Extracting FO4 models for external rendering

[Noverius]

Goal: 

• I am trying to import FO4's deathclaw model with it's associated skeleton into Blender so I can animate and render it using Eevee/Cycles.

Problems: 

• Blender 2.79/2.8 does not support .NIF import.
• Fallout 4 stores mesh and skeleton data separately - the data needs to be combined somehow to create a complete poseable rig.
• The use of paid [and trial, cracked or pirated] software is off the table.  I would sooner put the money towards a house and I'm not willing to commit a crime just for a bit of fun.  This means no Maya, 3DS Max or C4D.  Period.

 

Thus far all the tutorials I've been able to find either describe importing the mesh data only, or require $795.

 

FO4AK appears to rely exclusively on a Max plugin for NIF import - and Max itself for core functionality.  It seems Blender used to have a similar [or the same?] import plugin known as NIFtools 2.5.9/2.6, but from what I gather it's now defunct.  Stable support ended at Blender 2.49 and allegedly it doesn't fully support Skyrim/FO4 NIF files.

 

The current external methods of importing FO4 NIF files I've found thus far are:

• [NIF] -> Bodyslide -> [OBJ] -> Blender 2.8
• [NIF] -> NIFskope -> [OBJ] -> Blender 2.8
• [NIF] -> Noesis -> [DAE] -> Blender 2.8

 

Noesis appears to do the best job by far at preserving the NIF's data - except for flipping the UV maps upside-down ?.  This technique gets me just about everything I need except the parent hierarchy and vertex weight data for the bones... naturally that's stored in Skeleton.NIF.

Spoiler

 

 

Is there any way to take the data from Skeleton.NIF and plug it into the data tree inside Blender?  So far I haven't had any success with importing the file.

Or does anyone know of a complete workflow that they would like to share?

Thanks.

 

EDIT:

 

I was able to get the data in Skeleton.NIF to import successfully.  Now I just need some help figuring out how to integrate it with the existing data in Deathclaw.NIF.

It appears that Deathclaw.NIF's bones contain the weight data, while Skeleton.NIF contains the parent hierarchy.  I'm not sure how to combine them.