cornelius_t Posted September 5, 2013 Posted September 5, 2013 I'm starting another mod project; a follow up to my very first one: http://www.loverslab.com/files/file/332-pregnant-weighted-tbbp-armor/ I'm trying to mod vanilla clothing meshes, but am having difficulty getting the belly curvature right; the pregnant belly meshes always appear jagged and never rounded (i.e. matching the contours of the body mesh). The clothing comes out with nothing but jagged edges. I tried adjusting weight paints and the quantity of vertices, but nothing seems to work. (maybe I am missing something) Question: How do I get the clothing meshes (particularly around the belly node) to bend/curve to the exact same degree as the body mesh? I am currently using 3ds Max and Nifskope to mod the clothing skins.
Womb Raider Posted September 8, 2013 Posted September 8, 2013 You should start with making this one compatible with UNP first so my player has clothes to wear... lol and I'm not a modder myself unfortunately, good luck though! I'm really excited to see your work finished!
jacques00 Posted September 8, 2013 Posted September 8, 2013 Question: How do I get the clothing meshes (particularly around the belly node) to bend/curve to the exact same degree as the body mesh? I am currently using 3ds Max and Nifskope to mod the clothing skins. Try using 3DS Max's "Skin Wrap" modifier. First, duplicate (Clone as Copy) the mesh you want influenced and hide to original (just in case you need to repeat the process). "Collapse All" the layer stack so it becomes a "Editable Mesh". At this point, it is optional, but I would Convert it to "Editable Poly" and merge all the vertices where there are texture breaks caused by the texture seams (you don't have to do every vertex, you can just leave the parts that overlap alone as they are there to create the double-sided illusion). After that is done, you can tweak any stretched UVs and add the "Smooth" modifier of 2 to get rid of the roughness caused by the previous seam breaks. "Collapse All" when done and Convert back to Editable Mesh. Then a Smooth modifier of 2 just so it's in the stack. Add a "Skin Wrap" modifier and select the body mesh you want to influence your cloth/armor geometry. You can set the tolerance and other options, but I usually keep them at the lowest numbers closest to zero. It's also important to make sure the "Weight All Points" is toggled on (it is off by default). You can bend the joints around to test how well it looks with your current options. When satisfied click the "Convert to Skin" button. The "Skin Wrap" information takes in the bone influence info of your body mesh adds it to the geometry as a "Skin" modifier in your stack, so now you should have four items in your stack, from bottom to top: Editable Mesh, Smooth, Skin Wrap, and Skin. Since now you have "Skin", you can delete the "Skin Wrap" modifier from the stack without any issues, leaving you the three modifiers. From here, you can tweak the weights to how you like them and you must add in and paint/edit influences for the extra bones (if any) that were omitted during the Skin Wrap function (this usually includes dangly things or ornaments not usually bound to the body). Make sure to open the Advanced Parameters rollout and set the "Bone Affect Limit" to 4 (by default it is 20--you might not have to do this since it does it on export anyway, if your .nif export options are on default, but this will save you the trouble in case of export anomalies...). After the editing process is over, add the "BSDismembermentSkin Modifier" into your stack and edited them to the proper values--in most cases it's selecting all faces into one ID (0) and setting it to Body Part "Skyrim, Main body". Your final modifier stack should be, from bottom to top: Editable Mesh, Smooth, Skin, and BSDismembermentSkin Modifier. From there, you should be done and ready to export your selected mesh. Then, in Nifskope, you just copy over the texture nodes, edit the NiTriShapeData's "BS Num UV Sets" values (to 4097--it could be called something else depending on how you exported it), and edit the respective "Has Vertex Colors" (if necessary)--that should solve any texture issues. Copy over the respective BSLightingShaderProperty from the original mesh .nif to your edited one. Also copy over the respective NiAlphaProperty node if it requires it for that shape. Select the respective NiTriShape node and right-click, Mesh > Update Tangent Space. Repeat the Nifskope process for each body part, or copy the now-edited NiTriShape (and any extra bone nodes) into the naked body .nif you used for the skinning, rename the nodes properly. Save As a new file and