see a few issues right off. In the "4 Blender to NIF" right before you export, the model has a dirty skeleton. You need the make sure it doesn't have ".00" at the end when you import it. Also the weights did not copy correctly. That would probably explain the lack of bones and distortion.

 

Finally, your Skyrim ready NIFs still have the Fallout 3 partition "BP_TORSO". This should be set to the Skyrim one "SBP_32_BODY".

 

I'll have a better look at it later on when I have more time. For now try redoing the weights and skeleton and see if that fixes the problem.

 

Also there are 19 bones in the skeleton so the scripts for Blender 2.49 won't export it properly unless you make the changes to nif_common.py. I don't use the latest Blender so I don't know how the new scripts handle exporting.

 

If you are using Blender 2.49 you can fix the issue by editing "Blender\.blender\scripts\bpymodules\nif_common.py".

Search for

 

EXPORT_BONESPERPARTITION = 18

 

and change it to

 

EXPORT_BONESPERPARTITION = 40

 

Then search for a section with "Max Bones". In that section you'll see
min_val = 4, max_val = 18

 

change it to
min_val = 4, max_val = 40

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Thanks Kisuke for your response.

 

I was kind of rushing to get through this again, but the other times I did this, I did change the name on the dismemberments and I know it wasn't quite clear in my first post, but I did try to change the bonepartition thing despite things working for me in the past despite me never have to do anything like that.

 

Regarding the dirty skeleton, this is also new to me and I can't imagine everything I have been doing as of late has had a dirty skeleton. One of the things that I did in the past and worked fine, I simply imported it into Blender then exported again and the same thing occurs, just not to the same extent.

 

When you say the bones weight didn't copy properly, that interests me. I mean I think that is the key to the issue as well, but it doesn't make sense to me because I followed the same tutorial I always have and did the same thing I always did, so I'm not sure why it's not working now.

 

Again, I thank you for taking the time to try to help as well as for your tips. Hopefully I'll get back to a point where I can put them to use.

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I have to agree with Kisuke, the weight painting is definitely messed up and not working.

 

I ran a Remove Bogus Nodes in Nifskope on your final mesh and it removed 15 unused bones - that means 15 skeleton bones that didn't make it into your clothing that should have. Looking at the last .blend file I can see the same, half of the bones are not weight painted. What process are you using for your weight painting?

 

As for the dirty skeleton, the Blender nifscripts can be a fickle beast, sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes it doesn't want to. Always check it after import, make sure the name doesn't say anything after .nif. Always save your .blend file before importing the skeleton, so if it's not clean, just close it out and try again.

 

You also haven't partitioned any of the pieces, except to add one body partition. That's all well and fine if that's what you want, but you'll have issues wearing boots and gloves without forearm and calves partitions with disappearing body parts.

 

Besides all that there's also issues with your final meshes. Go through each NiTriShape and check the NiTriShapeData blocks. Change the Consistency Flag from CT_Mutable to CT_Static on all of them. Also on your particular body/skin (17 NiTriShape), you've not changed the NiTriShapeData options to tell it that it's skin. Change the BS Num UV sets from 4097 to 1, and change Has Normals to No. It's also missing the femalebody_1_s.dds texture file.

 

I'm not sure what tutorial you are or have been following, but I'm pretty sure it's not mine. :) All these issues are addressed.

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I guess my problem/concern is I know there is something going on with the Bone Weight Copy thing and I know the bones aren't being used. The tutorial I used comes from TESNexus and it is the one that has worked all the way up until now. I feel like I must have downloaded something wrong or something to that affect because nothing was fickle for me before now.

 

Though technically, it isn't being fickle now, it is consistently not working for me, lol. I stopped messing with the final meshes and didn't send all files for the mesh to work was because of the fact that I didn't see a point since I could already see the mesh was wrong from the Dismemberment count.

 

Anyway, thanks for all your input. I'll keep looking into this thing.

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Trust us on the weights thing. ;) It was the first thing I looked for when you mentioned distortion.

 

I've used that TESNexus tutorial too but I found it very confusing. I can vouch for Hana's tutorial, it goes through everything you need to do. It saved my life when I was starting off.

 

Just redo the weights for one of the .blend files. If you go into weight paint mode you can see how it compares to the original nif. If you want, you can post it up and we'll take a look at it.

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I did give the other tutorial a try as well and because that one seems to be concerned about the state of the skeleton, I can't get past that part as it always imports dirty for me apparently.

 

While there are more steps for the tutorial here, it is a good tutorial and I like both of them. I like the other one because it was quick and easy for me to do, but I like the one here because it provided a much greater understanding as to how things work and why.

 

Unfortunately, neither of them are getting me the result I want at this time, so I'm just going to move on for now and/or look for an alternative to using this combination to get the job done.

 

Thanks again )

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It's not difficult to get a clean skeleton. It just involves a little trick. When you're at the point where you import the skeleton, save the project and then exit Blender. Load it up again and load your project up and save it and exit Blender again. Finally load it up one more time and you should be good to go. I know it sounds like hocus pocus but it works for some reason. :shrug:

 

I know this stuff can get really frustrating when it doesn't work. I'd like to encourage you to stick at it but I understand.

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