Question about meshes/textures

[Huskarl27]

I don't exactly talk much, but I ran into a snag on a personal interest and hopefully someone's willing to shine some light on an issue for me.

 

I'd gotten a fair few DMRA armors and collections going, but ran across the DMRA-GUTS stock armor replacer and, what can I say, thighs and abs win out.

Out of curiosity, I tried to see if I could simply replace some of the meshes in modded armor that use the same shapes with the new meshes. While they do display with the right body, they default to the stock color.

 

Now, I figured it wouldn't be so simple, but that's where the questions come in. Just what would I need to do to, say, convert some of Nephenee's work to DMRA-GUTS simply and effectively? Tutorial links and personal advice are more than welcome.

 

(Also I mean no offense to Nephenee, this is just a little personal project, the base replacers are wonderful in their own right and I don't plan on releasing anything even if I somehow -don't- mess everything up hilariously)

[gregathit]

There is no "simple" or "easy" method.  You'll need blender and Gerra6's clothing lattice script.  Using the script you can bulk change most of way and then hand edit anything that the script missed.

 

Blender:  http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/42755

Gerra6's lattice script: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/10396-clothing-bodytype-converter-v42b/

[Huskarl27]

Let me rephrase, most efficient method. But, I'll look into those. I appreciate it.

[gregathit]

It is the "only" method unfortunately.  Blender has a pretty big learning curve and that is what makes things difficult.  Once you an figure how how to use blender then your task becomes a great deal simpler.  It just won't ever be "quick" or "easy". 

 

Youtube has a huge amount of "learn to use blender videos," so I do recommend you check them out.

[kingkong]

i do not quite understand your question   color textures mismatch or meshes problemes 

 

if it is the textures you might take a look in nifskope    -uv editor-  and try to match the texture uv 

 

if the textures are completly wrong you might need to learn "gimp" or "photoshope" to remake the textures .      or see with "blender" how to 'UV unwrap' the meshes (not so easy).

 

if you have a meshes ajustement you can do it in nifkope if it is just clipping and there are no tutorials for it .     or as Gregathit said  "blender" and look within the tons of tutorials over the net to suit you    --+any way    --+ " It just won't ever be "quick" or "easy". " +--

 

or 3dsmax  or maya.

[kosukosu1]

Having done a lot of DMRA-GUTS conversions, the "easiest" way is copy-and-paste in NifSkope, and then importing the nif in blender and editing the mesh to fit the DMRA-GUTS body.

 

DMRA to DMRA-GUTS is not too bad especially since the breast part (probably the hardest part to fit) is already done and in the upper body you just have to tweak the abs and the back of the shoulders usually.

 

The lower body is a little more work, depending on how much of the legs are covered.  If you're dealing with stockings or leggings, its obviously a little more work.

 

Blender is pretty daunting at first, but don't expect to know everything from the get-go - there's just too much stuff. I still feel like i've barely scratched the surface. I must say that it's very rewarding and powerful, just to be able to convert anything to the body of your choice - even from other 3d sources or games.

 

Here's what you probably need to know for the very basics of blender:

- Moving around the 3d space (middle click to rotate, shift middle-click to move, scroll wheel to zoom, right click to select)

- Importing a NIF

- Edit mode: adjusting vertices. Proportional mode (O) is your very best friend for conversions.

- Bone weight copy script

- Exporting a NIF

 

It sounds like a lot but learning blender is def worth it

[Huskarl27]

I appreciate the advice from everyone so far!

 

Spent about an hour messing around, and I think I've got the hand of basic movement and importing, though editing is still a bit beyond me.

 

So far I've mainly stuck to trying to fit the existing pieces over a pasted in blank body, and while it's rendering well, the actual result ingame is a texture flying mess.

If I had to make an educated guess from bbb fun previously, bones are getting messed up somewhere along the line or I'm not importing/exporting the weighting properly. May need to look into nifskope as well at this rate, seeing as the clothing conversions would be -way- trickier.

