TigerCubofPNW

Okay, Hanaisse has found the error and so I figured I would share it with the class. I know it bugs me when I am looking for a solution to my coding problem and I find someone who had the exact same issue post about it but then no solution to the issue is shown. Oh, and by the way, Hanaisse is awesome. Patient, helpful and brilliant. Couldn't ask for a better Blenderologist as a teacher!!! So, as stated earlier in the thread, the dirty skeleton was the issue with the weird stretchy body. Hanaisse's instructions are very good on that. I will just add that I found, for me, there was something actually wrong in the body I was using. I started over with a fresh body and that did the trick. As to the texture issue, it was a Vertex Color Problem. Two pieces of info were in conflict. In the NITriShapeData blocks, the vertex color was set to No but on the BSLightingShaderProperty the flag for SLSF_2_Vertex_Color (under Shader Flags 2) was checked. Unchecking that was the fix. And now, I have graduated from novice to apprentice Mesh Maker.

Er, nevermind, found the error in my code.

I can already see a bunch of things not included in the NexusWiki tutorial. As to the graphic, I am mostly sure those are the settings I use, though, during import. However, I shall report back with (I hope) success. ETA: Sigh.... Sooo CLOSE. Damn, I was sure this was going to be the last round. *shakes fists at the heavens* So, you were right about the dirty skeletons and that was a battle. But at long last, I was able to get a clean skeleton and my armor no longer looks like it's worn by Mr. Fantastic. Also, thanks to that tutorial you pointed me to, my meshes happily stay attached to my armor now in my blender saves. I was sure, so damn sure, that was what was causing my invisible texture issue. Alas... My meshes are just black shadows. Now, as one can see from my first picture of the distorted mesh, at some point in this mess CK did in some way feel like recognizing the meshes I put in. Also, I have been playing with changing textures for armors and they have all showed up fine in CK. So I know my method for adding textures isn't at fault and I know that I know how to add textures. I mean, I basically took a simple piece of armor, slapped a vanilla texture on it, saved it into the very same folder where my new armor is and it worked fine. The path for the texture cannot be the issue. What I don't know is why CK won't recognize them. They look fine in Nifskope. A comparison between working NIF files and my effed up files in NSk shows zero difference. Well, the Consistency Flag on my mesh shows up as Mutable where the working one shows Static, but changing the flag to match does no good. Several searches from Google reveal nothing. I am sure there is yet SOMEthing in Blender that isn't right, but what or why or how I have no idea. In UV/Edit mode, the texture sits right where it should under the armor vertices. I switched it from ORCO to UV. Everything that I know to do for the textures in Blender has been done. So, once again, I am stuck and begging for help. As I said, I could walk away if I didn't keep inching forward.

Factions have much less utility than I think we would all like. They are essentially good for creating groups of associated people and determining how groups interact. No expert here, but I figure any response is better than none, so... If I were doing it, I'd go to the faction I want to do this with, say the Vigilants, and see what the members are. Likely, it will be a list of generic NPCs the game calls on when it needs to. Then you'd need to go into each of those NPC actors and change their default equipment under the inventory tab. If I knew more about what you were trying to do, I might have some shortcut you could use. But as I said, Factions are not a great resource for modders.

You may come to regret saying that... Okay, I don't know if this is the "root" of the problem, but you have something with the dirty skeleton thing. I suspected this part of the process was going pear-shaped. But it's much worse and far more confusing than it seems in those helpful graphics. So let's go back, all the way back tot he beginning. I import the armor and everything looks normal until it's time to delete the skeleton, or "scene root." Now, to this point, I've been ignoring this weirdness, assuring myself that the little bone thingies (highlighted in pink) were this evil skeleton doohickey. However, as you can see, when highlighting them, they are not labeled "scene root." And that is confusing. Does that indicate a problem? If they aren't labeled Scene Root, should they not be deleted? So, that's happening. When I import the body, Blender behaves and the little bone-like thingies are labeled "Scene root" and so that's all fine. Then it comes time to add in the skeleton and things go very badly. I get an error that says, "Cannot import skeleton: root is not a ninode" which I can find no info on in Google. The skeleton does import, as a dirty skeleton, and just to really tweak my nose it's labeled "Scene Root 00". I tried the exit and reload thing a few times without success. (Also, even though I save the .blend file, it loses all my texture and material data, which I assume is one of Blender's cute little quirks.) I figured something was wonky with the body. I went back to the original, Skyrimmed it in Nifskope, same problem. I tried a different body, same exact sequence of events. Finally, there is a button on my import screen, "Import Bone priorities" I haven't seen referenced anywhere and don't know what setting it should be. Once again, your time and patience are appreciated. ETA: I have bypassed the effed up body issue. Still need to figure it out and all, but the bigger issue is the lack of texture. I have checked, double checked and triple checked. The path for the textures is identical to the path in other bodies/armor that work fine. So, what else would cause the texture to appear in Nifskope and not in Creation kit?

