Weight Sliders - Why aren't _0 & _1 compatible?!

[XunAmarox]

Alright, so... I don't understand this two mesh weight slider nonsense Skyrim has going for it. So the meshes need to have something or other identical for them to work together with _0 and _1, yeah?

 

Let's say I take FavoredSoul's Erect Male _1 (100 weight) mesh, and I make the penis 3 inches longer. I export it and copy the BSLightingShaderProperty(s) from the original over to the new one.

 

Now, at this point, the mesh is good. It's perfect. Flawless. I take it into game, and it's just a garbled mesh like an explosion. Why is this?

 

With that said, I can take my finished _1 product, copy it, and rename it to _0 and take that in-game and everything's just fine. There's terrible gaps at the neck & wrists at anything below 100 weight due to human male neck and wrist sizes changing based on the weight slider, but other than that it shows up perfectly in-game. The 100 weight one looks perfect at 100 weight.

 

Right, so here's the dillema: Why is this?

 

We can reasonably assume that FavoredSoul's original _0 and _1 meshes were compatible otherwise they wouldn't work together in-game at all and would just be a big jumbled up mess, yes? And the differences in these two meshes are essentially some moved around verts. So why I ask would FavoredSoul's original _0 not be compatible with a modified _1 that literally only moved a few verts?!

 

These two meshes already had verts in different locations, yeah? The number of verts hasn't changed. The weighting hasn't changed. So what's the deal? Why doesn't this work?

 

This problem is the bane of my existence, and I want to know why... It makes no sense!

 

Oh and uh, I threw the meshes in question down in the attachments if you want some reference.

 

edit: Oh and another problem... If I import, edit, and export the _0 mesh too then why does only 0 weight and 100 weight look right for the penis and anything else in between is a garbled mess?

long_peenor.7z

original_peenor.7z

0-100good_inbetween-bad.7z

[gerra6]

That's probably because Skyrim uses the vertex index (literally, the order that the vertex is listed in in the nif) on both meshes to find matching vertices.  When you adjust the weight slider, each vertex on the mesh morphs between the equivalent _0 and _1 vertices.  The mesh that you see in game is some intermediate state in that morph.

 

Here's the problem.   Anything that changes the vertex index of one mesh without changing the index on the other mesh will case that garbled mess that you are describing.

 

Lots of things can change the vertex index.  Adding vertices, deleting vertices, joining meshes, even simply importing/exporting the mesh can mess with the order.

 

On the other hand, things like morphs, transforms (scale, loc, rotate, etc), constraints, changing the UV mapping,  etc generally won't mess with the vertex index unless they add or delete vertices.

 

So what do you do?

 

This is where things get tricky.  Once things get garbled, there's really not much you can do other than some truly horrifically ugly things like editing the nif in a hex editor.  It's usually easier at that point to simply choose one of the meshes as the new base (ie the _0 mesh) and morph it into the other (the _1 mesh)

 

If you are using Blender, you can use my Lattice Generator to create a lattice that will morph your 0 mesh into your 1 mesh.  Then edit your 0 mesh, export it, and then use the lattice to convert it into your 0 mesh into your  1 mesh and export that.

 

In general, your best bet is to keep the meshes in sync with each other.  Generally this means that you need to import each mesh with *exactly* the same settings, perform *exactly* the same edits, and then export them with *exactly* the same export settings.

[XunAmarox]

The problem with just working off of one mesh is that for some god awful reason the neck and wrist seams are completely different for male characters. The wrists I could fix by just using two copies of the _1 hands, but there's nothing that I know that could be done about the neck.

 

Is there a way to make the neck not morph based on weight? I don't even know what the neck is controlled by... I'm guessing it's the head, but the head is just a tri file and those are a godawful can of worms I never want to have to get into.

 

Oh and I'm using Max for this since I had absolutely zero success trying to import/export this with Blender, and it's such a pain in the ass doing all that Nifskope voodoo for every single attempt... Blender's pretty much abandonware for Skyrim until they update their nif plugin with Skyrim support unfortunately.

[Endiness]

The male body itself doesn't have the same number of vertices in the nifs. 436 for _0 and 405 _1 nif. Did you add smooth modifiers to all meshes before export with option 2 selected? Load both min and max bodies into max from the original source and see if the bodies have the same vertex count.

[XunAmarox]

I have no idea how to do that. I started using Max literally today. I normally do stuff in Blender.

 

All I did was import, move the editable mesh around, then export. Default settings with this: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/5622

 

These settings:

 

The originals are attached in the opening post if you wanna check for yourself.

[Endiness]

 

 

 

[gerra6]

The problem with just working off of one mesh is that for some god awful reason the neck and wrist seams are completely different for male characters. The wrists I could fix by just using two copies of the _1 hands, but there's nothing that I know that could be done about the neck.

 

Is there a way to make the neck not morph based on weight? I don't even know what the neck is controlled by... I'm guessing it's the head, but the head is just a tri file and those are a godawful can of worms I never want to have to get into.

 

Oh and I'm using Max for this since I had absolutely zero success trying to import/export this with Blender, and it's such a pain in the ass doing all that Nifskope voodoo for every single attempt... Blender's pretty much abandonware for Skyrim until they update their nif plugin with Skyrim support unfortunately.

 

Well, I can't help with Max, unfortunately.

 

I did write a script for Blender that automatically repairs seams between meshes.

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/10179-blender-script-seam-mender-version-14-updated-10122012/

[anubis]

Lots of things can change the vertex index.  Adding vertices, deleting vertices, joining meshes, even simply importing/exporting the mesh can mess with the order.

 

I think that is the problem, well if you really sure that you just manually moved the vertices or just shaping the mesh without deleting/joining any vertices..

 

Ever since i found this _0 & _1 morphing is damn tricky procces (for me). so i just made it one time work. i just blend it all the _0 and _1 into one nif whether its vanilla,UNP,CBBE or Favored Soul. yeah i know its tedious work to copy/paste the bones (started with hands, since it has more bones than other).

 

Named each nitris for specific _0 and _1. import it (blender), make the changes with _1 size first so i need to hide the _0 parts, then duplicate after its done, unhide my _0 and hide _1, adjust the changes with _0. then save the blend file. simply delete the _0 or _1 for exporting parts with specific weight, then CTRL-Z/re-do (bring back the deleted _0 or _1) and vice versa the earlier step, finishing it in nifskope, and voila it always work, well so far for me. never experienced the ruptured mesh again in between mix and max weight anymore.

 

Why the hassle ?

1. I hate importing multiple times (its always mess up the file after exporting). i found Append or link function now become extremely helpfull for me.

2. Since skyrim, i never imported new/fresh skeleton, only re-parent back into existed skeleton that comes from the first importing the mesh unless my new mesh require bone(s) that arent existed in the first place i.e skirt bones (which i have no interest to make skirt).