Adding earrings to an ear mesh

[Myst42]

Another question i was trying to make an ear model and add a lot of earrings to it, the ear base mesh is the lop ear elf mesh

 

Everything was ok, managed to make the earrings, and the model exists and its textured but i cant get it to work in game

 

i noticed that there are three files which are vital when it comes to ears: .nif, .tri and .egt

 

I have 2 versions of the nif file, one has separate meshes for the ears and earrings the other is one single mesh.

The first one i thought would be easier to use cause the ears use the ear texture with "skin" material property, so they are retextured by race's ear skin texture while the earrings use a different texture with another material property name, so they are not retextured

The second one has it all mixed so only one material name property: "skin" so even the earrings get retextured

 

It was utterly impossible to even begin to see something similar to a working file with the first version so i turned to the second and i got the problem with the texture, now the earrings at least show up but they dont look like earrings cause the have the same texture as the ears

 

I noticed some existing mods with this structure such a some ears found in xenius's race mods (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/29103)

and i looked at them and they are made in one single mesh, also one texture

 

So how can i get it working? which method is the one that gets me some results and what do i do to fix it?

 

anybody help please?

 

PS: theres an pic of my race tweak prototype, nitice the earrings looking exactly like the skin

[vashar]

I would assume that the meshes for the ears in Xenius's race have a texture that supports the earrings. Unless the mesh you're using does too, it will be either skin coloured or black/white. I would suggest you use multiple meshes- What caused problems when you had more than one mesh?

[Myst42]

I think it was the .egt file. The ears looked invisible and the earrings looked like nothing with any sense at all, the texture i placed on them is golden but they looked silver and all distorted

 

Made a new attempt just now with no reconformuleted file, just the original .egm and .egt files from the lop ears and the nif is the lop ear original plus the earrings mesh... now the earrings are invisible

 

And no i dont think this texture supports earrings, its just lop ear texture, i made one containing both ear and gold texture but i dont think it has what it takes for a texture to really support earrings, even the gold texture looks like skin in game...

[gregathit]

I have never messed with the egm, tri nor egt files but I do modify nif files all the time. Make sure your earrings have a name "other" than skin for the material property. If the nif file won't let you do this then run the spell, "optimize" then split properties and then you can rename the material property.

 

If all else fails upload the nif file you are trying to modify and I will take a look at it.

[Stout]

If I understand it right:

Check you Earring NiTristrips, in block details look at properies, it should have Ref NiTexturingProperty

Ref Nimaterialproperty

dunno If this is vital Ref SpecularProperty

if it has same properties as your ear, add new ones. Right click->Block->Insert-> choose a Ni..., then when you got all 3 of them placed, get back to your Erarrings NiTristrips and in block details properties place numbers of those Ni's, that will add new made properties,

then Right click -> Block -> Insert Choose a Ni.., that should be a NiSourceTexture -> add a new texture, earring texture in that, then in NiTextureProperty in blockdetails look for base texture, add a number of your new NiSourceTexture there. Then set colors, gloss and alpha in your new Nimaterialproperty and you're done.

And ask at nexus too, there are more people who understand how to work with nifs.

[Myst42]

Ok now i can talk, my internet was broken =(

 

The material property's name is not the problem, everything can be renamed to what its supposed to be.

There are two meshes in one nif: lop ears and earrings

the ear's property has to be named "skin" in order for ears to look like ears for that race

The earring's property is named "gold"

 

Now in game, only the ears appear, and earrings are invisible.

 

I ve experieced something similar before when using clothing meshes that aren't attached to any skeleton and have no bonewheight but thats's just a bug and it's solved by making the mesh, parent to the skeleton in blender. But... ears are a different kind of nif and in game they are not supposed to be linked with the skeleton, i checked twice and there's no parent attached to the ears, they are just a mesh with texture, and they work. Somehow the earrings, dont.

 

I looked at what you said and unfortunately those are not the issues

Im trying to upload the file in mediafire but something wrong, cant upload now =(

Ill keep trying though

Ill do what you said too and ask in Nexus... guess ive been avoiding the site because of all the very strict policies they have, not sure you can even talk about lop ear elves or some rare files without getting banned, besides, i think because of that, all the pro people came here... but what the hell

[Myst42]

 

Ha! what do you say of that.

 

I thought the file was going to be too large to upload here but its not so here it goes

 

No folders, just the three "physical" files (nif, egm, and egt) plus the two textues and their normal maps.

