Making mesh moving with body?

[Thehunteroftruth]

hello there! as title says is there a way to do that just b using outfit studio? it does look fine in os but as soon as i walk in game there s lots of clipping, expecially on knee area. i know i could delete the body for armor that dooes use slot 33 but this is from aa modular piece, so not an option.

Thanks in advance!

[myuhinny]

You could try using outfit studios's increase mesh option on the spots where the clipping is at just make sure there are no seams in that area otherwise you'll open those seams up where 2 outfits come together that are not joined all into one piece.

[Thehunteroftruth]

On 2/9/2019 at 4:34 PM, myuhinny said:

You could try using outfit studios's increase mesh option on the spots where the clipping is at just make sure there are no seams in that area otherwise you'll open those seams up where 2 outfits come together that are not joined all into one piece.

thanks for answering! so increasing mesh is the only solution? cause like I said I can't see anything wrong in OS, so it would be a work of trial and error

[myuhinny]

You will not always be able to see any clipping in outfit studios because the model is just standing there not moving to see most clipping you have to be in game with the body moving squatting running to be able to see any clipping. With armors and outfits there should be X amount of a gap between the body and the armor/outfit to prevent clipping.

 

Another option you can try if there is no transparency in the area where the clipping is happening is to zap out the body underneath the armor/outfit using outfit studios which will delete out parts of the body underneath the armor/outfit.

[Thehunteroftruth]

On 2/10/2019 at 5:07 PM, myuhinny said:

You will not always be able to see any clipping in outfit studios because the model is just standing there not moving to see most clipping you have to be in game with the body moving squatting running to be able to see any clipping. With armors and outfits there should be X amount of a gap between the body and the armor/outfit to prevent clipping.

 

Another option you can try if there is no transparency in the area where the clipping is happening is to zap out the body underneath the armor/outfit using outfit studios which will delete out parts of the body underneath the armor/outfit.

Oh I see well I will try experimenting in OS then, wish there was a way to import some other poses in there, it would make everythin much smoother. Unfortunately zapping the stuff underneath is not really an option since I would either have to remove parts of my naked body or in alternative remove parts associated to other armors using slot 33, like some shoes do

[guk]

You haven't really said which outfit or which preset is causing the problem.

 

Assuming this is some kind of new or converted outfit - Did you actually copy the bone weights?

[Thehunteroftruth]

On 2/12/2019 at 2:52 PM, guk said:

You haven't really said which outfit or which preset is causing the problem.

 

Assuming this is some kind of new or converted outfit - Did you actually copy the bone weights?

It's a mod I downloaded, I'm not sure if it's a port from somewhere like daz or it was built from scratch. The preset causing it, is more or less regular cbbe, legs wise. I didn't copy any bone weight either

[guk]

On 2/15/2019 at 3:00 PM, Thehunteroftruth said:

It's a mod I downloaded, I'm not sure if it's a port from somewhere like daz or it was built from scratch. The preset causing it, is more or less regular cbbe, legs wise. I didn't copy any bone weight either

If it is an outfit made with an older version of CBBE, try copying the bone weights again. I know Ousnius improved that function greatly in an update sometime in the past year or so.

Automatic weight copy is never a final & perfect result and might need more manual edits, but it's worth giving it a try.

 

 

Open the project in Outfit Studio, then you should see this:

 

 

"Copy Bone Weights", not "Copy Selected Weights" like in the screenshot

 

(although you can also copy just the leg bones with that)

[Thehunteroftruth]

7 hours ago, guk said:

If it is an outfit made with an older version of CBBE, try copying the bone weights again. I know Ousnius improved that function greatly in an update sometime in the past year or so.

Automatic weight copy is never a final & perfect result and might need more manual edits, but it's worth giving it a try.

 

 

Open the project in Outfit Studio, then you should see this:

 

 

"Copy Bone Weights", not "Copy Selected Weights" like in the screenshot

 

(although you can also copy just the leg bones with that)

Thanks for answering! I think I managed to do that, right?

