Is there any reason to convert Gauntlets and Boots into Outfit Studio?...

[sshadow5001]

Unless of course the Gauntlets/Boots have long Sleaves/Stockings? I'm working on converting all of the UNP Spice Gear Collection to UUNP but wondering is there much point converting the Gauntlets or Boots if they don't go beyond the Forearm/Knee?

[myuhinny]

Depends on the body you might have to do them and convert them to the body type you are using or the legs and arms might clip through when you wear them. If many of the boots and gauntlets are the same you can just do one version of them and then make copies of the original rename the copies to the other ones and change the texture paths.

 

Best to load the files into game and test the boots and gauntlets while wearing the UNP spice gear items that you have converted to see if there will be any problems with clipping and such.

[sshadow5001]

It's just that when I've been going through all the sliders I don't really see any that effect the Shin or Forearm much. Biceps and Thighs can be effected alot in some of the sliders so I get why you would want to convert Gauntlets or Boots that reach those sections.

 

So really is there any point converting and that don't reach those parts?

[BringtheNoise]

What about weight painting?

Some gauntlets that are close to the body and go up to the middle of the forearm may deform differently if the 6 main bones per arm are weight painted differently on the gauntlets vs the body (L and R upper arm and forearm bones including the twist bones).

 

If the upper arm and upper arm twist bones go low enough on the arm (down into the forearm) on the body and not on the gauntlets then in game you might see clipping of the forearm thru the gauntlet in certain poses.

 

Just to be safe run the meshes thru mesh rigger with the reference being a complete uunp or cbbe body nif (head, body, hands, and feet).

That way the weight paintings will line up between the outfits and the body.

 

Usually I'll build a reference nif for mesh rigger by going into outfit studio and loading the body as an outfit, then the hands, feet and head (remember to check the box keep old meshes). Then adjust the head height to line up with the neck seam on the body (usually the head loads at the 0 point aka the base of the feet). Then export as a single nif and name it uunp reference and stick it in the mesh rigger template folder.... (cause sometimes Cell updates the weights, not often but sometimes).

 

Using that reference you can then copy bone weights to anything you have in the default uunp shape without issue....usually, most of the time, sometimes mesh rigger may hickup though and you'll need to run it thru again...it is not perfect.

 

But yeah weight painting comes into play on some gloves/gauntlets if they go to far up the arm.

[Gameplayer]

I say make the sliders,

 

Also

 

Get

 

Mesh Rigger

 

Search it up and download that,

 

get 0.89e portable and the 0.89k upgrade

 

Just unpack them to a folder and then overwrite with the upgrade.

 

Next you need Python 3.4 and Pyffi 2.2.2 links are over at KGtools where mesh rigger is.

 

This will greatly speed up your conversion and also you can get the outfit tighter than with Outfit Studio weight painting.

 

 

Tiwa44's stuff is very closely matched to the unp body what I mean is that the polies of the outfit are closely matched so the outcome can be very precise and when weight painted with mesh rigger you can expect a good outcome.

 

With MR you can just shove your nifs into the Target Folder and work the whole set of UUNP folders you made all at once....Also you can just walk away from the computer while its doing this, might take a large number of hours though but its worth it.

 

 

[sshadow5001]

Usually I'll build a reference nif for mesh rigger by going into outfit studio and loading the body as an outfit, then the hands, feet and head (remember to check the box keep old meshes). Then adjust the head height to line up with the neck seam on the body (usually the head loads at the 0 point aka the base of the feet). Then export as a single nif and name it uunp reference and stick it in the mesh rigger template folder.... (cause sometimes Cell updates the weights, not often but sometimes).

 

Using that reference you can then copy bone weights to anything you have in the default uunp shape without issue....usually, most of the time, sometimes mesh rigger may hickup though and you'll need to run it thru again...it is not perfect.

 

But yeah weight painting comes into play on some gloves/gauntlets if they go to far up the arm.

Where is the Head nif located?

[Gameplayer]

ITs in the Skyrimmeshes.bsa

 

This is a template I use with rigger

 

Though I don't always use this one its faster to use just the parts I need.

HDT Full Female Body_1.nif

[sshadow5001]

I remember now why I didn't use Mesh Rigger, It's because I couldn't figure out how the hell to install Python. I install Python 3.4 and that's all good but then when I try to install PyFFI 2.2.2 I get stuck because it only shows 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.

 

What do I do? Do I Just continue to install without picking anything?

[Gameplayer]

I remember now why I didn't use Mesh Rigger, It's because I couldn't figure out how the hell to install Python. I install Python 3.4 and that's all good but then when I try to install PyFFI 2.2.2 I get stuck because it only shows 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.