Yeah, dunno what happened there. I did the export again and the properties came back. So, thanks to you for creating such a great tutorial and thanks to Kisuke for hooking me up with a copy of part of it, progress has been made. I hope you will indulge me with a few more issues. One, just to be sure, in your tutorial you call it "Num UV Sets" but in my NIFskope it's called "BS NUM UV SETS". I assume that is just a syntax change in one of the Nifskope edits. It seems to me that since I am just making a skirt, and therefore only using one part of the body, I should only have two NifTriShapes when I export--one for the body and one for the armor. I always seem to wind up with three, which makes me worry that the parenting thing in Blender didn't work. And does it matter what is higher up in the NINode tree? The one piece of the TESnexus wiki I don't get is, in Blender, fixing dismemberment weights. It says it's necessary, but then it goes on to talk about how you can "choose" to move things around if you want. It doesn't say anything about anything that HAS to be done. That is really the only part of the Blender export process that isn't going according to that tutorial. And I only mention it because of the issue I am having. I just feel something has to be wrong in the export, since I follow your nice and very clear tutorial to the letter about preparing the armor in NIFSkope for Skyrim. Also, I've done comparisons in NIfSkope between my NIF and the NIF of another custom armor someone did that I know works. The only difference is that in their armor, in their body, they have "Has Normals" as yes, contrary to yours and everyone else's tutorials. In the Armor Add On, I select the armor and in addition to it not recognizing the texture for the armor (it shows it in black, even though it looks fine in NIfskope) the body looks like a Salvador Dali painting, as shown in the attached image. I would honestly give up and stop pestering you nice folks, but it seems every time I try I get a little further and that the end is near. Again, I really appreciate all the input and help. And I promise I do Google things before coming here, but sometimes an expert has to be asked. So.... Thoughts?

Much appreciated. I'm poking at it some more, but if it isn't one thing it's another. Now the BS Properties are greyed out.

That's very kind of you. Unfortunately, that link tells me I can't access it

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I don't want to drag you through having to basically write a new tutorial for me here. I think I'm just screwed for now. There are too many things which don't make sense, which aren't working the way the tutorials say. I delete the skeletons in Blender, then at the end import the new skeleton which shows up but I get an error about something not being a NINODE. I go into Nifskope and I suddenly have another body floating below the armor that wasn't there in Blender. The NUM UV Sets show up as zero. When I delete the NINODE Scene root, the body for the armor disappears. And so on. I was hoping that, having actually made the armor look right I could go the final step, but it looks like until your tutorial comes back online, I'm just screwed. With luck, there's something in there that will make sense of all this. But really and sincerely, thank you for trying to help.

I have tried the F5 thing, tried saving and loading CK again and again. And it's just my luck about that tutorial. I've read some of it before but I couldn't really use it because I couldn't get Blender to work. I finally get Blender to work and now the tutorial is lost in the void. I don't suppose you have a PDF copy or anything? I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Going by the tutorial on the TESNexus wiki, I was able to follow all the steps to the letter except for the "FIx Dismembered Weights" step which it insists is necessary but then describes every part of it as "If you want to do this" and "You can also" which makes it all sound optional. The armor piece I am using is torso only, so I am not using any of the other body parts. Another tutorial didn't have that step. They suggested I copy the BSLshader stuff from another mesh. Maybe I should do that? I have concerns that I messed something up in Blender, but I keep telling myself that if the armor looks correct in Nifskope it should be fine, just needs some settings tweaked. Related to all this is a question you can probably answer. Why is that when I call up some armors, especially vanilla armors, in Nifskope they have a body with them but others, especially many custom armors, have no bodies with them? The tutorials all seem to suggest it should have a body with it. Anyway, thanks for the help.

