Turning this file into hair

[DiscordOfSound]

Well, I'm back at it again. For some reason I was never able to import my custom head into the CK, so I went with editing the face in race menu. It's definately not as refined as using 3ds max, but it at least works.

 

So, here comes my next project. Adding the hair. The thing is, for this character, I can't use any of the hairs of the game (mods or otherwise) as it will subtract big time from my goal. Thus, I needed to use just the "Hair". The hair being leaves. Now, I followed this tutorial 

to help me get most of the way. Weighting and conforming the hair to a male head and using one of Apachii's male hairs as a guide. Great! Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Get it into NifScope, and made the adjustments necessary. Not too hard and the textures even showed up! I found out a reason I was getting just white instead of textures was due to the original .dds file not being shaped properly, even though the UV map was just fine in Max. No prob, import those puppies over to Photoshop and make them fit the size of one of apachii's hair .dds files. Perfect! Textures are sitting pretty, I see the skeleton nodes are there, and there's no holes in the mesh. Alright, save that sucker as a .nif and make the two .obj as per the tutorial. 

 

Next was Conformulator. Oh boy, seems like we ran into a problem. Program's not reading the faces error? Hm, Odd, faces seem fine to me. What do the other hair .tri files look like. Huh, only one obj in the file? Pretty much what's going to be for this hair.  Then I'll go ahead and make another .obj to turn into a .tri file using TriCreator. Works, so let's get this f**ker into the CK!

 

Import it into the CK, pull up a rando male norn to test it out and.....

 

.... Nothing.

No Hair anywhere to be seen. Utterly invisible. Entirely see through. Very much not there.

 

Hmmm... Go back to check in NifScope, and the .nif is just fine, showing off those textures and no invis vertexes. 

 

I keep going back and forth with this, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Is it because it's not a premade hair, or from a mod? Shouldn't be the case. What about flipped vertexes. No, I already made sure the vertexes were facing the right way, double checking between max and blender. Shoot, I've been at this all day and feel like I'm hitting my head against wall at this point. I even looked through pages and pages on google to see if anyone else had this issue or a solution.

 

Not. A. Darn. Thing.

 

So, that brings me here. I'm uploading the files to see if someone, anyone who knows how to make hair, if they wouldn't mind taking a look at these and perhaps turning it into hair for my custom male norn (which will eventually get turned into a follower mod). I'm admittedly very much a novice at this, no, below novice as this is my first time trying to make a mod for Skyrim. Biting off more than I can chew is an understatement. Heck, I'd be happy if someone just told me where I screwed up and point out a solution. Any bit of info would help to be honest and very, very appreciated.

 

[DiscordOfSound]

So, just a little update. I went back into NifScope, and as I sat down to eat my dinner, I thought... "Hm, could try saving this without the alpha map maybe?"

 

Bam... shows up in the CK. Guess the alpha map was just too powerful.

 

Anywho, I still have to get it imported into the game so we'll see how that goes.

 

[RomeoZero]

1 hour ago, DiscordOfSound said:

So, just a little update. I went back into NifScope, and as I sat down to eat my dinner, I thought... "Hm, could try saving this without the alpha map maybe?"

 

Bam... shows up in the CK. Guess the alpha map was just too powerful.

 

Anywho, I still have to get it imported into the game so we'll see how that goes.

 

Adjust in 3dmax your hair to align with the head properly and export, in nifskope open your hair* and choose NiTriShape to [file > export]  export as obj for making hairname.tri file support, open CK and create new hair using vanilla male hairs as a reference file. I dont remember if you really need to use for obj Skyrim hair morph tool to make TRI file,as I have read that the obj can be used simply as a renamed tri.

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Working_with_Skyrim_head_TRIs
Don't forget -  for hairline you will need another BSLightingShader set of flags 1~2 with alphas [4333\4844].Look them in variable hair mods.

Hairs of course need their set of DismemberSkin data [31 hair\41 hairline] in your meshes when in 3dmax.So that engine will render them visible. 

[DiscordOfSound]

18 hours ago, RomeoZero said:

Adjust in 3dmax your hair to align with the head properly and export, in nifskope open your hair* and choose NiTriShape to [file > export]  export as obj for making hairname.tri file support, open CK and create new hair using vanilla male hairs as a reference file. I dont remember if you really need to use for obj Skyrim hair morph tool to make TRI file,as I have read that the obj can be used simply as a renamed tri.

