AnaCostia

That's a wondrous island! Keep up the good work!!!

I don't know how but... it seems I managed on my own. Essentially my guess seemed correct. The two skeletons (outfit and skeleton.nif) were different but the result was almost the same. Since outfits had all the bones on the root, their position were absolute, while on skeleton.nif they were relative. Changing the parent / children in Blender and then exporting made all the relative positions becoming absolute (and correct) values. Maybe this affects the mesh in some other ways, but for now I'm just happy I solved it

Good day to everyone I'm struggling with this problem since a long time and I can't find a solution on my own, so after all these hours lost in attempts without understanding anything, I guess my only solution is trying to see if someone can help me with a clue. I have few almost finished works which are in stale because of this. Sorry if I will write some long description but the subject for me requires some words to be explained. I'm working on Blender 2.49b and I'm working on old style meshes (Fallout/Oblivion, not Skyrim), but I only need to understand the concept, I think it's almost the same system for new meshes or using another software like 3ds. I think you could have different shaders, different bone names, or dismembering parts, but the concept below should be the same. Also, don't make difference for me if I say creature, body or outfit, so if you see these terms mixed in the description just think they are synonimous and I wrote bad Generally, when I work on a outfit or a body, when I do a port or a conversion, I bone weight copy from another body (and or modify by hand if required) and then import the same body with the option "import skeleton only + parent selected", then I export the result. Everything's fine. Now I need to modify a skeleton for a new creature, because I need to move some pivots for custom animations, and my issue comes from there. I can't recreate from scratch a skeleton.nif because I really can't recreate the Constrants / Bounds and all these things that handle collisions or dismembering etc. it is really too hard for me to understand. I also tried it without them: I created a new skeleton, it was ok in nifskope and blender but it wasn't working ingame (the mesh isn't visualized, like a non-weighted mesh) (on a side note, I even tried to manually copy all these havok infos by nifskope... long pain for no results) So, I took the path of modifying an existing skeleton.nif, since I just need to move few bones. Essentially, if I modify the bones in Edit mode, I obtain what I want, I create my custom animations, everything works flawless in nifskope and Blender, but it won't in game, the nif will be distorted (distorted as if the bones are not in the correct position, not some weird visual issue). Still, this is a better result, it means it is weighted and the animation works too (even if not as intended since it's like if the bones positions are all messed up). This is, I think, because when I inject a skeleton from an existing outfit those bone positions are modified comparing to my modified skeleton.nif On the other side, if I inject my modified skeleton.nif (+ import skeleton only + parent selected + re-create vertex names + re-weight with the new vertex groups), it will work in game, it visualizes correctly, it animates correctly, but it won't move (like if there's no Bip01 translation) To better understand the concept, and maybe figuring a solution, I would like to understand first of all how an outfit skeleton is related with the skeleton.nif, what's the difference in the skeleton injected in a outfit when I import it from another outfit, and the same operation done importing skeleton.nif. If I open these two result models on nifskope, I get them: the correct one (injecting ourfit skeleton) has all the nodes as children of the Root + the NiTri nodes of the mesh itself. The second model, the wrong one (injecting skeleton.nif), mantains the bone structure "parent / child" inside the nif, so the result is Bip01 on the Root, then all the other bones below, like Spine, which has Spine1 as children, which has Spine 2 as children etc.etc. So the next step was recreating the same parent / children by nifskope, I moved all the bones as children of the Root, and I erased Bip01 and NonAccum. The result is mesh completely distorted. My guess is that's because every bone position / rotation has its values relative to the previous bone (its parent), so if I move everything on the Root the relative value will assume a wrong absolute value. But so... how can I create that skeleton which is injected in the outfit? where does it come from? there must be some automatic procedure, I'm trying to understand how they did it at start, how they did it on vanilla outfits, when they coudln't inject it from another existing outfit. I hope I explained well what I mean and forgive me if something is written bad, it isn't very easy for me translating these things. I wish everyone a very good day.

Thank you very much for the great explanation, I pinned this page on my preferred, on the browser. It's definetely too much important. And regarding rule II, I already noticed that on Fallout, I just found quite ... "peculiar" that some tutorials forget to specify that since it's too much important. You know, if there was some "Official guide", I could simply stick to that and think "this is wrong, the official guide says to do in this way". But when there isn't something like that, all I can do is assuming... and my sixth sense often leads me to make wrong Again, thank you very much

Thanks! I LOVE cookies! *nom nom nom...*

I perfectly agree about the linearity, the famous end chain which opens the secret passage is an obvious cliché for playability and I find it is a great idea for it and casual players, less for realism. But on the other side I don't feel that complete absence on dwemer ruins. The first example that comes in my mind is where I just went few days ago, the place where you kill (Antoine?) for Muiri's quest. It has a couple of sneaky thief alternatives, one just when you enter (you could go straight across the flames and picklock the door) and one before Antoine's room (you can surround them if you picklock the side door). Following the other path, you pass through some dwemer living quartiers, some beds, a kitchen... The same Blackreach has its own structure, which I personally don't understand but I feel the way the separated cells are structured and named has some kind of meaning. In the end I still think they found a nice compromise between playabilty and attention to details. It's almost the same for how much linear are the quests too, but still, sometimes they introduce those little unmarked details that are really nice in my opinion (i.e. the Winterhold murder quest line and its unmarked variant, the story of Sapphire in Dragonborn, etc.). Surely the best details could come out with mods, where the modder can use his personal taste and increase them, make the things more realistic, but because he doesn't have a real meaning in finding what the majority of fans could appreciate as stated in the second post. And this just makes me think... Thank you Bethesda that gave us all the CK

Someone came to me with that nick, because of I loved Fallout, it's ... I think it's called " a pun "

Hello, I found this tutorial and I wanted to say it's very very complete and easy to follow, congratulations and thank you! I used to make little works with meshes in previous games so essentially I just needed to understand the differences with Skyrim and... wow, how many things to set in nifskope While I was reading around I stepped on another tutorial too and some things were different. Fact is, following the tutorial on this site I managed to do my mesh, following that other one I didn't manage it, I only can assume these things I missed were important. I'd love to ask, if it's not a big problem, about some of these differencies, to let me understand better. - Is it necessary changing dismember partition in nifskope from BP_TORSO to SBP_32_BODY? Is it because Skyrim doesn't understand "BP_TORSO" string? - Stripify Geometries, some like it, some hate it. What's the deal? - Shaders / Has Normals / Num UV Sets: when I'm confused, I just copy parameters from another model. Comparing different armors of different mod authors, I find discrepancies, even on a simple thing like Body - Has Normals - No (sometimes find Yes, others I find No). Is there some documentation that all these parameters? I dug a little on Google and all I find often is "do this, flag that, set in this way" without explanations on meanings, so I can't understand why other armors have different parameters but it would be really useful for me for future works... So for example that tutorial on the other side wasn't flagging "Skinned", in an armor I took as example Skinned was flagged both in the armor and the body, in my past I used to flag Skinned and also Facegen for body, etc.etc. I wish everyone a very good day and thank you again for this tutorial

Hello, I arrived to this nice website while I was reading things about modding, it is very very pretty and full of things, congratulations! I started not a long time ago but I'm in love with modding and that's the main reason that keeps me playing the wondrous Beth games. I wish everyone a very happy day