[SKY] Modified nif for Note not displaying text

[DanielCoffey]

I have been receiving help from Hanaisse to deal with the necessary workflow for modifying Skyrim Book and Journal meshes but I have hit an infuriating brick wall with the mesh for the Skyrim Note that is preventing me from progressing with the Book Covers Skyrim mod.

 

Below is part of the most recent conversation I have fired off to Hanaisse but since I am aware she will have her own work to deal with, I thought I would post here in the Study Hall and see if there is something obvious I am doing wrong.

 

I am using Blender 2.49b and the relevant NIFTools.

 

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So far I have taken a vanilla Note nif, changed the two header entries, stripped it and got it into Blender (it sprang open because of the odd skeleton on it). I assigned materials and so on, tidied a few vertices and redid all the UV mapping. Once exported back as a nif, I noticed that the Page Text object had altered its appearance (a floating grey plane above the Note itself but I had made no changes to it at all. It is probably how I have assigned the Materials to it.

 

Then all I did was transfer the two NiTriShapes (NoteFront and NoteBack) back into the original source nif and reassign the BSLightingShaderProperty blocks. I did not move over the Page Text object at all. When the note is opened in the inventory, the garish Template texture I created is displayed perfectly and the skeleton works but the note is completely blank. There is text ready to be displayed because if I revert to the vanilla mesh, there it is.

 

I am wondering if the words are being drawn just behind the texture? Do you think I could test this by making the texture transparent? The PageText object in the nif is completely unchanged.

 

If you have time to take a look in case I have done anything stupidly obvious, here are the files that I have been working with. I am aware that the Front and Back NiTriShapes share the same texture but I will fix it once I have got the text displaying so that the Inventory Note can be double-sided.

 

ZIP - 200Kb - http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/misc/Better Notes Mesh.zip

 

BNM_NoteInventory_ORIGINAL.nif - the original Skyrim Note nif

BNM_NoteInventory_STRIPPED.nif - All skyrim blocks stripped ready for import

BNM_NoteInventory_IMPORT.blend - the stripped nif imported into Blender with no changes yet

BNM_NoteInventory_EXPORT.blend - the re-worked note ready for export

BNM_NoteInventory_EXPORT.nif - the exported nif with no changes straight from Blender

BNM_NoteInventory_FINAL.nif - the original nif but with the Note Front and Note Back NiTriShapes injected into it to replace the originals

Textures \ NoteTemplate.dds - sample texture to test UV Mapping

 

Thanks in advance for helping with this... it is the last bit I need to do with the Book Covers Skyrim mod.

 

Daniel.

[DanielCoffey]

Hanaisse has got me past this issue.

 

When I copied a NiTriShape from one nif to another, it always messed up the name so I just renamed the new block to something more sensible and deleted the old ones. I guess there was a link between the Page Text section and the old String name that got broken when I deleted the old block.