 

But, here's how the Armamentarium Iron Copper Armor's gone. (Not at all )

 

 

Even if it's slow going, it's been interesting to try something new, so there's that.

[kosukosu1]

Hey Huskarl,

 

Glad you're trying this out

 

So I've run into this before early on like you, and if i remember correctly, this happens if your Scene Root in the nif is messed up (might have multiple) - it's also a good habit to save the NIF in NifSkope after you exported it in blender. I've seen odd things happen when I don't do this and this might be one of them.

 

If you're still stuck, upload the nif and some of us can take a look at it.

[Symon]

I would guess that your ingame picture resulted because you didn't do <control A> before you exported. (Take the first option on the popup menu).

 

This is an essential step if you've modified anything of significance in Blender.

[kingkong]

i think you have selected the wrong object   (you copy the bone weight from armor to body)   you need to select the armor than select the body (active selection ) the last activated will be set as active      --+ than 'bone copy weight'  

[movomo]

It's important that you always delete the skeleton before starting any work and import a fresh one. For some reason, and sometimes bone weights are screwed up if you don't delete existing one and that's what I'm guessing of that picture. L.arm bone becomes R.leg bone, Op bone becomes pelvis, and so on..

 

For that case, either delete all the existing boneweights from your mesh and rework, or just rename those misnamed bones( I mean, vertex gruop names) properly. I *think* the second way should work as well.

[gregathit]

I would do as movomo recommends and import a fresh skeleton first thing.  Many times meshes only have partial skeleton information and thus it goes to pot real quick.

[Huskarl27]

I can't recall if I've been selecting everything before exporting, so that's definitely something to try.

 

 

As far as skeleton, should I import one from the appropriate body section, or a full one like the maximum compatability skeleton? I did manage to find a tutorial on setting armatures and the like, and I've been deleting the initial skeleton and following the steps it gives there, which gave me my best result so far. (Equipping the armor led to a normal unclothed upper body. Step up from nothing or texture flying)

 

 

And as a last question, if there are a number of things that would use the same mesh but different textures, would they each need a unique mesh tied to them, or would I need to go into the contruction kit and manually modify the paths for them?

 

 

And sorry if I'm just question dumping now, but this is the first time I've really messed with any of this and my curiosity's quite piqued.

[gregathit]

Use a full skeleton and I strongly advise you to use Growlf's universal skeleton (the controllable version): http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/37596/?

 

The maximum compatibility skeleton is very old and not as compatible as it used to be.

[movomo]

That's a good sign for weight painting, maybe. and invisible armor piece would mean missing texture - color map, or normal map, or both. OR, if you have appropriate textures check your nif structure. See if your armor part is somewhere else other than below of Scene Root. They should be directly below the Scene Root. otherwise you need to do some material fix.

 

You need separate nif file if you want color variants, unlike in Fallout or Skyrim. It's inefficient but sometimes more convenient.

[kingkong]

each mesh has his uv textures

 

the mesh can share the same textures 

 

you can make with joining meshes a full armor that use one uv complete that you can ajust to a specific texture ( this can be fun)

 

you definitively not need at all C S     the path is ajusted in the file.nif that is opened with nifskope

 

     (NiTexturingProprety              textures/armor/ your folder(where your textures files are placed) / your textures files.dds

[Huskarl27]

Right then, had some mixed results.

 

Texture swapping was simple enough, so absolutely no issues there. Nifskope's actually a bit simpler than I thought.

 

Attempts to get some stock clothing replaces hasn't gone as well. The conversions were a bit quick&dirty, but visually they would have done the trick until I figured things out a bit better.

Issue is, considering they're stock, I can't assign textures in nif, and they're blank ingame.

Think I'm missing something on that one, but w/e.

 

 

I'll go ahead and upload just in case someone wants to poke around the mess I've managed in a few hours, and maybe chide me for what should be obvious mistakes.

 

(Sack cloth/prisoner, 05 in lower class clothing)

shirt.nif

pants.nif

[movomo]

Firstly, your mesh has no skinned data. That's why your clothing is blank in game. Looks like you've done something wrong in exporting process.