It's that guy again with more questions.... Okay, thanks to the lovely folks here I managed (after an excruciating battle) to make the armor I wanted. Imagine my elation when I could look at in in NifSkope and see it just as it was meant to be. Creation Kit, well, that's another issue. I added it using the Armor Addon and I got the Big Red Triangle and Exclamation Point of Failure. Since it looks fine in Nifskope, it SHOULD work, so hopefully this won't be too hard. I went through two tutorials on prepping the armor for CK. I have added the armor _0 and _1 NIFs to a folder under the meshes folder and I put the DDS in a folder under the Textures. Nifskope can make sense of it, but not CK. So, what things should I be looking for? I am assuming this is something I need to do yet in Nifskope. Frankly, this part of the CK baffles me. I used someone else's mesh to make a different armor and it worked fine. The NIF file didn't even point to the right DDS files but it mysteriously works. So, with that much inconsistency, I don't even know where to start. I get this armor into the game and I shan't bother folks for at least a few weeks!

Yeah... I thought my way would work. Ah well.... :/ Thanks

So, I'm doing this basic thing in my mod where this Bandit surrenders and offers info. I'm using a scene for this. What I want it to do is that when the player walks into a trigger box it starts the scene. Event OnTriggerEnter(ObjectReference akTriggerRef) if akTriggerRef == Game.GetPlayer() debug.messagebox("It works") BanditSurrender.Start() endif EndEvent Only the scene doesn't start. I get the debug message, so I know the trigger fires. But the bandit doesn't move, he doesn't begin dialogue or obey his AI package. I know scenes can be started via events, but I don't know if they can be started by trigger events. Is that not possible? It seemed like the easiest way so that I had control over when and where the scene starts. Oh and the scene has no conditions on starting.

That's fascinating and disturbing. meshes\armor\imperiai\m\cuirasslight_0.nif That's the one I'm playing with. In Blender, if you go to the Links and Materials tab, and the ME: CuriassTrooperLight and click on the up/down arrow to go to Data/Browse, that's where I find this eyeball. But this helps me a lot by at least running down that it's not supposed to be there. So, now the question is did I mess up with editing the nif in NIfscope, did the import into Blender do something dumb or is it, as you say, something bad in the BSA unpacking. I'll start where you suggested and redo the BSA unpack. ETA: OMG, I think it works now. Thank you so much, EVERYONE. It seems to indeed have been a bad Blender install. Having started from scratch, I seem to have it working now. Just a quick and dirty test export, but it worked and that was more than I could do before. Thanks so much for the help. I really couldn't even guess what the issue was. Just knowing this wasn't a common glitch and that it was something that wasn't supposed to be there helped me so much. Thanks everyone!

Thank you for the response. I will do another re-load. But like I said, I kept hitting the "can't find Blender" error when I tried to re-install nifscripts. I'll report back with my results but I am not hopeful. The armor I am modding is the Imperial Light Cuirass. Again, I'd easily accept I did something dumb, but I did open the armor up again, clean without any alterations, and it had the eyeball.001.

