Character Import

[Guest]

Does anyone know if it's possible to import another character's face from a different game into Skyrim. I have the mesh and textures of it, but I am wondering if it can be done.

[miaterasu]

Every game uses their own model engine (or whatever it's called). There are standards kind of like how images have jpeg, gif, png etc... But sometimes they don't export easily because the files are encrypted. You will need to find the models of that game, then load them into a 3D model application and export it into a format that skyrim uses. I'm sorry I can't explain this more than this, I haven't played skyrim in a few years and I'm just now starting again lol! People will often say "If you have to ask, you can't do it" but that's not true. I cracked Tera models many years ago after asking around the community about it. Getting started can be overwhelming but if you're patient and willing to learn a bit of math, you can do it!

[Guest]

Every game uses their own model engine (or whatever it's called). There are standards kind of like how images have jpeg, gif, png etc... But sometimes they don't export easily because the files are encrypted. You will need to find the models of that game, then load them into a 3D model application and export it into a format that skyrim uses. I'm sorry I can't explain this more than this, I haven't played skyrim in a few years and I'm just now starting again lol! People will often say "If you have to ask, you can't do it" but that's not true. I cracked Tera models many years ago after asking around the community about it. Getting started can be overwhelming but if you're patient and willing to learn a bit of math, you can do it!

I actually already have the model in 3ds Max, but I am wanting to skin the head to the UNP body first and if that doesn't work, I'll try the importing entire body, which I am dreading to do. And the hair has one million polygons, so it'll take me a while to figure out how to get the hair in the game without sacrificing quality.

[Guest]

Ok I have my custom head that I want to export, but I am unsure what to skin wrap it to? Do you know what bones to use? I tried skin wrapping to the vanilla head mesh, but it just makes it really small and whenever I try to enlarge it again, it goes back to being small.

[Kastagir]

The head mesh should only contain skin data for two nodes:  "Head" and "Spine2."  The "Head" node allows the head to move about and the "Spine2" node controls the size and movement of the neck relative to the body.  If you take a look at the skin of the default femalehead.nif with "Edit Envelopes" selected in 3ds Max, you can see the vertex weight distribution between the two nodes.

 

 

 

 

As long as you skin it to the _1 body mesh (to avoid neck gaps) you can then remove all other nodes other than Spine2 and then add the Head node.  Use vertex weighting to weight all the vertices above the neck to the Head node (1.0 absolute value) and use weight painting to smooth between the neck and head areas to get something similar to the default head meshes.  Test in 3ds Max and in game until you're satisfied.

 

Being weighted to a single node is what keeps the head from distorting during movement.  Keep that in mind when you're blending the weights of the neck region to the head.  Sharp contrasts in weights will cause visible stretching of textures in game as the mesh is distorted.  Spreading this gradient over the largest possible area is the best way to avoid this, along with an even distribution of vertices in the region that transitions between two nodes.