 

Second, see all those junks around? I mean, red box, green things.. things that are originally attached to the skeleton nif. It means you imported your skeleton as it is. When you import a skeleton, check "Import skeleton only" or something ( I don't remeber correctly) If done right, you should see clear armature and nothing else in blender(arrows, coordinates, etc).

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/11870-automatic-bb-weight-painter-13-cskyrim-fnv-fo3-oblivion/?p=315124

 

See this post for more information. I believe this is exactly the same issue as yours.

[Huskarl27]

HAH!

Finally got it (somewhat) working.

 

The skeleton was horribly out of whack on one of them, but the issue I was having with the other was my selected export options, it would seem. Found a screenshot of what to set, and about half an hour of fiddling with the other one due to some funk with blender, and they're both displaying more or less properly.

 

Now, I am encountering an issue in that the body underneath the clothing is BB enabled whereas the clothing isn't. Case in point.

 

Not really sure how to approach that one. I'll go ahead and load the nifs alongside this so any mistakes can be pointed out. Still, pretty awesome to see it actually work.

 

(And I didn't notice but one of the nipples expanded to twice the size in an edit. gg me.)

 

shirt.nif pants.nif

[kingkong]

two solutions    in blender you weight paint the op3, op2, and op1 to 0.00 weight  to the body  through   'weight paint'   mod

 

                        in nifskope you need to remouve those bones from file.nif,  -1 in Nitrishape / NiTriStrips -- NiSkinInstance (block detail) you select each bone erase to none ( not 0 : no value)      -2  you select the NiNode (scene root) and delete those bones.  -3 (not sure if you need) select NiTrishape / NiTriStrips  by right clic  'mesh'     'make skin partition'   a window pops click ok.

 

the result in nifskope may cause a streching issue ( if this is the case no choise than Blender)

 

 

 

did not tested just esed it in blender (erase bhkbox of rigidbody(that you left),  one nif copy weight paint to  objshirt  from objbody.  second nif erase bone weight and delete bones (than in nifkope remove bogus node  for the two of them 'update all tangent and space' and save.

 

--+shirt bbb.nif

 

--+shirt no bbb.nif

 

did not test it just used blender.

[Huskarl27]

I did try messing around with the bones a bit, but I honestly have no idea what half of it is, so I think I may hold off on applying animations just yet.

 

I'm quite happy I just got the stuff to fit at all at this point

 

 

I've been messing with the transformation scripts too. No luck with upper body things so far, but I have a working lower body transformation lattice which is p. much all I need considering the similarities of the body types.

Worst case, can rough things out up top with the sculpt tool and fine tune in edit mode.

[Huskarl27]

Don't like double posting, but I did hit a snag.

 

Decided to try a full body armor, and despite my best efforts, I can't get the bugger to show, just the chopped up body underneath.

 

Considering that it was packaged with the entire max compat skeleton sticking out at all angles, I may have missed something in my initial culling of everything, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

 

I've also tried messing with the weight painting and all that, but I seem to be missing steps. Back to tutorials for me. But that aside, I've had other pieces work relatively flawlessly, so I think I'm getting the hang of the basics.

 

But here's the culprit nif in question.

PitFighterWithout.nif

 

If anyone could point out what I'm messing up and how to fix it, I'd be quite appreciative.

[gregathit]

In nifskope it appears to be fine.  When you open it with Nifskope do you see the textures?  If the texture paths are not correct then the game won't show anything.

[Huskarl27]

That was what I found odd. Displays correctly in nif. Out of curiosity, I tried porting the pieces individually to a working mesh through nif, and a fraction of it showed properly and the rest seemed to disappear.

 

Considering the state of it when I initially loaded it up, could be anything. Good to know it wasn't an obvious error though. May just skip this one.

[movomo]

Not the texture problem. You still don't have NiSkinInstance. That means you haven't weightpainted them at all, or exporting process gone south.