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Working_with_Skyrim_head_TRIs
Don't forget -  for hairline you will need another BSLightingShader set of flags 1~2 with alphas [4333\4844].Look them in variable hair mods.

Hairs of course need their set of DismemberSkin data [31 hair\41 hairline] in your meshes when in 3dmax.So that engine will render them visible. 

Hey, thanks for the response! The "hair" was able to be imported in, though is far too glossy IMO, like Mr. Clean's bald head sort of shiny. Unfortunately, I have to reverse all my steps to get the hair back into 3ds Max  to flip and flatten the top down, maybe add more polys to keep it from looking so blocky in some parts. At this point it looks a little too suburban wine mom fluffy.

 

But that was the problem with the hair disappearing in CK, using Apachii's hair as a base in Nif for what lines to include, the Alpha ended up rendering it invisible. See, there's not supposed to be any invisible parts, as it's all made of leaves (sorta like a spriggan). Only downfall is either the textures are looking almost black and white, or they have super high gloss, something I have to tinker with when re-importing the fixed hair. Pretty sure I have to start all over, which is good as I'll get more practice in, as just importing the already made .nif and flipping it might mess up the skeleton too.

 

I also want to export the head I save in racemenu and fix the bottom lip/nose tip in max as the racemenu sculpting tool is not quite cutting it for those bits. Luckily, that shouldn't be too hard! 

 

[RomeoZero]

1 hour ago, DiscordOfSound said:

I also want to export the head I save in racemenu and fix the bottom lip/nose tip in max as the racemenu sculpting tool is not quite cutting it for those bits. Luckily, that shouldn't be too hard! 

 

For a more quality head sculpting, Citrus made his mod " Citrus high poly heads" for Racemenu.
Specular gloss for hair is controlled via flag 2 [anisotropic_lighting] with spec map alpha channel in normal map. Variable hair mods do not have the right shader params for hair shader so don't use them as a copy reference. In order to make a realistic looking hair shader you need to learn about NIfskope BSLightingShader flags 1\2 via Nifskope interactive help or online. Also, shaders depend on ENB light parameters, so use vanilla Skyrim for testing first.

You can use both 4844 alpha flag with threshold 50~70 for both hair and Hairline meshes for CK to TEST render if you have issues.Go back to 4333 with flag 1 [Decal\dynamic D] on hair\hairline [ dont remember the order] in game after testing.

[DiscordOfSound]

1 hour ago, RomeoZero said:

For a more quality head sculpting, Citrus made his mod " Citrus high poly heads" for Racemenu.
Specular gloss for hair is controlled via flag 2 [anisotropic_lighting] with spec map alpha channel in normal map. Variable hair mods do not have the right shader params for hair shader so don't use them as a copy reference. In order to make a realistic looking hair shader you need to learn about NIfskope BSLightingShader flags 1\2 via Nifskope interactive help or online. Also, shaders depend on ENB light parameters, so use vanilla Skyrim for testing first.

You can use both 4844 alpha flag with threshold 50~70 for both hair and Hairline meshes for CK to TEST render if you have issues.Go back to 4333 with flag 1 [Decal\dynamic D] on hair\hairline [ dont remember the order] in game after testing.

Oh, I think I have Citrus downloaded, but not installed via nmm yet. I pulled it open and it does have way more polys to work with compared to the normal head mesh, so I'm guessing the amount of control I'll have in Sculpt should possibly double. I'll give that a go instead of exporting the head.

 

As for the hair, apparently 3ds max found my lack of faith disturbing and the hair foliage flipped without touching the bones. I also went ahead and re-added the alpha channel in nifscope and replaced the "1" in maps to the 4890 something number. Also followed some information here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/. Seemed to show up just fine in CK and in game... except for one... odd... issue. The texture is now very dark grey scale instead of the green tones. I've been poking at what might be causing that, though it could be something to do with a line not set right in Nif. I will keep poking though.

 

[RomeoZero]

When you set a main hair shader, you can turn on vertex colors [on by def in Nifskope when exporting from max] in Nitrishape with its shader flag 2 and use hair tint to control the color gamut of your mesh.

[DiscordOfSound]

2 hours ago, RomeoZero said:

When you set a main hair shader, you can turn on vertex colors [on by def in Nifskope when exporting from max] in Nitrishape with its shader flag 2 and use hair tint to control the color gamut of your mesh.

Shader flags.... I'm posting a screenshot of what I think you're talking about. Shader flag 1 was set at 2185233155, while Shader flag 2 was sitting at 32785. However in Nitrishape, Has Shader is set to no. So these three need to be changed? 

