RabidGears

Yeah, the face issue looks like it's solved. I can import it into Blender now. I can see some obvious problems with parts of the mesh pulled all over the place, especially the eyes. Can you import the TRI into Max?

I use Blender. I don't know how to do it in Max.

I think I see the problem. It looks like the mesh is using quads instead of triangles. I think the TRI format only uses triangles, and so the program is only designed to work with triangles. So you need to convert the mesh faces of the morphs to triangles before exporting. And make sure that they match up with structure of the mesh in the NIF.

I re-extracted your Tri and it appears that there are no faces on any of the morph meshes. They're getting stripped out somewhere along the line. I've used that Tri creator a lot so I can confirm that it works. The first thing we need to do is track down where the faces are getting stripped out. I don't use Max so I'm not familiar with how it exports OBJs. If I had to guess, though, I'd say that the problem happens at that point. Double check your export settings with those shown in the tutorial. Also check any exported OBJs to make sure that they contain lines beginning with 'f'. For example, you should find something like this: ... f 1/1 2/2 3/3 f 3/3 4/4 1/1 f 2/2 5/5 6/6 ... On the Conformulator: As I understand it, in the tutorial she's using the Conformulator to adapt extra parts, such as eyebrows or beards, to the new head. I don't think you need to use it for the head Tri, so just ignore that step for now. I don't know of any other tutorials on TRIs. I used that one when I was learning about this stuff.

If you're just trying to retexture an existing model, then you don't need to touch the mesh in Nifskope. You simply make a duplicate of the banner you want in the CK and then use a texture set to change the texture on the duplicate. Have a read through this tutorial on texture sets to make sure that you're using them properly: http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3895-skyrim-texture-sets/

I don't really get what you're saying. From what you described you DID add the perk to a race. Please give more detail about exactly what you want to do, and what you have done that didn't work. If nobody can understand you then you're not going to get many replies.

The instructions for setting it up are here: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender. So, according to that, the Python version you need is 2.6.6 (32bit).

You will need to learn how to use Blender and Nifskope if you want to do this. The best place to start, is to learn how to set up Blender and get a basic grounding in how to use it. Then follow this tutorial to learn how armor works. Because hair in Skyrim works pretty much like armor, you can then apply what you learn in that tutorial to working on hair. There's nothing inherently difficult about this, but you do need to follow some tutorials to pick up basic skills before the rest of what I say will make any sense. In that tutorial, you'll learn about skin partitions (or dismemberment partitions) and how to assign them to faces on a mesh. The relevant skin partitions for hair are SBP_131_HAIR and SBP_141_LONGHAIR. SBP_131_HAIR is used on faces that disappear when you equip a hat or helmet, and SBP_141_LONGHAIR is used on faces that stay when you equip a helmet. So, to get your hair the work properly, you need to first import the model into Blender and follow the other steps outlined in the armor tutorial. When you come to the partition assigning stage, using Fallout 3 partition names as placeholders so that they will export correctly, assign BP_HEAD (which you will later change to SBP_131_HAIR in NifSkope) to the areas that you want to disappear when the hood is equipped, and assign BP_HEAD2 (which you will later change to SBP_141_LONGHAIR in NifSkope) to the areas that you want to stay visible. Other than that, you just follow the same steps for weighting, rigging, exporting, and cleaning up in Nifskope that you do for armor. Finally, you use your new edited hair model as a replacement for the old one. Sometimes hairs have two (or more) separate models, so if that is the case with this hair, you will also have to repeat the process on the second model. Lastly, the hood *may* need to be edited in the Creation Kit to allow it to display hair. Again, I have to stress, you need to pick up the basic skills I mentioned earlier before any of this will make sense.

I think it sounds more like curiosity. Not all games can be modded to the same extent as Skyrim or other Bethesda games. If you look at the Nexus homepage, you'll see that Bethesda games make up the top 6 most modded games, most of them dwarfing the next non-Bethesda game (Dragon Age Origins) for number of mods. Part of this may be that they have more scope for modding given that they are open world games, and maybe their popularity is another factor, but a big part is also down to the fact that the CK (or CS, GECK, etc.) makes them much easier to mod and in some cases makes some things possible which would otherwise be impossible. Games that don't have a tool like the CK can sometimes be modded to an extent. As TigerCubofPNW said, you can sometimes replace assets like 3D models or textures. Other things like gameplay or game data can sometimes be altered if it isn't hardcoded. Or sometimes you can make minor hacks to the exe with a hex editor.