 

 

 

 

tough I get a popup saying this

 

 

upload image
 

 

what should i do now?

 

also how to copy just the leg bones?

[guk]

Hit "OK", after OS is done (should be instant) you would save the project. Go back to Bodyslide (may have to close and restart it to refresh the outfit), build it, and test in game.

If the clipping gets worse, you can simply restore the reference meshes from the original mod.

 

To copy only specific bones, you would click on the "Bones" button in the top-right corner, then select bones you want to copy. IIRC you can select multiple bones with Shift or Control.

Then you use "Copy Selected Weights" instead.

 

 

 

 

To improve the weighting, you could first try to use different search radius and/or vertex targets. Otherwise you would have to do some manual weight painting. It's quite easy once you understand how the bone / vertex weights work:

 

 

For starters - to explain the technical terms: A "mesh" actually consists of "vertices", which are geometrically defined points in a 3-dimensional space (X/Y/Z coordinates).

Each vertex becomes connected to its neighbors so they form triangles, and the area of these triangles is then used as a plain surface to display textures.

So for any work on bone weights, the only thing you will be editing are the vertices.

 

 

Take a look at the bare CBBE reference body mesh in Outfit Studio, press L and T to disable Lights and Textures. Open the Bones tab, and click on all the bones one by one.

On the CBBE body, you will see different "color temperatures" popping up which are different with each selected bone.

 

What these colors mean:
Within the body, there is an invisible "skeleton" consisting of "bones", and these connect the skeletal joints which are moved and rotated to create animations.

The colors on the CBBE body represent how much each vertex should move along with the associated bone for animations and poses.

You can also move the mouse over any vertex in weight paint mode, this will display the exact values in the tooltip (so you can understand the relation between the colors and the real values).

 

 

So let's say the clipping happens in front of the knees, then you probably have to increase some of the bone weights on the affected vertices.

Which bones exactly are responsible for the clipping, and how much you have to increase them, might require a lot of trial and error. Problem is that Fallout 4 has a lot more bones than for example Skyrim, and they may be arranged in a strange fashion in some areas (hence the knee bend problems with CBBE).

You can also smoothen the transitions between weights, to make the animations look more natural in game.

 

[Thehunteroftruth]

On 2/17/2019 at 6:37 PM, guk said:

Hit "OK", after OS is done (should be instant) you would save the project. Go back to Bodyslide (may have to close and restart it to refresh the outfit), build it, and test in game.

If the clipping gets worse, you can simply restore the reference meshes from the original mod.

 

To copy only specific bones, you would click on the "Bones" button in the top-right corner, then select bones you want to copy. IIRC you can select multiple bones with Shift or Control.

Then you use "Copy Selected Weights" instead.

 

 

 

 

To improve the weighting, you could first try to use different search radius and/or vertex targets. Otherwise you would have to do some manual weight painting. It's quite easy once you understand how the bone / vertex weights work:

 

 

For starters - to explain the technical terms: A "mesh" actually consists of "vertices", which are geometrically defined points in a 3-dimensional space (X/Y/Z coordinates).

Each vertex becomes connected to its neighbors so they form triangles, and the area of these triangles is then used as a plain surface to display textures.

So for any work on bone weights, the only thing you will be editing are the vertices.

 

 

Take a look at the bare CBBE reference body mesh in Outfit Studio, press L and T to disable Lights and Textures. Open the Bones tab, and click on all the bones one by one.

On the CBBE body, you will see different "color temperatures" popping up which are different with each selected bone.

 

What these colors mean:
Within the body, there is an invisible "skeleton" consisting of "bones", and these connect the skeletal joints which are moved and rotated to create animations.

The colors on the CBBE body represent how much each vertex should move along with the associated bone for animations and poses.

You can also move the mouse over any vertex in weight paint mode, this will display the exact values in the tooltip (so you can understand the relation between the colors and the real values).

