Issues with model alignment between Blender and Nifskope

[caradas1030]

Because I'm a crazy person, I've been attempting to separate the Schwertleite BU set into individual parts. I've hit a snag in that things aren't aligning like they are supposed to. Things are fine in Nifeskope, but off in Blender. Can anyone offer their expertise? 

 

 

[movomo]

That's very weird. Because when I had tried to split that armor set I thought it was already faulty even in Nifskope. Are you sure it's fine in Nifskope?

 

No sweat anyway. I have already split up some BU armors.. at least everything in BU compilation. enjoy mate.

Schwertleite in pieces.7z

[caradas1030]

Thanks a lot. It looks like my original plans for piecing it out aren't going to be possible, at least not with my skills. 

[movomo]

Well, what I can tell is that this isn't about skills. What I had done on this armor was (probably) to choose one side, delete the other side, and mirror it. It was just the matter of patience, I needed it a lot while working on BU armor pack.

[caradas1030]

My original goal was to have a gauntlets, cuirass, skirt, and boots all individual to work better with lovers and the bathing mod. But what I'm finding on the upperbody of the BU model is stuff like the arms being at odd angles and clipping being hidden by other parts. If I could get this problem of the upper body meshes not lining up in Blender fixed then I would basically be done, save for resizing the boots. 

[gerra6]

Don't give up.

 

Blender takes getting used to, but the issues you're describing are very solvable.

 

The first thing you probably want to do is delete the body meshes (at least move them into a different frame) and import a clean body that matches up with the base body style you're going for.

 

If you start out with the right body mesh, adjusting the armor meshes to properly fit is is infinitely easier.

[caradas1030]

Don't give up.

 

Blender takes getting used to, but the issues you're describing are very solvable.

 

The first thing you probably want to do is delete the body meshes (at least move them into a different frame) and import a clean body that matches up with the base body style you're going for.

 

If you start out with the right body mesh, adjusting the armor meshes to properly fit is is infinitely easier.

The problem with that the breasts. The breasts are modeled to contour with the dented armor. What makes this so frustrating is that it's just two of the meshes.The Schwertleite BU comes in 5 stages, and I have 1,4, and 5 completed for the cuirass. it's just 2 and 3 giving me issues. And I didn't use any different method to do them than I did with the ones I'm having trouble with. 

 

Mesh 2 was the one I posted originally, here's mesh 3. In this case, everything is aligned fine in Blender, the right arm on the original model is just out of whack (the highlighted portion is the arms and shoulders from the HGEC HB upperbody). Though on closer examination in Blender, mesh 3 looks doable. it's just the alignment issues on mesh 2 giving me grief. 

[gerra6]

Well, there are a bunch of different techniques for modifying the breasts.

 

For what you're talking about, I'd do the following (it's a bit advanced, but not too bad and a great learning experience).

 

*Caveat* this assumes the torso is rigged for BBB. If not, let me know and I'll send you a copy of my automated BBB rigging tool

 

1. Delete the skeleton that was imported when you imported the mesh

2. Select *just* the upper body mesh

3. Import a skeleton nif with BBB support (the LAPF skeleton is a good choice here). *Very Important* Select 'Import Skeleton only and Parent to Selected'.

4. At this point you should have the ability to animate and morph the breasts by manipulating the breast bones on the skeleton. Very cool. So Select the skeleton.

5. *Important* Hit <Control> <Tab> to enter pose mode.

6. Hit Z a couple of times until you are in wireframe mode.

7. Look for the OP1.L and OP1.R bones. They'll be near the breasts. Select one (or both) of them.

8. Hit 'r' to rotate the bone. You'll notice that the breast morphs to follow the movement of the bone.

***Note***

At this point I'd like to introduce you to the transform orientations window.

Click on 'View' and then 'Transform Orientation'

From here, you can decide whether a given transform (say, rotation) is relative to your view, the world, etc. Very very useful.

***End Note***

9. Once you are satisfied with the position and shape of the breast, make the modification permanent.

10. First add a keyframe. Make sure that the bone is selected and hit 'i' and select 'rot' (for rotation) from the pop-up list.

11. Repeat for the other bone.

12. Select the Mesh and look in your 'Buttons' window. Make sure that you are in the 'Editing' panel (F9) of the 'Buttons' window.

13. You should see s tab labeled [modifiers][shapes]. make sure it's on modifiers. You should see an entry called 'Armature Parent Deform'

14. Click 'Make Real'

15. Click 'Apply'

 

Congratulations, you have now permanently modified the shape of the breasts.

 

From here, I recommend deleting the armature (skeleton) and importing and parenting another one (or you can clear the keyframes and re-parend the armature you were working with, but it's a bit complex). Once that's done just export everything normally.

 

Now...There are plenty of other ways to do this.

 

You can play around in sculpting mode in Blender.

You can manipulate vertexes directly in the editing mode in Blender.

You can grab my Transformation Lattice Generator, and transform the entire body into a different body.

etc.

[caradas1030]

Thanks for the run down. If I can't get the models to line up in blender, then I'll try and do that. If I could just get them to line up in Blender and cut out the overlap, that would be the best option though, as I Just have 2 more meshes to do.