This is going to be lengthy. Apologies in advance. So, for a long time I have struggled to get Blender and the half dozen apps it needs to all work in harmony so I can do some mesh edits. I finally seem to have something. I was able to import a body and an armor and adapt the armor the way I wanted. Then things went askew during the export process. Using this guide: http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Skyrim._Part_1 I made all the changes needed and added things like weights and UV and everything. As per the instructions, I selected everything and clicked on the "Scale and Rotation to ObData" option. When I clicked export, it errored saying I had not done the scale and rotation for the "eyeball.001", which was a surprise as there was no head in the body I was working with. It turned out that "eyeball.001" is some sort of tool. In the attached image, it's the black ball thing. Not sure what it's for. Anyway, I cannot do anything to eyeball.001. It won't do the scale and rotation because it has multiple users. When I try to change it to just have a single user, instead of editing the eyeball.001 object it makes a copy of the eyeball.001 object with my changes and leaves the eyeball.001 intact. I can't delete it because I can't select only it. The armor gets selected too. So this is basically an insurmountable barrier as is. My confusion is I don't even know where to start with the issue. I thought maybe the blender nif scripts weren't properly installed, but if that were the case, could I even import the armor? Is this eyeball object something that shouldn't even be there? And if not, why is it? How do I remove it? I know it's not a result of my edits, because I have imported a clean version of the armor and the eyeball is there from the start. Google has yielded zero results on this, which worries me because that indicates this is not a common issue and likely something I did wrong. Okay, now, full disclosure. The blender I am using is basically an all-in-one package thing. It came with the Pyffi already in it. I can't say for absolute certain if the nif scripts are installed correctly. But like I said, the armor and body import as normal. So the logical thing is to just install a basic version of Blender 2.49b and then add in the scripts myself, right? No dice. I wiped the blender package off my computer, installed straight blender 2.49b, installed Pyffi and then tried to install blender nifscripts and hit the "Blender not found" error. The install file for nifscripts was in the same folder with the blender.exe file, so that made no sense. Dowloaded and tried multiple copies of nifscripts 2.5.8 and 2.5.9 and hit the same exact problem. The programs I am using are Python 2.6.6, Blender 2.49b PyFFI 2.2.2 and Blender NifScripts 2.5.8 I just honestly don't even know what avenue to pursue here so I am hoping some wise computer person here can point me in the right direction.

It may seem like I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't, but you'd be amazed how many of these things I figure out myself. I bring that up because this question is more to get people's experiences so I can figure out what the eff is happening. So, I asked before about the Alias not overriding the NPC's idles. I found that, against all reason, by renaming the idles the problem went away. That's filed under, "I don't get it, but it's fixed now so I don't care." Sadly, the problem came up again and the rename fix ain't gonna cut it. So, firstly, do weird things happen when you assign multiple aliases to characters? Given how festively entertaining CK is, I'm guessing so. In this case, once again the alias is absolutely assigned and yet (again) the idle is not overriding the idles I just forced it to accept with the previous alias. Basically, I'm assigning a temp alias to have them follow the player around the house to meet people. I promised them I would return them in the same condition I found them, but they refuse to follow my character. Now, the frustrating thing here is this is one of the first things I ever did, this "follow the leader" thing and it worked fine. The only difference I can see is that when it worked before, the character only had one alias. Since there is no script command that I have been able to find, I don't know of any way to get the character to follow outside of an alias. I came up with what I thought was a terribly clever solution--I added the follow idle to the original alias, the one I first assigned them instead of the temp idle. Then I slapped a condition on it to only do that when the introduction quest thing was at Stage X. CK's response was to stop showing the dialogue at all, call me unflattering names and cast aspersions on my mother's honor. So I undid the little alias trick. And still no dialogue. I removed all the conditions from the dialogue. Nothing. Clearly, CK has been terribly offended by my ineptitude and wants me banned from using it. So the next question for you fine experienced folks is, what causes dialogue to not show up? I've got the SEQ thing handled. It's not the conditions. My only guess is that the quest itself is invalid in some way. Does that happen? It shows up when I ask the Console about it, so it's in the game somewhere. Another fun fact, I wrote the first topic for this dialogue tree, saved, loaded, tested to be sure I had it right. It showed up in game without a fuss. Then I went back in and added more dialogue, conditions, aliases, etc. That's when CK threw stuff at me. So, in conclusion,,,, Can NPCs have multiple aliases? Why won't aliases use the idle I asked them to use even when I do ForceRefTo and EvaluatePackage? What causes dialogue that was working to stop working? Can Quests not start because silly modders like me did something wrong and that is the root of all my problems? *tries some viruaul cupcakes this time* ETA: Okay, I hope I'm not annoying people here with my attempts at humor. Anyway, I found a solution to both my problems. I misunderstood the CK wiki when it talked about the "Optional" ticky box in the quest alias tab. For all intents and purposes, that ticky box must be ticked. There are involved things governing it, but in most applications it must be ticked. If it isn't, the dialogue won't show. As for aliases and using them to make people follow you around temporarily, I got the idea from the "Heart of Dibella" quest and didn't realize that really, the follow thing in the quest alias is not all that useful. Scenes though. Man, scenes are where it's at for temporarily overriding actors and their AI. If anyone is curious about it, I'll field questions for my fellow noobs. But I won't spam the board with the stuff just to sound like I know something. *slinks off to his shadows*

How sneaky!! Okay, I'll play with that. Much thanks!