rename appropriately, or overwrite the mesh you want to replace (I make copies and backups just in case) Load the item up in game or the Creation Kit and pray no errors or CTD happen. ??? Cry tears of joy. Troubleshooting: If you have an n-gon or really bad geometery anomalies, the .nif exporter will fail at exporting the mesh properly. If this happens, check your geometry and make sure it's clean and doesn't have unnecessary faces where they shouldn't be. If you successfully exported, but the item in game is invisible or completely black, you probably need to change the boolean value on the "Has Vertex Colors" of the respective mesh's NiTriShapeData. If the item loads up but the textures do not (you might have a multi-colored/null blue-colored object instead of a fuller textured on), check your BSLightingShaderProperty node for that mesh. If the game crashes on item load, you might have a/multiple rogue vertex/vertices that escaped the skinning process, or there are vertices that are weighted to bones not in the source skeleton you are using for the game (skinning incompatibilities usually cause CTD). Just go back into your file and check all the weights again. One simple fix can be to repeat the same process all over again, but using a duplicate of your edited mesh and using the edited mesh as the source for your duplicate instead of the body mesh--that way you don't have to repaint/edit weights all over again. Just make sure you positively have the "Weight All Points" toggled on during the Skin Wrap stage. If the game continues to crash on item load, you might want to check your geometry again--there could be troublesome vertices somewhere that need cleaning but successfully passed through the export process. You may want to do as adviced from the previous troubleshoot option. Everything imports successfully in game, but there seems to be some super horrible stretching or crumpling in some places. You did it right, you just need to edit your Skin weights some for perfection. Trouble areas include any areas where neighboring joints are really close together (pelvic region on thighs, between shoulder/arms and spine joints). But for the most part, the Skin Wrap modifier should have made things at least 50% easier than reweighting from scratch. No problems and everything works as perfectly as you envisioned, but you cannot cry tears of joy. To do that, you must first acquire "joy". Please go acquire joy. There are probably scripts that automate this process, so you might want to dig around to find them, but I usually do things manually for quality control. I hope this helps!
cornelius_t Posted September 8, 2013 Author Posted September 8, 2013 Question: How do I get the clothing meshes (particularly around the belly node) to bend/curve to the exact same degree as the body mesh? I am currently using 3ds Max and Nifskope to mod the clothing skins. Try using 3DS Max's "Skin Wrap" modifier. First, duplicate (Clone as Copy) the mesh you want influenced and hide to original (just in case you need to repeat the process). "Collapse All" the layer stack so it becomes a "Editable Mesh". At this point, it is optional, but I would Convert it to "Editable Poly" and merge all the vertices where there are texture breaks caused by the texture seams (you don't have to do every vertex, you can just leave the parts that overlap alone as they are there to create the double-sided illusion). After that is done, you can tweak any stretched UVs and add the "Smooth" modifier of 2 to get rid of the roughness caused by the previous seam breaks. "Collapse All" when done and Convert back to Editable Mesh. Then a Smooth modifier of 2 just so it's in the stack. Add a "Skin Wrap" modifier and select the body mesh you want to influence your cloth/armor geometry. You can set the tolerance and other options, but I usually keep them at the lowest numbers closest to zero. It's also important to make sure the "Weight All Points" is toggled on (it is off by default). You can bend the joints around to test how well it looks with your current options. When satisfied click the "Convert to Skin" button. The "Skin Wrap" information takes in the bone influence info of your body mesh adds it to the geometry as a "Skin" modifier in your stack, so now you should have four items in your stack, from bottom to top: Editable Mesh, Smooth, Skin Wrap, and Skin. Since now you have "Skin", you can delete the "Skin Wrap" modifier from the stack without any issues, leaving you the three modifiers. From here, you can tweak the weights to how you like them and you must add in and paint/edit influences for the extra bones (if any) that were omitted during the Skin Wrap