 

 

So let's say the clipping happens in front of the knees, then you probably have to increase some of the bone weights on the affected vertices.

Which bones exactly are responsible for the clipping, and how much you have to increase them, might require a lot of trial and error. Problem is that Fallout 4 has a lot more bones than for example Skyrim, and they may be arranged in a strange fashion in some areas (hence the knee bend problems with CBBE).

You can also smoothen the transitions between weights, to make the animations look more natural in game.

 

Wow wow wow! This is a lot of useful info right here, I can't tell you how much I'm grateful for that! 

 

I did like you said, tough it didn't let me copy weights if I had the cbbe reference selected, I also just exported the nif, no idea what is that export project thing, never used it, hope I didn't mess up anything there. I'm really surprised how this worked out, sure it didn't solve everything but I can say that 90% of the clipping is gone, which is great for just pressing a button. the same trick even worked for some other items that even while still in game would display lots of clipping. The thing is, where is the catch with this? I cannot really believe that mod authors didn't do this themself since it's super easy.

 

I also took a look at the bones tab, and the temp thing, had no idea it existed, tough I may need some more help with that, for starters how do you see the value while hovering over the interested area? I just see the vertex count and secondly how to do you affect the weights in that area and soothen transitions between weights, like you said? Sorry for the many questions, hope it's not too much and thanks again for help!!

[guk]

1) If it doesn't let you copy the weights, you have to switch back to the mesh list and select the specific mesh(es) you want to copy the weights to.

Weight copy can only be done from the Reference into other meshes. The reference is always the green mesh in the list.

 

2) You have to overwrite the original project you are editing, so Bodyslide can make use of your edits. Don't worry, if you mess anything up you can always restore the original mod.

 

3) As mentioned above, the weight copy process was improved a lot at some point. Any mods done with an older version are going to have much worse weight painting.

The weight painting could also be done with Blender, Mesh Rigger etc. which might be better or worse. Or maybe some authors don't care how well the things animate ingame.

 

4) The catch is, that the automatic weight paint / copy can really mess things up. This is because it doesn't "know" how an outfit should animate, it only does geometrical calculations.

 

For example if any parts of the outfit are supposed to move in a rigid manner (example: a pistol holster, or a bell on a neck choker), the weight copy will just extrapolate the weights so these will stretch in weird ways when animated.

Or any outfits with very complex, extensive shapes (like the Daedric Armor in Skyrim) might additionally not get fully painted, which causes severe bugs in the game. Coats or skirts would be a such a candidate in FO4.

 

5) Been a while since i used Outfit Studio productively; the mentioned tooltip displaying the weight values is probably at the bottom of the viewport.

If you are in weight paint mode, you can choose to either increase or decrease the selected bone weight. Press Space to access the brush settings, and there are more keyboard shortcuts in the menu (like Shift, Alt etc).

There also is a setting to paint with a fixed weight, IIRC the option for that was an extra button on the right of the screen (below the mesh/bones list).

 

 

Or, since you now got a bit into the basics, you could look for some tutorial videos.

[Thehunteroftruth]

12 hours ago, guk said:

1) If it doesn't let you copy the weights, you have to switch back to the mesh list and select the specific mesh(es) you want to copy the weights to.

Weight copy can only be done from the Reference into other meshes. The reference is always the green mesh in the list.

 

2) You have to overwrite the original project you are editing, so Bodyslide can make use of your edits. Don't worry, if you mess anything up you can always restore the original mod.

 

3) As mentioned above, the weight copy process was improved a lot at some point. Any mods done with an older version are going to have much worse weight painting.

The weight painting could also be done with Blender, Mesh Rigger etc. which might be better or worse. Or maybe some authors don't care how well the things animate ingame.

 

4) The catch is, that the automatic weight paint / copy can really mess things up. This is because it doesn't "know" how an outfit should animate, it only does geometrical calculations.

 

For example if any parts of the outfit are supposed to move in a rigid manner (example: a pistol holster, or a bell on a neck choker), the weight copy will just extrapolate the weights so these will stretch in weird ways when animated.

