How would I add HDT to a body?

[Gawdzila]

Hey folks!

 

So, as an essential novice at working with 3D modeling in any capacity this may be waaaay over my head, but....

I'm curious what the general procedure for adding HDT physics capability to an existing body mesh would be?  CBBE is wonderful of course, but there are so many great bodies out there with their own unique qualities and, even with BodySlide, CBBE can only approximate them not replicate them.  I have particular love for the long-abandoned "Rebirth Body", and wanted to try my hand at updating it with some of the same capabilities and options that CBBE has.

 

My understanding is that the body needs to be TBBP-compatible, but I'm unsure exactly what that entails.  As near as I can tell this means that it needs to have a TBBP-capable skeleton and that it needs to be "weight painted", although I'm unsure of any other requirements or restrictions on how those things must be done.

 

Aside from having holes in my knowledge of the requirements for TBBP compatibility, I also don't know how a body is tied to a particular skeleton or what software is required both for the 3D work and the nitty gritty of importing and exporting Skyrim-compatible .nif files to that software.

 

I realize I am starting from a very basic place and I'm not looking for a detailed hand-holding, just a birds eye view of what I need to do and what I need to do it.  After that I can attempt the dirty work of reading tutorials and watching videos and frustrating experimentation.  I'm a pretty quick study... but of course, pointers towards any good tutorials are helpful anyhow

 

Thanks!

[blabba]

AND another morph for me to get my hands on

 

Basically:

 

1. Use Outfit Studio, or Gerra6's Mesh Rigger to copy weights over from a TBBP body to your rebirth body

2. Make sure you have Groovtama's skelly files installed

3. Profit.

 

If you want to do 3D stuff, I recommend you to download 3dsMax (student version is free)

(Blender works also, but not my cup of tea lol)

 

Best of Luck (getting started in modding is hard but fun!)

[Gawdzila]

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

That actually seems like a much more manageable procedure than I was anticipating (maybe deceptively so).  Here I was figuring I'd have to get the .nif's into some 3D software so that I could trial-and-error my way through painstakingly hand-painting the weights onto each individual body, manually "bonding" each model to a new skeleton or something, and then getting it into Bethesda's quirky engine with some error-prone export tool.

 

Perhaps I'm just underestimating the difficulty of step one, but then I could also be underestimating the awesomeness of the tools that people have come up with.  Or both, lol.  Oh well, off I go!  Thanks for the pointers, and I'll be sure to report back if I have success so you'll have another morph to play with

[Gawdzila]

Wow blabba, thanks for the pointer on this -- it turned out to be a simpler process than I could have imagined.

 

Outfit Studio can do the job on almost any mesh in that I care to convert in mere minutes.  After thinking I'd probably spend at least a few days learning to do one mesh with imperfect results, I instead got great results on a couple of meshes just the other night!

 

While Rebirth worked great, one body -- the old, unsupported, but realistic and unique-looking BABE Mk.V -- threw errors at me when I tried to copy weights over.  I assume there is something funky with the mesh, so maybe I'll have to learn some modeling skills and/or weight paint that one by hand if I want to convert it.  Perhaps I'll have to grab a copy of 3DSMax anyway

 

All in all, my little project was a much bigger and easier success than I ever thought.  Thanks again for that!