function (this usually includes dangly things or ornaments not usually bound to the body). Make sure to open the Advanced Parameters rollout and set the "Bone Affect Limit" to 4 (by default it is 20--you might not have to do this since it does it on export anyway, if your .nif export options are on default, but this will save you the trouble in case of export anomalies...). After the editing process is over, add the "BSDismembermentSkin Modifier" into your stack and edited them to the proper values--in most cases it's selecting all faces into one ID (0) and setting it to Body Part "Skyrim, Main body". Your final modifier stack should be, from bottom to top: Editable Mesh, Smooth, Skin, and BSDismembermentSkin Modifier. From there, you should be done and ready to export your selected mesh. Then, in Nifskope, you just copy over the texture nodes, edit the NiTriShapeData's "BS Num UV Sets" values (to 4097--it could be called something else depending on how you exported it), and edit the respective "Has Vertex Colors" (if necessary)--that should solve any texture issues. Copy over the respective BSLightingShaderProperty from the original mesh .nif to your edited one. Also copy over the respective NiAlphaProperty node if it requires it for that shape. Select the respective NiTriShape node and right-click, Mesh > Update Tangent Space. Repeat the Nifskope process for each body part, or copy the now-edited NiTriShape (and any extra bone nodes) into the naked body .nif you used for the skinning, rename the nodes properly. Save As a new file and rename appropriately, or overwrite the mesh you want to replace (I make copies and backups just in case) Load the item up in game or the Creation Kit and pray no errors or CTD happen. ??? Cry tears of joy. Troubleshooting: If you have an n-gon or really bad geometery anomalies, the .nif exporter will fail at exporting the mesh properly. If this happens, check your geometry and make sure it's clean and doesn't have unnecessary faces where they shouldn't be. If you successfully exported, but the item in game is invisible or completely black, you probably need to change the boolean value on the "Has Vertex Colors" of the respective mesh's NiTriShapeData. If the item loads up but the textures do not (you might have a multi-colored/null blue-colored object instead of a fuller textured on), check your BSLightingShaderProperty node for that mesh. If the game crashes on item load, you might have a/multiple rogue vertex/vertices that escaped the skinning process, or there are vertices that are weighted to bones not in the source skeleton you are using for the game (skinning incompatibilities usually cause CTD). Just go back into your file and check all the weights again. One simple fix can be to repeat the same process all over again, but using a duplicate of your edited mesh and using the edited mesh as the source for your duplicate instead of the body mesh--that way you don't have to repaint/edit weights all over again. Just make sure you positively have the "Weight All Points" toggled on during the Skin Wrap stage. If the game continues to crash on item load, you might want to check your geometry again--there could be troublesome vertices somewhere that need cleaning but successfully passed through the export process. You may want to do as adviced from the previous troubleshoot option. Everything imports successfully in game, but there seems to be some super horrible stretching or crumpling in some places. You did it right, you just need to edit your Skin weights some for perfection. Trouble areas include any areas where neighboring joints are really close together (pelvic region on thighs, between shoulder/arms and spine joints). But for the most part, the Skin Wrap modifier should have made things at least 50% easier than reweighting from scratch. No problems and everything works as perfectly as you envisioned, but you cannot cry tears of joy. To do that, you must first acquire "joy". Please go acquire joy. There are probably scripts that automate this process, so you might want to dig around to find them, but I usually do things manually for quality control. I hope this helps! Thanks! I'll try that and hopefully that fixes it. ...... Well it almost worked; the resulting clothing skin is now slightly less jagged. Weight painting is just paint-ful to do. BTW, Does anybody want to take over my first mod project? It's getting too big for me to handle alone (and I've run out of material to add).
Hollow_Fang Posted October 12, 2013 Posted October 12, 2013 Good luck if doing Pregnancy for vanilla clothing might as well do the TBBP too
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