Or any outfits with very complex, extensive shapes (like the Daedric Armor in Skyrim) might additionally not get fully painted, which causes severe bugs in the game. Coats or skirts would be a such a candidate in FO4.

 

5) Been a while since i used Outfit Studio productively; the mentioned tooltip displaying the weight values is probably at the bottom of the viewport.

If you are in weight paint mode, you can choose to either increase or decrease the selected bone weight. Press Space to access the brush settings, and there are more keyboard shortcuts in the menu (like Shift, Alt etc).

There also is a setting to paint with a fixed weight, IIRC the option for that was an extra button on the right of the screen (below the mesh/bones list).

 

 

Or, since you now got a bit into the basics, you could look for some tutorial videos.

thanks for clarifying that point! so it's just for the conversion in bodyslide, but as I see it since i removed the orginal mod, I think backing up the nif before doing the edit, can work as well since I don't plan to change again body, after all the tweaks i had to do to each clothing piece.

 

Oh tough people making mods were using more professional tools like 3ds and such, didn't know they used OS for that as well. I also get your point about effects it can have on clothing but nothing regarding performance, right?

 

If you can link me some easy to understand newbie friendly tutorial or video  I would gladly appreciate by the way

 

In any case I got this message just before when trying to edit a mesh

 

 

 

 

How can that happen after I copyed the weights, did I miss any extra step?

 

Oh by the way the remove texture button has been of great help, it makes things much easier to spot

[guk]

Managing the projects can be a bit difficult, in most other creative software you would simply save incrementally to keep backups for each work step (like version 0001, 0002 etc) but with Outfit Studio you would have to use "Save Project As..." and then manually change the filepaths/names.

I would recommend to just save manual backups of the work files instead, copy them to your own backup folders.

 

For the tutorials, you should check the Bodyslide pages on Nexus; or just search on YouTube. I learned all the things i know over the years by either figuring it out myself, or asking Ousnius when something wasn't documented or lacked features (like the fixed weight paint brush or the 2D / FoV camera settings which were suggested by me).

 

 

The unweighted vertices are essential:

 

If that message pops up, say "No" to saving. Instead you should now examine the mesh very closely, and try to spot all masked vertices (they are darker than the others).

Then you Invert the mask, and manually paint these vertices in a similar "color" like the surrounding vertices. The fixed weight brush and/or the weight smoothing are best for this.

Repeat this until OS no longer gives that message when trying to save.

 

If you don't fix these, there will be severe glitches ingame, because the engine would lack information what to do with these vertices.

 

 

BTW, on top of T and L shortcuts, W for Wireframe can also be very useful to keep track of the actual shape of the mesh.

[Thehunteroftruth]

7 hours ago, guk said:

Managing the projects can be a bit difficult, in most other creative software you would simply save incrementally to keep backups for each work step (like version 0001, 0002 etc) but with Outfit Studio you would have to use "Save Project As..." and then manually change the filepaths/names.

I would recommend to just save manual backups of the work files instead, copy them to your own backup folders.

 

For the tutorials, you should check the Bodyslide pages on Nexus; or just search on YouTube. I learned all the things i know over the years by either figuring it out myself, or asking Ousnius when something wasn't documented or lacked features (like the fixed weight paint brush or the 2D / FoV camera settings which were suggested by me).

 

 

The unweighted vertices are essential:

 

If that message pops up, say "No" to saving. Instead you should now examine the mesh very closely, and try to spot all masked vertices (they are darker than the others).

Then you Invert the mask, and manually paint these vertices in a similar "color" like the surrounding vertices. The fixed weight brush and/or the weight smoothing are best for this.

Repeat this until OS no longer gives that message when trying to save.

 

If you don't fix these, there will be severe glitches ingame, because the engine would lack information what to do with these vertices.