 

Oh, btw, Citrus head works with all the heads, except for the custom race head mod, but I'm sure there's a fix for it.

[RomeoZero]

Yes in BSLightingShader section but those numbers are not suppose to exist. Make sure you are using latest Nifskope 2.0 dev 7 to open nif files. 3dmax export meshes with default params, not random digits.

Example in a WIG [ignore envmap_light flag - old hair]
 

Spoiler

 

 

Save screenshots.

where decal flags are - alpha flag 4333 (128 threshold)

[DiscordOfSound]

11 hours ago, RomeoZero said:

Yes in BSLightingShader section but those numbers are not suppose to exist. Make sure you are using latest Nifskope 2.0 dev 7 to open nif files. 3dmax export meshes with default params, not random digits.

Example in a WIG [ignore envmap_light flag - old hair]
 

  Hide contents

 

 

Save screenshots.

where decal flags are - alpha flag 4333 (128 threshold)

HA! Downloading the latest Nifscope did the trick, I was able to copy the BSLightingShaderProperty and tweek the gloss strength and use the color palate, plus imput what you added in the shader flags and that did the trick.  Thank you so much for your invaluable help! I'll be fussing with the face texture, and possibly see if I can get Citrus head working with Custom Race as I have the bottom lip and nose tip to sculpt properly. Again, thank you so much!

enb 2019_07_04 16_10_23_91.bmp

[DiscordOfSound]

Ah, now I'm back with a new problem. So, I used the RaceMenu to export the head, as well as making a .npc file with SPF. Following the nif merge tutorial, and the NPC creation tutorial, I'm finding that the head is quite messed up, i.e. the neck is sitting on top of the head. Not quite how anatomy works. And this is viewing it in the CK. If I open the nif file in Nifscope, it looks fine. I'm wondering if this is an issue due to using the Custom Race mod instead of the regular race mods. I'm going to test this out on standard Nord and see if it still has the problem.

[RomeoZero]

there are 2 files in mod, for the gameplay and for CK making NPC.

Also hit "Like" for respect ;) 

[DiscordOfSound]

1 hour ago, RomeoZero said:

there are 2 files in mod, for the gameplay and for CK making NPC.

Also hit "Like" for respect ;) 

Ye, I have the SKSE folder with the preset nif/.dds files, and I also created a .npc file which I should be able to import. Unfortunately, when I import the head, it falls through the neck, thus neck on top of the head. I followed these tutorials:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Using_a_face_made_with_RaceMenu_on_an_NPC_for_Skyrim

https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Adding_a_Follower_NPC_to_Skyrim

 

As well as the NifMerge tutorial. Unfortunately the imported head remains default when creating an actor in CK, and when importing the head to a head parts section, I get get the above result. I can try making the head with a different hair to see if that's where the issue is coming from, and if so, I'm guessing the hair may need a scalp mesh layer. 

 

On a side note, CK absolutely will not open CustomRaces.

[DiscordOfSound]

Yeah, that attempt with using a different hair for the character didn't have any impact. The head can't be imported, and the .npc file fails to translate the character model, with or without using standard norn or custom norn race as the base. I saw some people suggest using ECE and exporting to a cme file, unfortunately I don't use ECE, and would be unable to import the preset I made through ECE anyway (Tried this a bit earlier). 

 

Using NifMerge, when I check in Nifscope after using the merge, I can see the change, yet there's no option in CK to import that nif file instead of default norn head. And going the route of making a custom race with custom head, we land back in either a janky head, or just eyes and teeth.

[Swe-DivX]

On 7/5/2019 at 7:30 AM, DiscordOfSound said:

Yeah, that attempt with using a different hair for the character didn't have any impact. The head can't be imported, and the .npc file fails to translate the character model, with or without using standard norn or custom norn race as the base. I saw some people suggest using ECE and exporting to a cme file, unfortunately I don't use ECE, and would be unable to import the preset I made through ECE anyway (Tried this a bit earlier). 

 

Using NifMerge, when I check in Nifscope after using the merge, I can see the change, yet there's no option in CK to import that nif file instead of default norn head. And going the route of making a custom race with custom head, we land back in either a janky head, or just eyes and teeth.

Do you want to export e present from Racemenu and use it on a playable race? Use the standard head in Racemenu and import your work, then export. Create a obj in Bodyslide. Now use Blender and create a head race tri from that obj.