Vince

Thank you all for your useful information. @Vouivre, what is "The Last Wish"?

A few weeks ago I ran across a post inviting experienced modders to apply to be Beta Testers for their REDkit for the Witcher 2. The REDkit is their modding tool, like the CS or CK. On a lark I applied, listing my mods, experience etc., figuring if I won, I'd buy the game. Today I was notified that I was selected. I'd like to know a few things before I buy it. As I understand it, it is DRM free and if I buy the DVD-ROM from Amazon, I won't have to sigh up with STEAM. Is that correct?

'Glad to help Phaedra. I'll be checking the gallery for your stuff. Vince

Hi Phaedra, It is a smoothing problem with the normals. As you know, although Wings3D has made quite a bit of progress, the documentation has not kept up. I would definitely recommend that you switch to Blender. The user base is much, much larger and, overall, it's a much more powerful program. For the time being, you would need to use Blender 2.49b as there is no .Nif exporter for 2.6x yet. Because of the large user base, there is a lot of documantation available, plus countless tutorials. Two good, free .pdf books are: The Blender 2.4x manual, see http://wiki.blender..../Doc:2.4/Manual and the CD Schools Blender Basics book, see http://www.cdschools.org/Page/455 For information specific to creating content for Oblivion, you may find my Blender2Oblivion tutorials helpful, see http://tesalliance.o...ivion-–-part-1/ Relative to your specific problem, if you have your stick of butter in Blender and set the mesh to Smooth, you should see the dark artifacts like the ones you show from your .Nif file. Add the EdgeSplit modifier and set the angle to something like 50 degrees for a start. Just remember that you must Apply the modifier before you export, otherwise the EdgeSplit fix will be lost. Good luck and it's nice to hear from you again. I hope you will drop by more often. Vince

I've been playing Morrowind, concentrating on the actual game play and the game elements that work, and those that don't work so well. Elements in a game that you remember long after are rare. Two of the three that I remember most vividly are from Morrowind. My favorite hero is that tiny ball of fury, Mazzy Fentan, from BG2. The most memorable voice acting is that given by the goddess Azura-- truly extraordinary. My favorite monster name of all time is the Winged Twilight. I hope some of this analysis will give me better insight into what is fun and, eventualy, some direction toward my next major mod project

Leonardo, I'm glad to see your post, including the links and other useful information you've provided. I tried loading RealSignPosts.esp in the CS and re-saving as you suggested. That did fix the problem. Thank you! Relative to the Morrowind Code Patch, as you know, besides fixing bugs, it adds new features like enabling statics to stop rain or snow. I'm sure you can appreciate how useful this is to someone who makes exterior homes. I've added the Morrowind Visual Pack (MVP), which with MGE enhances the cosmetics substantially without a big FPS hit. One thing, I could not successfully download MVP from either PES or FileFront. Fortunately, I did find and download it from Morrowind Mod History (the third link in my OP). Surprisingly, 'Mod History seems to be down as I write this. I hope it's back soon as it really is a lifeline to many Morrowind mods.

The purpose of this post is two-fold: to provide a place where others that want to revisite Morrowind can find (hopefully) useful information, and a place where I can ask for help when I run into issues. I've always thought Morrowind was the best of the Elder Scoll games, at least through Oblivion. Now there are a variety of powerful mods that bring Morrowind into the current age. Some of these, like the Morrowind Code Patch, may allow a more realistic exterior home than is possible with Oblivion. INFORMATION: If you are installing Morrowind on a new system, you must install Morrowind, then Tribunal, then Bloodmoon. Other orders don't work. INFORMATION: You may find the following links useful - From TESA's own DeMage, see: http://tesalliance.o...s-is-morrowind/ For other tweaks to Morrowind, see: http://www.tweaktown...ide/index1.html For hard to find Morrowind files (thanks Arion), see: http://mw.modhistory.com/home The first mod I installed was MGE, version 3.8.2. I found the instructions in the linked wiki quite straightforward. After installing MGE, then creating distant land, the graphical improvement was amazing, even using mostly default settings. I've attached screen shots for vanilla Morrowind, and with MGE--without grass. Both are looking North from Arrille's Tradehouse. Vanilla Morrowind: With MGE, shader 3.0, 4X AA, and no grass: At present, I have MGE, the Morrowind Code Patch, and Real SignPosts installed. I plan to install Morrowind Patch Project Next. I do have one minor problem right now. I believe Real Sign Posts is an essential mod. I've never played Morrowind without it. However, now, whenever I start Morrowind, I get an error message: "One or more plugins could not find the correct versions of the master files they depend on. ....". Fortunately, the message provides the option to continue anyway. I do and everything works as it should, including the sign posts. If I uncheck RealSignPosts.esp, the error goes away. I've downloaded all the official patches for Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon. but have not installed them. I think I heard that installing Bloodmoon patched the other files. If there is a way to determine the revision of each of these, I don't know how. This is where I am now. If you can provide help or have Morrowind tweak information you would like to share, please do.

