Armor Modding - Missing Something Minor

[begalund]

Okay, I'm finally getting somewhere in my quest to figure out the mysterious world of making my own set of armor.  But I've run into a pair of glitches.  Now be aware that since this is a rather simple test the armor is supposed to be a piece of crap.  It's a simple mod of the Alyn Shir armor cuirass.  I've had so much trouble even getting the silly thing to show up in the game in the first place, I'm not working with anything special at this point.  You can tell me it looks like shit, and I'll acknowledge that and promptly move on.  

 

Glitch #1 is an offset issue.  Somehow the armor/body/skeleton of the mod I'm testing are offset from the rest of my character.  

 

At first I thought I had it figured out since I noticed that the body and armor, while snap-centered to each other weren't similarly matched up to the skeleton.  They were shifted upwards a tiny amount, and it made the character float a few inches above her ankles as well as have no neck.  I went back and re-centered the armor and body relative to the skeleton and figured that would fix it.  Instead I ended up with the opposite problem.  Now the armor and body are shifted downward by enough to leave a prominent gap between the head and body, as well as significant overlap at the wrists.  See the following screenshots

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glitch #2 should also be pretty obvious from the screenshots.  I can't seem to make the body textures show up in the armor mod.  Now according to the guide I've been following, all I should need to link up would be:

 

femalebody_1.dds, femalebody_1_msn.dds, femalebody_1_sk.dds and femalebody_1_s.dds 

 

in texture slots 1, 2, 3, and 8 respectively.  But since that hasn't worked, I've also attempted a test with astridbody and astridbody_msn  (from CBBE) in slots 1 and 2 since those are also present in my texture directory and were the base textures from the body when I started this whole process.

 

I've included the nif as an attachment, in case someone can point out the couple of mistakes I made.

HTop_1.7z

[skyrimkillmod]

for the floating body problem:  did you reskin the body or is it in its origonal form when u started your project?

for the textures:  Did you load the textures from your data/textures folder in the skyrim directory?

are you useing 3ds max?

 

so im looking in my 3ds max and yes your skin is lower then the body so the head would be floating in this one.  Make sure that when you get your body into 3ds max (or what ever your useing) to not move it or remove the skin and reskin it, it needs to remain in its origonal form.  

[skyrimkillmod]

 

I just started working with this armor last night

[begalund]

for the floating body problem:  did you reskin the body or is it in its origonal form when u started your project?

for the textures:  Did you load the textures from your data/textures folder in the skyrim directory?

are you useing 3ds max?

 

so im looking in my 3ds max and yes your skin is lower then the body so the head would be floating in this one.  Make sure that when you get your body into 3ds max (or what ever your useing) to not move it or remove the skin and reskin it, it needs to remain in its origonal form.  

 

I've never been able to get my version of 3ds max to work correctly.  Unfortunately I grabbed the 2013, 32 bit version, and then when I grabbed the nif loader for it, I keep getting an error sauing it isn't a valid Win32 application.  So I've been working in blender.  Frankly for the complete novice it almost seems easier.  But that's besides the point....

 

So far as I know, I've never reskinned the body.  I do remember having an issue at one point where the body mesh just jumped when I was trying to work through the guide.  And by "jump" I mean it looked fine on screen - then I ran the exporter (or importer, or unwrapper, it's been several days) and when the screen returned to normal it was out of position.  

 

I'm less worried about the floating part, since I'm pretty sure if I started over fresh I'd not have that particular issue again (I can always reload the base body from scratch after all).

 

I'm far more concerned with why the body isn't showing texture.  If I can nail down what I'm missing there, I think I'll finally understand this process.

 

(well, I won't completely understand 3-d lighting effects, or how to deal with shadows, or exactly how to make things look how I want them - but at least I can make them appear in the damn game)

 

As for where the body textures came from, yes, I grabbed/loaded them from skyrim\data\textures\actors\character\female

(although listed in the texture slot in the nif without the initial "skyrim\data\")

[skyrimkillmod]

are you useing nifskope? this is how idd do it in niff skope

 

 

 

 

hope this helps

[skyrimkillmod]

forgot to mention you should delete the lighting shader property for the body in your custom nif then go to the nif of the origonal body copy and paste its lighting shader property into the custom nifs body you are working on, then at that point follow my pics

[begalund]

are you useing nifskope? this is how idd do it in niff skope

 

 

 

hope this helps

 

 

Well, I'm not going to post a screen shot, but suffice it to say that as of right now, that is exactly how my nifskope view looks.  I have no idea why this persists in being so stupidly frustrating for me.  Link everything exactly as described, and it doesn't work as expected.  Go back and do it again, exactly the same way, still no luck.  Wash rinse and repeat 47 more times.  and somehow on that last attempt something is different.  You don't know what, but something.  And suddenly, part of it works.  Not all of it, but part of it.  *sigh*

 

I'll go back to plugging away on it.

[skyrimkillmod]

witch part is working? sometimes i get problems at the hips of the body 

[skyrimkillmod]

what body are you useing?