 

What do I do? Do I Just continue to install without picking anything?

 

You can and it should still work.

 

The options likely depend on a specific Python installation from what I've read and would likely be needed for Blender 2.49

[sshadow5001]

 

I remember now why I didn't use Mesh Rigger, It's because I couldn't figure out how the hell to install Python. I install Python 3.4 and that's all good but then when I try to install PyFFI 2.2.2 I get stuck because it only shows 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.

 

What do I do? Do I Just continue to install without picking anything?

 

You can and it should still work.

 

The options likely depend on a specific Python installation from what I've read and would likely be needed for Blender 2.49

 

It just seems weird not to pick anything

I mean it would seem like I'm installing just some documentation 

[Gameplayer]

It should install some stuff to your C:\Users\yourcomputername\ here somewhere.

 

Just ignore that and try an fire up meshrigger it should work.

 

Sorry if its not real helpful,

 

Dammit JIM!

Im an artist and a chemist not a Software Engineer.

[sshadow5001]

um...

Is this right?

[sshadow5001]

Ok I got Mesh Rigger up and Running, I just need to figure out how it work.

 

In the Mesh Rigger Topic where it tells you how to use it, there seem to be things it tells you to do that don't seem to be in the actual program.

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/24797-mesh-rigger-skyrim-fallout-oblivion-beta89f-10-26-2014/page-1

 

Step 13,14 and 15 say select rigid meshes, replace weights and replace rigging but they don't seem to be options in my version

 

Am I just being dumb?

[sshadow5001]

Ok I think I understand the purpose of Mesh Rigger now. You use it to get any outfit to fit a body of your choosing without having to manually do it yourself in Outfit Studio. I originally thought it would make it work on all bodyslides also but they still need tweaks.

 

There may have been a misunderstanding of what I am attempting to do. It trying to make a complete Bodyslide set from the UNP Spice Gear Collection. I'm sure Mesh Rigger is immensely useful for making outfits that use stranger body types conform nicely to the UUNP body, but I already know exactly what body the Spice Gear is using "UNP Perky" so it's already very easy to make it conform to UUNP.

 

This is what I think anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to find out if Mesh Rigger could instantly make an outfit work with every Bodyslide.

[sshadow5001]

Step 13,14 and 15 say select rigid meshes, replace weights and replace rigging but they don't seem to be options in my version

Untitled.png

 

Am I just being dumb?

I'm still curious about this.

[Gameplayer]

Ok I think I understand the purpose of Mesh Rigger now. You use it to get any outfit to fit a body of your choosing without having to manually do it yourself in Outfit Studio. I originally thought it would make it work on all bodyslides also but they still need tweaks.

 

There may have been a misunderstanding of what I am attempting to do. It trying to make a complete Bodyslide set from the UNP Spice Gear Collection. I'm sure Mesh Rigger is immensely useful for making outfits that use stranger body types conform nicely to the UUNP body, but I already know exactly what body the Spice Gear is using "UNP Perky" so it's already very easy to make it conform to UUNP.

 

This is what I think anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to find out if Mesh Rigger could instantly make an outfit work with every Bodyslide.

 

No there is no misunderstanding of what your trying to do.

 

That's "Bring the Noise" he invented UUNP.

 

Im the guy that most people ask to make the Spice of Life gear by Tiwa44.

-Made the Remodeled Conversions, Tiwa44's MiniDresses, all the DX Mini's for UUNP.

aka Im Gamefever.

 

Weight Painting is very serious step in making a good conversion, sure you are going to have to spend a lot of time adjusting positioning of the Mesh for each slider a person could use

 

BUT

 

Mesh Rigger is the superior Weight Paint program,

Its the weight painting that has discouraged a lot of potential conversions that people "would" have made an released over the years.

Without a decent weight paint people will go Eh this is crap and uninstall your hard work....Honestly Im not sure why some people even upload their SliderSets at all when each and every set is busted up? 

 

Just take the time to pre-pare a whole folder of UUNP conversion Nif's in their correct folder paths

 

Then move the whole folder to Meshrigger

 

Then run it

 

Then take the outputted folder structure and overwrite

 

You also will have a backup of the pre-runs in the Target Folder.

[Gameplayer]

I prefer to run the Chest Piece separately with just the Torso NIF without hands an feet attached to my template.

 

Don't want to accidentally get un-needed weight paints.

 

 

[sshadow5001]

So I guess making and Slider Set for the collection is more or less a waste of time? So should I just make the Spice Gear collection fit the standard UUNP Body, Make a Bodyslide Body to my liking and then use Mesh Rigger to make the outfit fit that Body?

