Self-modelled armours turn out spiky and distorted.

[Salune]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of LoversLab.

 

I am an old hand at modding, and have created detailed 3D model assets with corresponding textures for a number of projects, mostly using the Source and UDK engines. I have been making 3D models for several years, and for some time, I have been considering putting together a few armours or items for Skyrim. I figure that the community could always use another skilled pair of hands, so why not mine?

 

As an experimental first try, I decided to alter the already existing Devious Devices padded chastity belt, so as to familiarise myself with an already successfully created mod item and the methods which had been used in it's construction. In short, I like to see how successful people have done things before committing my own time and resources into trying to do something similar.

 

I had no difficulty importing the chastity belt model into Blender 2.49b. I made my alterations within Blender 2.49B and then inserted the mesh back into the Skyrim data folder using the steps described in the Nexus Wiki tutorial (http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Skyrim._Part_2)

 

However, after multiple attempts at exporting the file to Skyrim, I keep encountering the same problem. My altered mesh keeps turning into a spiky mess of tangled vertices, completely ruining the model and making it look distorted beyond all recognition. (see screencap) The weird thing is that the mesh looks completely fine in Blender, and even looks perfectly fine in Nifskope. At this point, I have no idea where the error is coming in. The way that the tangled vertices move doesn't seem synonymous with any sort of weightmapping errors (such as accidentally binding parts of the crotch to the hands or something equally silly,) so I'm not sure what's going on at all.

 

Is this something to do with my newly altered model clashing with other mods, such as a custom skeleton?

 

I have now made four attempts to rectify this error, but since the process of integrating a mesh into skyrim is a little time-consuming, I figure that it will probably take me months before I would find out what is going wrong here.

 

So, I come before those of you who are more experienced in modding with Skyrim for assistance. Has anyone here encountered this problem before, and if so, how do you go about fixing it? I'm sure that I'm just making some stupid mistake somewhere, but I would appreciate any help that you lovely ladies and gents might be able to give.

 

 

[Leito86]

Looks like the vertex count or vertex numbering for the underwear isn't the same for the _0 and _1 nifs.

[Salune]

Looks like the vertex count or vertex numbering for the underwear isn't the same for the _0 and _1 nifs.

 

Thank you for your feedback.

 

To test your hypothesis, I took the liberty of copying and pasting my altered _1 nif, and then renaming it _0. I figured that this would cause the newly altered armour piece to fit poorly on thinner characters, but would at least help to test if the source of the problem was some sort of conflict between the information contained within the _1 and _0 nif meshes.

 

Since the two copies of the _1 nif will contain the same exact information, surely they shouldn't have any problems?

 

However, when I tried performing this test, I crashed immediately to desktop. I think I might need to do some tinkering to find out exactly why.

[Leito86]

Does it crash upon loading the scene or when you try to equip the armor?

[Salune]

Does it crash upon loading the scene or when you try to equip the armor?

 

It took me a while to isolate it, but it's crashing when I try to equip the armour rather than at any other time. From my limited understanding of skyrim's inner workings, this would indicate that the problem is somewhere in the armour meshes that I've created.

 

However, I find it difficult to understand exactly why, since it is basically just the original Devious Devices chastity belt, modified by moving a few of the vertices around a little bit to make it fit the UNP body a little better. I followed the tutorials to the letter multiple times and keep getting the same problem. Is there something that the tutorials or myself are overlooking?