[begalund]

forgot to mention you should delete the lighting shader property for the body in your custom nif then go to the nif of the origonal body copy and paste its lighting shader property into the custom nifs body you are working on, then at that point follow my pics

 

well, that did make a difference.  I'm not sure what the difference is, but rather than being all black, the body is now an all over light peach color.  It's found at least part of the flesh texture, so I'm closer.  But this did give me some areas to explore.  I can at least look at the differences in the before and after, and I've made notes for myself.

[begalund]

what body are you useing?

 

An unmodified CBBE, although I have extra textures i usually run with while playing - SG texture renewal and battle hardened typically.  Plus several face changers, although those don't matter in this instance of course.

[skyrimkillmod]

does the bodys texture have nipples?  sometimes the body looks weird when you put the texture back on it but it will work in game,  mine useally is a brown color but i think it used to turn peach on a different body i would use.  point is just because it might look weird in nifskope dosnt mean its not working.  one of the texture files is allways called astrid.dds and astrid is a npc in skyrim that you found burnt to death i beleave but modders love to use the texture of the burnt body for all of their body mods so sometimes your body will look burnt in nifskope or strange because it may have been altered by the modder and now is just a resource thats been alterd from its origonal burnt form.

[begalund]

Nope, I thought of that.  The peach color is when I tested it in game.  So I also checked by replacing astridbody.dds with femalebody_1.dds just in case.  Same issue - although I think it might have been even more washed out.  I've examined both texture files by hand, and the astrid one is the burnt texture you describe, while the femalebody version is more what I would expect to see.  However both of them are just showing up as randomly blah when testing it in game.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

 

what body are you useing?

 

An unmodified CBBE, although I have extra textures i usually run with while playing - SG texture renewal and battle hardened typically.  Plus several face changers, although those don't matter in this instance of course.

 

 

If you are using a standard CBBE, then go to the CBBE modpage at Nexus and manually download a fresh copy. Extract the meshes to a new folder on your desktop and use THOSE. This will avoid any bugs that may have worked their way into the meshes you actually use in your game.

 

I would highly recommend the first 12 or so of NIGHTASY'S TUTORIALS for making Skyrim armour - these go through the first beginner steps really, really nicely, and they will help you avoid ALL of the problems that are apparent in the above pics & discussion. It's quicker than you think, and well worth your time!

 

*These tutorials ALSO cover how to properly obtain and install the correct software - including 3dsMax, and how to get it to work for you! I would really recommend 3dsMax, it is much easier to use than Blender (I have found), and there is very extensive tutorial support for it.

[Deedlit]

nightasy will dnt help too much for him, because hes using blender, try zquad1 guide its for blender, i know you are not doing a conversion, its a new armor, but some steps are the same and i think at your case that will help. 

If that helps i just ask to later on if you can post a thanks at his tutorial, because its kinda rare people doing that.

[begalund]

Well, as I've mentioned over on my main modding gripe thread (http://www.loverslab.com/topic/29982-wanted-to-express-my-admiration-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-a-first-modding-attempt/?p=774178), I've decided to switch over to 3dsmax.  I just think it's going to be the better tool for me to work with.

 

Although I never have quite figured out the issue with the flat coloring, I'm going to finish working through the tutorials and see if I can get something completed with the new tool set.

 

If it works, I'll mark this topic closed (and solved).  For now though I'll thank everyone that has contributed.

[Absurdity]

Gonna quote myself from the post in here http://www.loverslab.com/topic/31006-weird-texture-issue/

 

 

1. Did you fix the BSLightingShaderProperty? It's screwed up after you export the model from 3ds or blender or w/e, best option is to copy it from another armor and assign the new textures.

2. Did you fix the normalmap? You need to go to "BS Num UV Sets" under NiTriShapeData and set it to 4097 to fix the normal map, it's probably set to 1 after exporting the mesh.

    Then you go to NiTriShape, the one to which the NiTriShapeData belongs, right click ---> mesh ---> Update Tangent Space, do that with every mesh-piece that the armor has.

 

I doubt that number 2 is the cause of that texture issue but the armor looks like crap without a working normal map anyway.

 

When copying the BSLightingShadeProperty make sure you copy it from a mesh that definitely looks right in-game and delete the old one, if it's the BSLightingShaderProperty of a body mesh copy it from the original body mesh or another working body mesh AND NOT from an armor mesh.

[Dillpickle]

You have somehow managed to delete the body's UV map in your file - it has nothing to map the textures to...

 

Easiest solution - right click on your body NiTriShape 'Block -> Remove Branch' , use original body and 'Copy Branch', on your armour nif right click the 0 NiNode and paste branch - problem solved.

[begalund]

You have somehow managed to delete the body's UV map in your file - it has nothing to map the textures to...

 

Easiest solution - right click on your body NiTriShape 'Block -> Remove Branch' , use original body and 'Copy Branch', on your armour nif right click the 0 NiNode and paste branch - problem solved.

 

Yep, that was it.  Not sure how I did that, but this was the fix.  I'll have to figure out what I did there - I think I know where it might have taken place, but not how it took place ( I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it does to me, and that's the important part ).

 

In any event, case closed.  Thanks again everyone, I know the steps to fix the errors, and I can move on to making something (as my niece would say) "more less sucky!"

 

 

[oh, and what do you know, post number 35 too.  bonus]