How to make a head from scratch (with expressions)

[Myst42]

So... I was messing around with an alien head because whynot.jpg

I have this Blender that allows tri file edition

So we know a head needs 4 material files and 2 texture files

The material files are:

-.nif

-.egm

-.egt

-.tri

 

I had a nif so, checked

The egm can be built with the conformulator out of virtually any tri file so, pertially checked

I had a blank egt texture for races that do not require texturing so, also checked.

The tri was the real challenge here

 

Imported to blender, had a round or two attempting to position and scale the mesh to the position of a working functional normal human head tri I imported to compare and exploit

Eventually managed to position it correctly, used all ctrl-As as needed and the position was identical and synchronized with that of a real tri.

Use set solid button, deleted texture property and cleared parents

Then started doing the morphs

Using the human head tri as reference, I copied the names of morphs (keys) one by one and modeled them (expressions) as new shape keys with custom expressions

It's an alien head so not much science in modeling expressions. Just some mild jaw movement and sometimes moving the inner mouth.

Finished my work, exported as tri file

Used the conformulator on my alien head nif using alien head tri as base

Succesfully created alien head egm

egt was already in existence as a blank one and I could finally say I had all 4 files

Proceed to create a test race using my new alien head on the CS. Itworks.jpg

Go to game

 

It really works (I can't believe it)

But expressions dont

I have... no idea why

I re-imported the tri to blender and all morphs are still there, they just refuse to show up

And that's the story of this endeavor >_<

*This is to be read with some ending story tune*

 

[Myst42]

Not that anybody replied but I feel like this knowledge SHOULD BE OF PUBLIC USE

It's not right that always the people who do complicated stuff in the world of modding are always secretive and keep their resources and knowledge in weird and obscure japanese or korean forums.

 

So just for the record:

The tri making process is entirely doable in Blender with the tri import/export script

But the problem is the way the mesh for the tri file is obtained

Blender is insane, so no matter the logic of one's actions, nothing ever makes sense.

I thought creating a tri file from the imported nif directly in blender (erasing rigging, materials and parents and then re-scaling to 10) would work

It doesnt

It needs the long way to obtain the mesh, that means:

From the nif file:

-Export obj with nifskope

Then in blender

-Import obj with rotate X90° unchecked

-Re-scale from 0.1 to 1

-Then you have a funcional tri that can be edited for shepe keys and safely exported

 

The eternal struggle against a blender that keeps re-arranging normals or something like that.

Anyway, it works now, and I believe I've also managed to write on this thread, all that is needed to create a functional head with expressions from scratch

From any model

Want a cheese wheel head that talks in Oblivion? Well, it is possible now.

[movomo]

Myst, the official(?) nifscript from niftools is supposed to merge some vertices along the seam line. That is because the nif format does not hold multiple uv coords for one vert.

There is a modified version of nifscfipt somewhere around here.. so that you don't need to do the import obj and rotate 90 chore. I'll link it here if I find it again. Sorry I didn't see your post.

I'd say it's already very impressive that you've discovered the fact that vert order is auto-messed up during the import process.

 

 

......

 

damnit, I can't find it. I'll directly attach it here instead

import_nif_2.zip

drop it to your import script folder.

[Myst42]

Thanks!

Though i can't take the credit for figuring it out. A friend helped me out to track the origin of the issue (Room), once the messed up normals thing was a certainty, we managed to get a working way to get a functional tri and everything went smoothly from there.

 

Now I'm faced with an awkard issue

I once made working complicated eyes for a certain spider elf race of mine (It has 8 eyes)

But now I can't even remember how the hell did I do that XD

I thought this was over...