KWITS, I don't understand your question. What you say you want to do sounds straightforward. You say you want to make a hole in one wall of the cell, but not the opposite wall. Is that right? There are several of us here familiar with 2.49b, maybe a screen shot or a more in depth description of what you are trying to do would be helpful.

Leonardo, thanks. I'll uninstall everything and reinstall in the order you listed. Like donnato, I didn't know the order and wasn't able to find it with a quick web search.

The order was Morrowind, Bloodmoon, Tribunal. The CD's appear scratch free. Yes, I was able to see and open the files on the Bloodmoon CD from Windows Explorer.

I've installed Morrowind, Bloodmoon, and Tribunal on my newer computer. I installed them in the default location, directly from the original CD's. So far I have changed no options and added no mods. When I try to run Morrowind, it's Ok until I get to the main menu. If I click 'Play', when the game starts to load I get error messages. The first is: Chunk size 10 too big in WEAT.ID in form REGN_ID. Max size is 8, data truncated to "". Continue running executable Yes/No If I answer Yes, I get another error message about the weather chances in a certain region not adding up to 100%. If I keep on answering Yes, I get more error messages until it crashes. If I uncheck Bloodmoon.esm in the Data List, Morrowind appears to run correctly. I tried to patch Bloodmoon with the V1.6.1.1820 patch, but get the message "Old File not found. However, a file of the same name was found. No update done since file contents do not match". Any suggestions would be welcome.

I think the kind of "trophy" isn't that important. It's the knowledge that your work is appreciated by your peers that counts. Vometia can have the pie. If it comes to that, I want cake!

I guess I'll have a lot to learn once I get Skyrim. I see that there still isn't a .nif exporter for Blender to Skyrim. BTW, Tamira, I saw your normal map. Did you make it mostly transparent to minimize the specular reflection?

I think Tamira has covered most of what you need. If you want the leaves to look right from both sides, you need a NiStencilProperty block with all the flags set correctly. I've included a link below to a .nif with everything correct, at least for Oblivion. Good luck. http://www.mediafire...n24nuxb4ud3uidr Please ignore this post. After I made it I realized that without including the textures in the correct folder structure, so the .nif can use them, the file isn't very useful.

If you want to be stubborn about it, do the following: 1) Import some mesh from a .nif file. Don't change anything, but verify that you can export it. 2) 'Same as 1) except, change the texture. Just the texture, without re-UV mapping it. 3) 'Same as 2) except re-UV map it. 4) And so forth. That is, start with something you are confident will work. Then, step by step move toward the current issue until you find a problem. Good luck!

It's been awhile since I last exported a .nif. 'Been working on weapons as art, lol. Did you try the same export when you were in Object mode? Sorry, but I probably can't help you further,

AFAIK you can only associate one material with one mesh and (best I remember) one texture with one mesh. If you specify a .dds file and you have a similarly named normal map file ("..._n.dds") in the same folder, it will be used by the .nif. You said you were using .tga files. Are you modding Oblivion or Morrowind?

If you replace a UV map with another one, you need to change the texture associated with the material. You should have a texture of type Image. Press F6 and in the Image panel, change the path and filename to point to your texture. This is just a guess as to what the issue is based on the last error message. Let me know if that worked.