Holy crap, really? Everything I read said the arrow indictated the direction the blood was spraying. Okay, I'll have to try that. Thank you!

I don't get it. And Google has yielded no results. I'm trying to add blood spatter to the ground as a clue for a mystery mod. According to the very thin Google results, even though the TEXT shows up as an arrow in the render window, it really really is a blood splatter. But nothing. I put in several in case they were too small to see, blew one up to huge size. Nada. Also according to my tiny Google results, I am supposed to be able to see the blood splatter as blood splatter if I go to the Show/Hide menu and click that I want to view decals. So I did that. Nothing. No sign of blood. Only arrows which lie and say they really will be blood in the game. Is my Skyrim/CK messed up in some way? I assume that is something amusing about needing to unpack the textures (and create ungodly clutter) in my Textures folder. I can live without seeing it, if so. But that shouldn't have any effect on adding blood splatter to the game.... RIght? Also, after ticking that I wanted to see decals, there was no "save preferences" button so I just closed the Show/Hide window which unticked the show decals thing. Is that normal? So.... Yeah. I'm hoping there is a Bloodologist here who specializes in putting blood splatter everywhere and can instruct me with something along the lines of, "Okay, doofus, you just do this. See?" *puts out a plate of cookies and waits*

Okay, so I'm new to modding but I've been studying mods and the scripts that power them and reading tons of helpful tutorials and watching videos so I have a reasonable grasp of the basics. This script I have should be working. It's based on another script which does work. Basically, I am trying to hire NPCs to be servants at my house. (Using the gorgeous Underground Bathhouse by Andragon) Basing my script and how it is used off of her script I came up with this (stripped down to save space, I removed the multiple repeats): {Pap Fragment:} (GetOwningQuest() AS TIGHouseServantInvite).NewServant(akSpeaker) {TIGHouseServantInvite Script:} GlobalVariable Property TIGGBServant01 Auto ReferenceAlias Property Servant01 Auto Faction Property ServantFaction Auto Function NewServant(Actor (Servant) If (TIGGBServant01() == 0) Servant01.ForceRefTo(Servant) TIGGBServant01.SetValueInt(1) {repeat a few times} Endif Guest.AddToFaction(ServantFaction) Guest.EvaluatePackage() EndFunction >>>>>>> So, the script saves and compiles without complaint. The script runs in game, which I know because the global variable does indeed switch from zero to one. And the character is added to the servant faction so there is no problem with akSpeaker knowing it is named Servant in the script. But what it refuses to do is attach the actor to the alias. I confirmed this by creating test dialogue with the condition that the actor had to be linked to the Reference Alias. Additionally, the character did not travel to the house in the way he should have, which tells me he is not using the AI packages in the alias. I also tested this with a follower by bringing them to the house, releasing them and then running the "be a servant" dialogue. They just went home. I have Googled this every way I can think of and every result is basically, "ForceRefTo" should work. So I guess I'm wondering if there is a thing where sometimes it just doesn't work because CK likes to be whimsical or something? My confusion is that there is no difference between my script and the original script save for the names given to the aliases and variables and so on. The aliases I use are set up identically to the ones in the script that work. And while I am no master coder, this is a pretty simple script--if there's a spot available, assign it to the speaker. I generally try to work these things out on my own, so I've never asked for help before so I hope I gave all the info required. I fully expect someone to point out something obvious I missed, but at this point, I'll just be grateful for the answer to the riddle. ETA: Found the solution. I don't really understand it, but there was something in the naming of the idles in the alias that seems to be the root of the conflict.