Blender exported nif invisible in game

[Frosferes]

Hi I was wondering if anyone could help out a modding noob with a small problem.

 

I imported the mighty beasts werewolf model into Blender 2.90.1 using Blender Nif Plugin 2.6.0.dev4 (latest release) to practice making some minor mesh edits. Afterwards, when exporting directly to Skyrim nif format and opening in NifSkope the mesh appears black and has no lighting. I saved my mesh as both malebodywerewolf_0 and 1 but predictably this direct export doesn't appear in game or the CK.

 

I copied over the shader branches from the original mesh to fix the textures and updated the tangent spaces to fix the lighting so that the mesh is looking as intended in NifSkope, but still appears invisible outside of it.

 

I then tried replacing the TriShapes in the original MB mesh with my modified ones but still no luck. If I copy only one exported shape into the original mesh and leave the other, only the original shape is visible. Would anyone be able to have a look at the mesh to see what the problem area might be? (the head is missing intentionally)

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif

 

Many thanks!

[Dorabella]

Have you just tried reapplying the textures?

[Frosferes]

As far as I can tell the shaders and textures are applied correctly unless there's something i'm missing. As I said I copied BsShaders including the texture sets directly from another mesh and they show up correctly in NifSkope.

[jesseg]

Could it not be a partition issue? Do you know what partition slot is being used in the esp? If not, then right click the bsdismemberskininstance in nifskope, then click convert, then choose niskininstance...Do this for both shapes in the nif and then check if it works....

[Frosferes]

Actually I did notice that the mesh exported with 3 skin partitions per object despite the original shapes only being a single partition each. I wasn't sure if that was going to cause an issue or not. Unfortunately I won't have access to my PC for a couple of days but I'll check that as soon as I can. 

[Frosferes]

Ok so I just checked the base mesh that I imported and it does have BSDismemberSkinInstance rather than NiSkinInstance so in that regard my mesh has exported correctly. However, the export also has its objects split into extra skin partitions which may be throwing off the armor addon in the esp. This might be an issue with the partition and vertex bones settings on Blender export but I don't know for sure. Is there a way to merge skin partitions within Nifskope or is this an export issue that I'll have to further look into?

[Andy14]

19 minutes ago, Frosferes said:

Is there a way to merge skin partitions within Nifskope

 

Just change the number of partitions in Nifskope.
Double click on the number. Then refesh and set the slots.

 

[Frosferes]

Thanks for the advice, I've sorted out the skin partitions and checked the body part settings against the esp and the original model. It all looks fine to me but the model is STILL invisible in game. I even imported some animations into Nifskope to check if the objects are skinned properly and they all worked perfectly. I'm running out of ideas as to what the problem is. Does anyone know what material CRC does? Could the issue be related to bone bounding spheres? Here's the most up to date model:

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif

[jesseg]

5 hours ago, Frosferes said:

Thanks for the advice, I've sorted out the skin partitions and checked the body part settings against the esp and the original model. It all looks fine to me but the model is STILL invisible in game. I even imported some animations into Nifskope to check if the objects are skinned properly and they all worked perfectly. I'm running out of ideas as to what the problem is. Does anyone know what material CRC does? Could the issue be related to bone bounding spheres? Here's the most up to date model:

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif 1.83 MB · 4 downloads

I think there were some issues with the shapes in the nif, when i first loaded the nif in 3DS max four shapes appeared, there were two duplicates....After deleting and exporting from 3DS max i was able to view the nif in outfit studio and was able to optimize it as well but the skeleton was messed up....I loaded your updated nif a second time in 3DS Max and there were only two shapes, I don't know (scratches head), i exported it out, copied the shapes to your updated nif and deleted the original shapes, installed and tested in game....

 

Spoiler

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif

[Frosferes]

2 hours ago, jesseg said:

So i tried to optimize the mesh with nifoptimizer and it crashed the application, tried to look at it in outfit studio and it crashed the application as well....Loaded it up in 3DS max and noticed the same two shapes are duplicated, so there is total of 4 shapes in this nif but two are hidden....Deleted the duplicates and exported it out, it loads up in outfit studio and i am able to optimize it now....Here it is, test it out....

That's very bizzare. I tested your mesh in game and this time it is visible, but somewhere along the line its skeleton reference got bent out of shape, resulting in a warped mess when animated.

 

I tried going back to my own mesh to see if I could replicate your fixes. I noticed that the file size is a few hundred kb bigger than your mesh and the base that I imported to begin with. Like you said, loading it into nifoptimizer or outfit studio caused a crash. I tried reloading the mesh into Blender to see if I could spot the hidden geometry but either it's not there and is a problem that happens during exporting, or it is there and I just have no idea how to find it and deal with it. If I load the base model into blender and export it without changes it has the same problems as my modified one.

 

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and use 3DS max instead of Blender since it seems to have much more developed integration with the nif format. I favored Blender because it's much easier to get hold of but it never seems to want to play nicely with nifs.

[Andy14]

6 hours ago, Frosferes said:

Thanks for the advice, I've sorted out the skin partitions and checked the body part settings against the esp and the original model. It all looks fine to me but the model is STILL invisible in game. I even imported some animations into Nifskope to check if the objects are skinned properly and they all worked perfectly. I'm running out of ideas as to what the problem is. Does anyone know what material CRC does? Could the issue be related to bone bounding spheres? Here's the most up to date model:

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif 1.83 MB · 4 downloads

The Nif causes an outfit studio crash.
The reason is the skin. There are many vertices skinned with more than 4 bones. This is invalid.

I used the Nifskope tools to fix it.
Is now visible in the CK and in OutfitStudio without a crash.
I also removed the unused bones.

 

malebodywerewolf_1.nif

[jesseg]

33 minutes ago, Frosferes said:

That's very bizzare. I tested your mesh in game and this time it is visible, but somewhere along the line its skeleton reference got bent out of shape, resulting in a warped mess when animated.

 

I tried going back to my own mesh to see if I could replicate your fixes. I noticed that the file size is a few hundred kb bigger than your mesh and the base that I imported to begin with. Like you said, loading it into nifoptimizer or outfit studio caused a crash. I tried reloading the mesh into Blender to see if I could spot the hidden geometry but either it's not there and is a problem that happens during exporting, or it is there and I just have no idea how to find it and deal with it. If I load the base model into blender and export it without changes it has the same problems as my modified one.

 

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and use 3DS max instead of Blender since it seems to have much more developed integration with the nif format. I favored Blender because it's much easier to get hold of but it never seems to want to play nicely with nifs.

I posted a a new mesh with the correct skeleton, look above, Andy has also posted a nif....

[Frosferes]

42 minutes ago, Andy14 said:

The reason is the skin. There are many vertices skinned with more than 4 bones. This is invalid.

Brilliant, that's what the issue has been. I didn't realise Skyrim had a max vertex bone count of 4 so I didn't limit it to that on export. Now the meshes I export work fine aside from the minor tangent and shader issues mentioned previously. Thanks Andy and jesseg for your help!