Making longsword's blade longer

[ZuTheSkunk]

I have a mesh of longsword loaded in 3DSMax8 and I wish to make his blade and handguard longer, but due to fact I've never worked in this program before, I have no idea how to do that.

Please, create for me a detailed walktrough with screenshots included, if it's possible. I'm total newbie.

[ZuTheSkunk]

Bump.

Help me, please.

[grond]

Hi Zu, I don't use 3DSMax, but if you do some searching you'll find plenty of tutorials.

Here's a start.

I look forward to a [RELz] thread from you. Good luck!

[ZuTheSkunk]

I've actually managed to learn how to change size in single angles, even without tutorial - I've just don't noticed proper angle arrows before. I'm unable to test my changes in-game though, due to some temporary technical problems (graphic card permanently refused to cooperate). But even so, I've got two questions, and answers are probably hard to find by Google:

1. I've done something that hide those angle arrows, preventing me from scaling in single angles. How can I turn it back?

2. Collision mesh stays unchanged in NifScope, even if I've tried in 3DSMax to change his size to fit sword's new size. How can I force it to fit sword's model correctly?

[nateneurotic]

I've actually managed to learn how to change size in single angles, even without tutorial - I've just don't noticed proper angle arrows before. I'm unable to test my changes in-game though, due to some temporary technical problems (graphic card permanently refused to cooperate). But even so, I've got two questions, and answers are probably hard to find by Google:

1. I've done something that hide those angle arrows, preventing me from scaling in single angles. How can I turn it back?

2. Collision mesh stays unchanged in NifScope, even if I've tried in 3DSMax to change his size to fit sword's new size. How can I force it to fit sword's model correctly?

Hi there.

1. Since I'm not familiar with 3ds Max, I can't give you any specific information on how to bring back your axis/editing tools, but you really should check out the tutorials HERE for good Oblivion specific information for 3Ds Max.

2. As far as editing the collision for your new sword model, you can actually do that within Nifskope. Just locate the bhkcapsuleshape blocks and edit the y-values for point one and point two of the collision capsule. Here's a quick screenshot of the values you'll have to edit.

Hope this helps.

[ZuTheSkunk]

1. Since I'm not familiar with 3ds Max, I can't give you any specific information on how to bring back your axis/editing tools, but you really should check out the tutorials HERE for good Oblivion specific information for 3Ds Max.

Well, I've already figured out that I need to press X button to bring it back, but thank you for link - might be useful.

And great thanks for this NifScope solution! This is just what I've needed, works correctly.

[ZuTheSkunk]

(Sorry for double-posting.)

I'm afraid there's something that I've made wrong. The changed sword looks correctly, is holded correctly, and all this sort of things are correct, but still there some problem with collision mesh. After removing from inventory, sword levitates in air. But strangely, I can actually move and take his... invisible version. I assume that the sword mesh and his collision mesh are not combined with themselves. But how can I fix this problem? I'll be happy, if this problem can be fixed only by NifScope (but that's not required). Unfortunately, I don't know how to use this tutorial in this situation.

EDIT: I've got one more question, that's probably a matter of mesh, not texture. I've added new sheath for the mesh of Rugdumph's Sword, turning it into one-handed weapon at the same time. Everything looks okay, texture is displayed normally (I've already figured out how to create normal maps), character holds weapon correctly, sheath fits his body correctly... but I've noticed this. Sheathe is too shiny while standing in the sun, far more than the sword itself. What makes that difference and how can I fix it?

Edited March 24, 2010 by ZuTheSkunk

[Vince]

ZuTheSkunk, hopefully you were able to follow nateneurotic's advice and fix your collision. The shiny scabard is due to a too opaque normal map. The alpha value of the normal map controls the specular reflection. For dull surfaces like leather, you typically want the normal map to be about 95% transparent (alpha about 12). For the metal parts you may want more reflection, maybe an alpha of 25 to 50. If you use a uniform alpha value for your normal map, save it in DXT5 format. If some parts are more transparent than others, DXT3 will probably work best. Good luck.

[ZuTheSkunk]

ZuTheSkunk, hopefully you were able to follow nateneurotic's advice and fix your collision.

Well, the length of collision mesh is right now (looking at the NifScope at least), and I'm thankful for that, but still remains the problem of that it isn't combined with sword's mesh at all (see my previous post, first paragraph).

EDIT: Further description: When I drop the sword out of my equipment, then he levitates in the air and I can't even do anything with him, but at the same time, his invisible version lies on the ground (I even hear the sound of it) and THIS is what I can move and take. So it looks like the appearance of the sword and the collision mesh are not combined with themselves.

EDIT2: Here are the NIF-s with this problem. You can check them all, since all of them have the same issue.

EDIT3: Link changed into MediaFire one.

But thank you for information about normal map. It seems that I need to make a bit more experiments with that.

Edited March 25, 2010 by ZuTheSkunk

[nateneurotic]

Yikes, it looks like your .nif files are a bit messy. You have a lot of NiNodes stacked on top of other NiNodes and quite other bit of issues going on. My advice would be to take all the meshwork blocks (NiTriStrips, bhkCapsuleShape), and just replace a vanilla sword's blocks with yours.

1. Copy both of your bhkCapsuleShape blocks and paste them into the vanilla sword's .nif. Change the links under the bhkListShapes to you newly pasted bhkCapsuleShape blocks.

2. Copy all of your NiTriStrips and paste them into the vanilla sword's nif. Find the NiNode block which contains all the the vanilla sword's NiTriStrips and just relink the children to target your pasted NiTriStrips blocks from your sword model.

3. Delete all the the unlinked NiTriStrips and bhkCapsuleShape blocks from the vanilla sword.

Doing it this way will make your new sword, as far as nif attributes go, almost identical to a working vanilla mesh. For your sword with the scabbard, just remember to replace the scb NiNode's NiTriStrips block with your scb NiNode's NiTriStrips block. That pretty much should do it.

[ZuTheSkunk]

Great thanks to you, nateneurotic, with your solution I've finally get rid of this problem. Now my meshes looks like fully working.

I hope this is my last problem with changing original meshes...