Having problems editing vanilla meshes in 3DS Max 2016

[ChubbyKitty]

Hello! I posted this on nexus forums last night and didn't get a reply, so I thought you guys might be able to help me out.

 

I downloaded the nif plugin linked in the description here for 3DS Max.

 

Basically I'm trying to make the Tunnel Snakes jacket. Just editing the vanilla greaser jacket in 3DS Max, removing the pants and then I tried deleting the vertices that made up the undershirt and then placing it over the vault suit so the vault suits collar would stick out.

 

My first issue was whenever I would try to edit the mesh, 3DS Max would crash. Even if I deleted a few vertices and it didn't crash, trying to save would crash it anyway. The I moved onto importing the files WITHOUT the skeleton (Which I'm concerned I'm doing that wrong- Am I not supposed to do that?) and that way it let me edit it without problems, but gives me "unknown error" when trying to export.

 

I have learned a tiny amount of 3D Modeling in school but I'm still a complete noobie with it still. And I don't want to be wandering around begging other people to make mods for me, so I want to figure out how to do this. Am I doing something wrong. Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

[xgamer468]

I dont think youre really doing anything wrong, max  just doesnt really seem to like working with these meshes. When you want to edit the mesh, try deleting the BSSubindex and the Skin modifier, once youre done import the vanilla jackt, add a Skin wrap modifier to the new model and add the vanilla jacket as reference. Then convert it to skin and fix some vertices weights if necessairy. Now add a new BSsubindex modifier to your new mesh and set up the partitions the same way they are set up in the vanilla file. Delete the vanilla file and export. Its important that you import the vanilla file WITH skelleton though, or you will end up without any bones on your model.

That unknown error seems to occur pretty randomly for me, when it happens just try to restart max, that usually fixes it.

[SlapMeSilly]

The crashing with figment's plugin is "normal". It shouldn't be but 3DS dislikes it/nif's for some reason. Anyway as xgamer noted deleting the BSSubIndex and Skin Modifier will almost always stop the crashing and let you edit the mesh. I've never had luck trying to re-skin and export back out of 3DS and have always had to make an intermediate nif, import to Outfit Studio, export back to OBJ, then import back into Outfit Studio and weight it. Doing the export>obj>import causes Outfit Studio to regenerate the mesh as a BSSubIndexTriShape. Then weighting it against a reference model does what it's supposed to. I'll be frank, I have no clue how to do weighting in 3DS. I've done some in Maya. I can transfer the models from Maya to 3DS, but as mentioned getting it out of 3DS with weights has always been an issue for me.

[Flycrusher]

Actually i don't use 3DSMax do work on meshes, only to convert them.

 

I load a nif model with Figment plugin , then i immediately export it also in nif format but for Fallout 3.

I do this to be able to load it in Blender and edit it as i did for Skyrim.

The skeleton and skin modifier are kept and can still be used.

 

You just have to realign the skeleton to the right place in Blender (just see in NifSkope how it should be)

 

Be careful with the skeleton position, if it's not done correctly you will have an invisible mesh in game.

 

When i'm finished i export from Blender in Fallout 3 nif format and then just import in 3DSMax and export to Fallout 4 nif format.

 

Then you need to create the dismemberment partitions and edit some parameters in NifSkope.

Finally you load it in Outfit Studio to make some final editing and export you nif.

 

In this way you can create everything you want and it works perfectly.