[gerra6]

Well, as far as getting things to line up, constrained transforms are your best bet if you don't want to modify the shape of the breasts.

 

In Object Mode, hit g and then either x, y, or z. This lets you move the object along a single axis, which is extremely helpful.

 

Hold down <shift> to dramatically reduce the dragging speed.

 

Another thing that is extremely useful, particularly in Edit Mode, is to enable the transform magnet mode. Look for a magnet-like symbol to enable/disable magnet mode. Then, during a transform, hold down <Control> to snap the object (or vertex, face, etc) to whatever the mouse is hovering over. *Very* useful. If you can't find the magnet, you can also enable this with <control><tab>.

 

 

Now...if you are grabbing meshes and transforming them...then I'll mention the importance of the 'transform orientations window' again. It allows you to create arbitrary constraint axes, which is incredibly useful for the type of work you are doing.

 

Here's the idea. Let's say you want to move the armor along some arbitrary vector to make it match up to the body (note...you generally don't want to move the body around, or it won't fit with the hands, feet, head, etc). Now, you can spend some time grabbing and dragging and getting frustrated...but here's what I do. Set transform orientation to 'View' and rotate your view until, say, the y-axis is perfectly aligned to the direction you want to move the mesh. Then hit <g><y>, hold down <shift> and drag the mesh carefully into position.

[movomo]

One thing to keep in mind when introducing a new body mesh and adjust to the armor is that the vertex weights around the breast region are likely to be different.

This generally is solvable by copying OP 1,2 and spine2, but if the armor piece over the boobs is a rigid body (thus not deformable), gosh, you'll need quite a bit of work.

[gerra6]

One thing to keep in mind when introducing a new body mesh and adjust to the armor is that the vertex weights around the breast region are likely to be different.

This generally is solvable by copying OP 1,2 and spine2, but if the armor piece over the boobs is a rigid body (thus not deformable), gosh, you'll need quite a bit of work.

True, although there are some fun things you can do.

 

My favorite technique is to decide which pieces should be treated as rigid sections. Every vertex belonging to that rigid section gets identical weight-painting that should be equal to the maximum weightpainting of the nearby breast vertices.

 

Then you just choose the next clump of vertices and repeat.

 

The end result, if you chose well, is a mesh that moves with the breast, but doesn't stretch. Instead, it behaves like, say, banded armor (or similar) with rigid pieces that can move relative to each other.

 

Of course, this doesn't really work for anything that should be solid, like a plate mail chest piece.

[caradas1030]

Just an update, I'm making slow but sure progress. You guys have been a ton of help.

 

[gerra6]

Glad to hear it.

 

Let us know it goes.

[caradas1030]

So it seems the box in Blender is more clutch than I though. So long as I import with the box selected, I don't have alignment issues. For the cuirass, not it's all a matter of splicing models together as seamlessly as possible (mesh 2 still giving me grief in that department but at least something is getting done). I though I was done with the gauntlets, but I still have a ton of work to do on them to reduce clipping. 

 

Can the lattice generator be used for non-upper body stuff? That seems like it would be an easier solution than hand sculpting. 

[gerra6]

Sure. I'll send you the latest beta. It will be released publicly next week, but is a significant improvement over the old version and has one feature in particular that I think you'll need.

The basic idea behind the lattice generator (clothing bodytype converter) is to generate a reusable Lattice modifier that can be created once and then used on any clothing meshes that you want to convert from one body to another.

For your purposes we want to do something slightly different.

1. First, duplicate the body.
2. On the duplicate body, tab into edit mode
3. hit a until no vertices are selected
4. hit 'b' twice to get the area selection tool
5. select vertices where the body clips through the armor (left click to select, middle mouse button to deselect)
6. hit tab to go back to object mode

7. Select the original body
8. tab into edit mode
9. hit 'a' until every vertex is selected
10. tab into object mode

At this point, one mesh should have all of the vertices selected, one mesh should have only some vertices selected.

11. Select the original body
12. shift-select the copied body (you may need to be in wireframr mode ('z') to do this.

Run the lattice generator. Try something like this:

 

Take special note of 'Growth Margin'.  That's the setting that determines how much (in Blender units) the selected regions on the mesh will 'grow'.  Experiment with different values until you get an idea for how much growth is needed for your purpose.

 

This should give you a lattice that smoothly magnifies the area of the mesh that you had selected while leaving the areas you has not selected untouched.

 

You should end up with something along the lines of this

 

 

In that example, I selected the left breast and ran the tool with the above settings.  The selected region was smoothly magnified and the rest of the mesh left untouched.  If I were to then apply that lattice to a piece of armor, it would be magnified by the pre-existing lattice to match that movement.

 

Then select the armor meshes and run the save/load/apply lattice tool.

 

If you are satisfied with the results, look for the lattice modifier in *each* mesh and *apply*

 

Sending the lattice generator beta in PM (I'll probably release the Lattice Generator update publicly in the next few days, assuming no more significant bugs show up).