 

Im using a full gold texture that i plan on changing a bit if this works

 

the files just need to be "pathed" to a race in the construction set, any race and folder will do as long as all the paths are right, also you may wanna change the texture path in nifskope to wherever you choose to place the textures but i guess you already know that

 

A thousand thanks to anybody capable of helping

Ears.rar

[Stout]

I'll try to figure it out.

Edit: Your paths are okay.

Here's what you can try, since it doesn't give a damn what ear texture you'll assign to it, it only uses specific one, I tried it on imperials. If you're 100% sure that you wrote those tri and egm files right, then make 1 dds from gold and ear texture, then ear and earrings should be 1 tri, in blender assign their uv's, ear should use ear skin and earrings - gold. Why am I saying this: it could be that oblivion just ignores other textures, that's why you should try 2 textures in 1 file and 2 meshes in 1 tri. And I checked other mod with earrings, they are 1 mesh. I think what you did at your posted screenshot was almost there, just needs right texture play. That's all that I can help you with for now.

If you're asking at nexus just say you're dealing with ears. Don't mention Lop Elf ears, it doesn't matter. Dunno what "pros" are here, try asking something above medium at tech forum, dead silence, while at nexus something may be answered.

[movomo]

no two textures in 1 trishape. if two different materials present in one object, nifscript separates it into two trishapes that's the policy how oblivion handles the things.

you can use only one trishape for the file with associated egm/tri.

so if you want to attach earings join them and you should also edit the texture as well.

[Myst42]

Ok now i got the closest thing to get them working

 

I tried to do the thing with 2 meshes with different material property name pointed to 1 texture containing both ear and gold texture.

 

It was an epic fail when nothing changed, it appears that oblivion can only consider 1 mesh in the ear file, so earrings dont show. I made an experiment by deleting the ear mesh and leaving only earrings, and they did show up but really messed up (probably because i didnt use the conformulator to make an egm for the earrings only)

 

But the resulting theory says now that there can be only one mesh for the ears nif file

 

But when i was changing the mesh's UV map to make them both fit 1 texture i also exported a combined mesh which is the closest thing to something that works.

So this story ends with a semi-happy ending. Though i couldnt use a property name other than skin, somehow it looks more like gold now (another theory is that maybe the amount of skin retexture that a texture gets has something to do with the alpha layers in normal maps, but thats just a theory), though it still gets modified by the skin tone but its acceptable as the gold in the earrings gets darker or brighter but still... acceptable

 

So even if the solution isnt EXACTLY what i wanted, its a good gone and it works. Anyway tank you all for helping and sharing your opinions here its really appreciated. Im considering the possibility to try to repay you by sharing some of my personal mods and alterations somewhere, but permissions are a little difficult.

 

This project is about some extra races based on moonshadow elves materials it has "Mystic Elves" using ancient elven sorcerer/s skin textures, "Moon Elves" which is a moonshadow retexture similar to dark elves but with white moon tattoos on them (like fantasy art of Luis Royo), Fairy Elves, which is also a moonshadow retexture with more orange skin, green plant-like tattoos and dragonfly wings, and "Blood Elves" which are dark-skinned. I also made Wind Elves which have frost affinity and pale skin (almost the base moonshadow textures) and finally the Night Elves based on warcraft...

[Myst42]

Ok now i got the closest thing to get them working

 

I tried to do the thing with 2 meshes with different material property name pointed to 1 texture containing both ear and gold texture.

 

It was an epic fail when nothing changed, it appears that oblivion can only consider 1 mesh in the ear file, so earrings dont show. I made an experiment by deleting the ear mesh and leaving only earrings, and they did show up but really messed up (probably because i didnt use the conformulator to make an egm for the earrings only)

 

But the resulting theory says now that there can be only one mesh for the ears nif file

 

But when i was changing the mesh's UV map to make them both fit 1 texture i also exported a combined mesh which is the closest thing to something that works.

So this story ends with a semi-happy ending. Though i couldnt use a property name other than skin, somehow it looks more like gold now (another theory is that maybe the amount of skin-like color that a texture gets has something to do with the alpha layers in normal maps, but thats just a theory), though it still gets modified by the skin tone but its acceptable as the gold in the earrings gets darker or brighter but i can live with it in the way it happens now

 

So even if the solution isnt EXACTLY what i wanted, its a good one and it works. Anyway tank you all for helping and sharing your opinions here its really appreciated.

[Stout]

Alpha channel in normal maps is a specular map, darker it is - less light the material will receive. But with skin, because it uses skin shader, it only works in low light places, atleast for me.

-It's you who did all the work, Good luck.