 

Also holy crap your Gamefever, I'm a fan of your work

[myuhinny]

From what I have seen though is that mesh rigger likes to chew up and spit out bodyslide bodies into a pile of crap. I tend to keep all original files load the mesh riggered one into the CK check it out and see if the body is a pile of spazzing junk if it is make a copy of the original and copy the body branch from it delete out the old spazzing one and replace it with the original body check again and pile of junk is gone. I have seen some go in fine and come out looking like gumby. I rarely try to add bone nodes and weight paints using outfit studio it always seems to break other weight paints or messes them up. I mostly use the outfit studio weight painting for weight painting a piece that is stretching because no node is close enough to that spot.

[sshadow5001]

I'm still confused about the options available in Mesh Rigger that are different to what's stated in the Mesh Rigger Guide. (See post 13 of this topic)

[Gameplayer]

The work order,

 

First,

 

Unzip the Spice of Life to its own folder.

 

Open SP's meshes folder,

Remove all _0 and GND/GO files.

 

Only files that should remain in meshes are the _1 files.

 

 

Remove all files not in the Meshes aka ESP, Textures, documents, readme's....Everything not a _1 mesh.

 

Rename your Spice of Life Folder to something like "SpiceOfLifeUUNP"

 

Move this folder to Caliente/Bodyslide/ShapeData Folder

 

The folder paths are now prepared to work in Bodyslide with.

 

____________________________

 

Step 2: Change all the outfits to the UUNP Basemesh shape.

 

Open Outfit Studio

File>Load Reference UUNP HDT

File>Load Outfit "pick outfit"

 

Shape the UUNP Base Body to match the Outfit, in this case Tiwa44 matched her shapes to UNP Perky,

So move the UNP Perky _1 to 100%

 

Now File> Make Conversion Reference

Move Slider to the 100% position full right.

 

Now File>Export Mesh

Copy over your "outfit_1" mesh

 

Do this for each part of the outfit or outfits.

 

Now the outfit parts are converted to baseline UUNP.

 

________________________________________________

 

Next Step. 3rd

 

Make The Sliders for your outfits....

The outfits should be already UUNP Baseline at this time.

 

New Project

Select the UUNP HDT Reference

Select the Outfit "Iron Armor"

 

Quick Glossing of what it is to make sliders

 

You first go Slider Tab > Convert to Sliders

 

Now when you click on a slider pencil example Sevenbase, the body and outfit should shape itself like the body.

-Understand that the quality of how well it shapes is dependant on how closely matched the polygons that make the outfit are to the body you are converting it too...

-This means that unfortunately in most cases each slider has some work to be done.

 

You can for instance without sliders selected fix up the Baseline shape and update the sliders to respond to a baseline across the board, this can help but sometimes its best not to adjust your outfit this way cause it has different outcomes across sliders.

 

Example I select Sevenbase Slider the panties may actually fit just fine....but if I select UNP Skinny the panties may not fit correctly,

 

The task at hand is to select every slider and adjust the mesh to fit those sliders one by one.

 

This will take a lot of time in some cases of outfits so be prepared to spend hours on an outfit.

 

I actually consider this to be rather the easy part most of the time.

Most difficult type of meshes to work with are the ones that have a lot of detail between the Breasts.

Example a RING between the tits will not stay perfect circle shape between sliders.....Same with pendants.

 

_____________________________

 

Step 4:

Making the Project Save,

I consider this to be a very important step, as most sliders even good ones are quite messy.

 

Note that if you followed my instruction on placing your Baseline meshes into the Shapedata folder earlier your work will be stored cleanly like the way the original mod author stored theirs.

 

If you like to see an example check out DX's folder path structure vs WTF bikini folder structure in bodyslide....Hint one is way faster to work with than WTF.

 

Display Name: Name of Pack, Name of Piece, Name of body type (UUNP HDT)

->This is what users will see when they select the outfits.

 

Output File Name

This is the name of the file that the game needs to see. IE your mesh name in the games folder....Do not put a _0 or _1 after.

Note that it may already be there if you used my method of preparation above.

 

Output Data Path

The exact path position that the file needs to be to overwrite the game data.

May already be close if you followed my prep method above.

 

Slider Set File

This is the File that Bodyslide will save the project data too, you can save 1000's of outfit parts to this file,

Don't be stupid and think each part needs its own........You only need one for the entire Pack.....Its fucking annoying to work on something if you make 1 per piece.

 

Shape Data Folder

This is the folder that will store the relevant information of your mesh and its file that controls its shape in game.