The CK is actually a pretty good tool when you consider what's available (or just not available) for modding other games. However, it's not the only tool used to create mods. There's a long list of tools created by the modding community that make it possible to do the things that you can't do with the CK. Nifskope is an example of a common tool used for working with the 3D model files (.nif) used with Bethesda games. The source code is available on github if you want to poke around in its innards. Also, if you're any good with decoding binary formats you might consider trying to help out decoding the nif format.

It probably won't import a tri. You could maybe try extracting the tri with Animation Tools N2 so that you get a separate obj for every morph in the tri and then see if it'll work with one of the morphs.

I had a quick look at some of the hair mods on nexus. The author of one of them mentions using Outfit Studio, so it must be possible to use it for doing hair. Animation Tools N2 is a more general tool for working with TRIs, and not game specific. It's a command line tool, but it's pretty easy to use. It works with .obj files that you can export from nifskope. I remember that there were some dummy files you could use with the Conformulator that allowed it to work for skyrim heads. TBH, I never really understood what the Conformulator was supposed to do. As I understand it, it's more useful for beards and other face parts?

You might not need any special tools for doing it. For hair in Skyrim, you don't strictly need .tri files (what I assume you used the Conformulator for) for custom hair to work. Maybe there's an issue when replacing a vanilla hair which is expecting the tri. I always make .TRIs with AnimationToolsN2 and then edit them in Blender. I never found that the Conformulator worked properly. Anyway, if it's like everything else FO4, I suppose all the old rules have gone out the window. I'll be interested to hear what you can dig up on this. I haven't got the game so I can't poke around through the game assets.

OK, I asked a few people and it turns out that they use Outfit Studio which outputs Fallout 4 ready nifs. So, as I understand it, you can import your model into OS and then export it as a nif ready for FO4, with no editing in Nifskope. That's for bodies/outfits. I didn't ask about whether there's anything for weapons/statics/etc. Edit: I'm assuming that it can also import FO4 nifs and export for Skyrim, or whatever, so it can be edited in Blender.

As far as I know, I don't think 3DS Max has any better support for FO4 nifs than Blender has, so getting Max isn't the answer. On the modelling front, I heard of someone who made one of his mods by moving verts around one by one in nifskope. It's a bit of a hacky solution but I don't know if there are any better ways of doing it atm. A good place to check for more info would be the niftools forum or their irc channel.

Have you tried Amazon? Sometimes you can find parts that are cheaper than anywhere else. I find amazon.co.uk is the best, and even with the insane euro->sterling exchange rate right now, it still works out cheaper than most other places. Just factor in the VAT. The prices on the site include the UK VAT rate (20%). I'm not sure what the delivery charges to Finland would be like though. Ordering anything from outside the EU is a no go. You just get killed by the customs charges.

You can...you just need two tabs open in your browser: one for the chat and one for the forums.

Yeah, it kicks you after 25 minutes of inactivity. If the time limit was extended a bit, I think it would encourage more people to use it.

Yes, the ears are actually part of the mesh. You don't edit the mesh in the NIF directly. All human and elf playable races use the same mesh: malehead.nif for males and femalehead.nif for females. What changes these to looking like a specific race are the TRI files maleheadraces.tri and femaleheadraces.tri. The relevant files are all found in meshes/actors/character/character assets/. The TRIs contain a number of morphs that transform the base mesh into the shape of the desired race. There's also one base morph that is an exact copy of the mesh as found in the NIF. You need Blender 2.49 and the TRI import/export scripts. Once you import one of the TRIs you can access the morphs in the "Shapes" tab. Use the arrow keys to cycle through them. Here's a list of the morphs that are in the TRI: Basis - The base mesh shape (as it is in the NIF) RedguardRace NordRace BretonRace ImperialRace ElderRace HighElfRace WoodElfRace DarkElfRace DremoraRace OrcRace The two relevant morphs for you are RedguardRace and DarkElfRace. If you make a duplicate of RedguardRace you can edit the ears on it to look like the ears on the DarkElfRace morph. I don't know much more about the specifics of creating a race, but I hope this helps. =)

Can't you use a glow map to create a glowing effect?

This might be a stupid question, but have you checked that the difficulty setting isn't set to something really low?

Maybe the attachments don't work yet. The site is having some issues at the moment. =( I'll try sending it in a pm but that'll probably be the same deal.

I have part 5 of Hana's tutorial downloaded. It's the part that deals with NifSkope. I'll look around and see if I have the rest of it. Edit: Ok attachment didn't work

What's the specific NIF file that has the eyeball.001? I've checked all the imperial light cuirass NIFs and they all seem fine. Maybe try extracting Skyrim - Meshes.bsa again to get a fresh copy of the NIF.

As grond said. =) You might find the index in the support thread useful. Also have a read through the support thread. It has solutions to common problems that you may also be having. Edit: The armor looks great btw