 

 

BTW, on top of T and L shortcuts, W for Wireframe can also be very useful to keep track of the actual shape of the mesh.

ye that's what i'm already doing making backups of the nif file just before i exports, of course that depends if I already took the time to fix some stuff with the model, if that's not the case i simply rebuild the file with bodyslide

 

Thanks for that suggestion i'll have a deep look at it, hopefully i will understand more

 

I assume that part black part is the affected area right? With vertex mode enables it shows that area having 2 red vertex, which if i remember well, means that they are masked already. Where do I find the fixed weight brush or the weight smoothing brush by the way?

 

 

 

 

Tough how can that part be affected by the copy weights if the body mesh doesn't even come with a neck shape? Should I even go on with that or do I have to import like the head and do something else?

 

Thanks for the other shortcuts, they will surely be useful

 

[guk]

 

 

 

Seems like there are a lot of bone weights converging at the neck seam, i count at least 6.

You could actually copy the headmesh in there just to see which weights would have to be around the collar (don't save the project afterwards). Otherwise i would look at other outfits with a collar and check how they got that layout done.

 

Well the automated weight copy works best for outfits that wrap the body until below the neck seam, with enough vertices to match the base body. If the outfit would have, let's say a really high and tight collar going up to the jaw and ears, you definitely would have to copy the weights from the headmesh as well. I think this is also why the Marine Helmet and Wetsuit (Far Harbor) don't have anything on the neck, because Bethesda is so god damn lazy.

[Thehunteroftruth]

On 2/20/2019 at 3:53 AM, guk said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

Seems like there are a lot of bone weights converging at the neck seam, i count at least 6.

You could actually copy the headmesh in there just to see which weights would have to be around the collar (don't save the project afterwards). Otherwise i would look at other outfits with a collar and check how they got that layout done.

 

Well the automated weight copy works best for outfits that wrap the body until below the neck seam, with enough vertices to match the base body. If the outfit would have, let's say a really high and tight collar going up to the jaw and ears, you definitely would have to copy the weights from the headmesh as well. I think this is also why the Marine Helmet and Wetsuit (Far Harbor) don't have anything on the neck, because Bethesda is so god damn lazy.

Oh wow, how were you able to figure that out? I just count like 4 red vertex, it really sucks not being able to figure this stuff out myself. How do I copy the headmesh by the way, I have no idea where is it even located.

 

Regarding weight painting, I have a question; on a different outfit, it gave me the same exact problem, so I did like you said, inverted the mask, went to bone table, checked fixed weight brush and applyed the brush over that area. Now I have no idea what else to do, but I clearly missed some other thing, tryed even looking at some tutorial but didn't find much.

[guk]

1) Use something like the BSA Browser, export the headmesh from Fallout 4's meshes BA2.

Then with your Project loaded, use "Load Outfit..." with the option "From File" and then below "Keep other shapes" ticked.

With this you can also create mash-ups from different items. Just remember to not save the project after adding anything that isn't supposed to be in the final project.

 

 

2) Well you would just save the project. Then restart Bodyslide (to force the project being refreshed) and hit Build.

If it keeps giving that unweighted vertex error when you save, you have to keep looking for other spots.

And if it just doesn't animate properly, there are other bone weights missing. You may have noticed that most vertices have more than 1 bone weight applied.

[Thehunteroftruth]

23 hours ago, guk said:

1) Use something like the BSA Browser, export the headmesh from Fallout 4's meshes BA2.

Then with your Project loaded, use "Load Outfit..." with the option "From File" and then below "Keep other shapes" ticked.

With this you can also create mash-ups from different items. Just remember to not save the project after adding anything that isn't supposed to be in the final project.

 

 

2) Well you would just save the project. Then restart Bodyslide (to force the project being refreshed) and hit Build.

If it keeps giving that unweighted vertex error when you save, you have to keep looking for other spots.

And if it just doesn't animate properly, there are other bone weights missing. You may have noticed that most vertices have more than 1 bone weight applied.

Interesting, looks like I do really have a lot to learn :)