A quick guide on how to break an armor (creating BU meshes)

[rad87]

There is a bunch of people that would like to make BU meshes but don't know blender enough to make it possible so I decided to make a quick and dirty tutorial. Keep in mind that I'm a blender noob (like a week or so experience working with it) so there might be better ways to do stuff.

 

1. Start blender and import the armor you want to break. Delete the skeleton.

 

2. Select the piece you want to work on and go into edit mode (press TAB). Go into faces selection either by pressing a button on your hotbar or by using CTRL+TAB and then selecting faces in the popup.

 

3. Imagine how you want the break to look like. For example lets say that I want to cut a hole similar to what was painted in red lines here.

 

 

 

As you can see the geometry of the mesh doesn't allow me to cut out a piece like that, and that the moment when knife subdivide tool comes to save the day.

 

4. Select faces that need to be subdivided to make our idea come true.

 

 

 

Now press SHIFT+K which brings up a popup window. Choose exact line option. Move your mouse near the corner you want to start a cut from and click left mouse button while holding CTRL (this makes the cut to snap to the nearest vertex). Do the same for the end of the cut. Now it should look like this:

 

 

 

The pink line shows where the cut will be made. To finalize the cut press ENTER. Repeat the process for the second cut needed. Now it should look like this.

 

 

 

Press A to deselect all.

 

5. Select the faces that you want to remove:

 

 

 

pres X, select faces.

 

And it's done!

 

 

 

Go out of edit mode (TAB). Press A until everything is selected.

Now import the skeleton (remember to select option 'Import skeleton only and parent to selected'). And when it's done importing you are ready to export. remember to export it to a different name so you don't overwrite the unbroken mesh. Name it for example cuirass1.nif

[movomo]

Hmm, can you edit this a bit? In a little bit more detail - because, even importing & exporting could be a pain for starters... like I did. Besides, sometimes BU meshes need new weightpainting.

 

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Anyway I link this to vanilla BU thread.

http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=13518

[rad87]

Hmm' date=' can you edit this a bit? In a little bit more detail - because, even importing & exporting could be a pain for starters... like I did. Besides, sometimes BU meshes need new weightpainting.

 

---------

Anyway I link this to vanilla BU thread.

http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=13518

[/quote']

 

Well I will in time turn this into a full tutorial. Right now it is targeted at guys and gals who know how to import nifs into blender. And about weightpainting I know almost nothing, apart from using bone weight copy script ;D

[Mailamea]

Seems good enough, although you might want to tell people where to find or the shortcut of knife subdivide tool for users who are beginning with blender.

 

Thanks very much. This is helpful

.

[rad87]

Seems good enough' date=' although you might want to tell people where to find or the shortcut of knife subdivide tool for users who are beginning with blender.

 

Thanks very much. This is helpful

.

[/quote']

 

well pressing shift+k brings up a knife subdivide popup

[Ark of Truth]

Extremely helpful Thanks!

[rad87]

Extremely helpful Thanks!

 

I'm glad it's helpful. As I said I might expand this tutorial in the future but right now I'm spending most of my free time creating bu meshes

[DeadSomething]

too bad one of the first lines reads "start blender" i wont learn how to work in that thing.

[rad87]

too bad one of the first lines reads "start blender" i wont learn how to work in that thing.

 

Once you get to know it it's quite good, but apart from that there are nif importers/exporters for 3DS Max and probbably other 3d modelling software. If you can set up one of those to work, and find a tool that offers same or similar functionality you are good to go

[DeadSomething]

well, i once edited some "Neverwinter Nights" models in 3dsmax but thats years ago - back then in 2004 i guess...

[Yvell]

Hmm' date=' can you edit this a bit? In a little bit more detail - because, even importing & exporting could be a pain for starters... like I did. Besides, sometimes BU meshes need new weightpainting.

 

---------

Anyway I link this to vanilla BU thread.

http://www.loverslab.com/showthread.php?tid=13518

[/quote']

 

Movomo's right, some like me are worst noob than you...

How to import armor and how to delete skeletton?