IF you used my prep method above you simply hit browse and then find the folder that the mesh was located in.

-IF this part will be located in a folder that will contain other parts it will need to be separated into its own folder location.....

-However....It can be advantageous to use the same folder location when the mesh is the exact same across many outfits..........Takes less space.

For a good example of how these should be look at DX UUNP stuff.

Example

GweldaVampireUUNP\Armor\

The gwelda armor goes here

GweldaVampireUUNP\Underwear\

Undies go here.

 

Example of combining a whole bunch of the same mesh

SottettaHuntressUUNP\Armor\

Sott has 4 chest pieces that use the same mesh, so uh I only need 1 folder and 1 shapefile and 4 base armor meshes.

as opposed to 4 separate chest folders and 4 shape files.

 

ShapeDataFile

You want your shape data file to be named something simple like ArmorHDT.nif

This way you can simply later make a Armor.Nif

Now you have both HDT and non-bounce options

Note that both these armor's use the same folder and the same files as opposed to having to do the work twice as I have seen ppl do in some cases.

 

____________________________________________________

 

At this point your entire conversion should be ready for Weight Painting process

 

Find your Spice of Life folder in your

Skyrim\data\calientetools\Bodyslide\Shapedata folder

 

It should be named SpiceOfLifeUUNP if your following my examples.

 

Copy the entire folder......Paste that folder into

 

Meshrigger\Target\ Folder

 

In MeshRigger select the Target Folder and check mark "Subfolders"

 

MEshrigger will weight paint the entire UUNP Folder and export the meshes in the correct folder structure to OUTPUT folder

 

You then move the contents of output into the Shapedata folder blam your ready to batch build your outfits for testing.

 

[Gameplayer]

Making a Group File

 

this is super important cause newbs need it easy.

 

Close Bodyslide

 

OPen Bodyslide

 

Find the "group manager"

 

Find "Add Group"

In text window type

SpiceOfLifeUUNP HDT

 

Add Group

 

Type

Unified UNP

 

Add Group

 

Type

Unified UNP HDT

 

Add Group

 

Select your SpiceOfLife

Now look at right column

You see every single part that is installed into Bodyslide....So all slider set parts ><

You want your slider set parts all of them in your SpiceOFLIFE pack to be in the group.

Be careful not to select parts from other packs.

 

Unified UNP

Contains all non hdt versions of your SOF pack

 

Unified UNP HDT

Contains all hdt versions plus parts like gloves and boots that normally are not hdt.

 

Save AS

Type SpiceofLifeUUNP as file name and save it.

 

Now close bodyslide

 

Open Bodyslide

 

You should now be able to open Spice of Life Group and see only its parts AND have a PRESET tab for the bodies <<<<<<<<<<<----

 

Batch Build it.

[sshadow5001]

Thanks alot for the detailed guide but really all I need to know is what settings I should use for Mesh Rigger.

 

http://www.loverslab.com/topic/24797-mesh-rigger-skyrim-fallout-oblivion-beta89f-10-26-2014/page-1

 

In this Mesh Rigger topic it describes the various settings and what they do but in the guide it mentions things like rigid meshes, replace weights and replace rigging but these option don't seem to be in the Mesh Rigger I'm using.

I have things like Delete all weight and replace bones which it doesn't seem to mention in the topic.

[Gameplayer]

Now after you have made your conversion and tested it.........

 

Its time to Package your creation for others to bitch slap u   eerrrr praise right praise....

 

On the C:\

 

Drive C

 

Make a New Folder

 

Call it, Packing Folder

 

In the Packing folder

 

Make these folders.

 

CalienteTools\

Meshes\

 

In CalienteTools

Make

Bodyslide

 

In that folder make

ShapeData\ <This will contain your SpiceofLifeUUNP folder

SliderGroups\ <---This will contain your SpiceofLifeUUNP slider group XML file

SliderSets\ <---This will contain the SpiceOfLifeUUNP.XML it contains all the names of the parts its a directory thingy

 

Now on

C:\PackingFolder\Meshes\ <----You can place UUNP Zeroed Meshes here with TRI files this makes it super easy for new ppl to use your conversion without actually learning how to turn on bodyslide.

 

At min you want something like a blank meshes folder in the packing file so that Mod Organizer doesn't cough up errors and you get a ton of useless reports from ppl that don't understand the program.

 

 

[sshadow5001]

Also do I follow the same instructions for Boots and Gauntlets?

just load up a uunp body and boots, put the unp perky slider to 100% and make conversion reference, Conform all, move slider to 100% and set base shape and load up the uunp reference body again?