I am interested in some Oblivion NIF support, especially as there's armor/clothing mods I would like to port and I found Blender to be a little more intuitive now than 2.49b.
In a week or two I'll be doing V2 of this tool. I'll post here when I get started. At that point, if there's interest I'll see if I can get other games supported. Oblivion and FONV are two possibilities. I'll need people to test tho, bc I don't have those games.
Hello! This isn't entirely a relevant question to ask, but I have been struggling with this for hours, Googled it and asked around with little response, so I'm hoping someone might help me out. I think I've messed up by how I've animated a rig I've downloaded off Nexus. I now cannot export .hkx due to lacking a skeleton, I believe? Is there any quick way to slam in a skeleton and match it to a rig, or am I cooked and need to start over?
Hello, I recently started using blender. When I imported the .nif file of the character's head in Skyrim, I found that the skin was not displayed. Is this because blender cannot load the .dds file?
On github there's a Blender addon by Matyalatte that import DDS textures as TGA and export them as DDS. I don't think it is off topic to mention it, maybe you can find a use for it to "automatically" import/export DDS related to a Nif processed through your addon. It would be fantastic to be able to finalize a NIF and related DDS textures without having to go through Nifskope and GIMP or PS
(I just saw that Oblivion Deluxe edition is on offer on Steam for 3-4€ but only for the next 40 minutes, too bad. if you want to PM me your Steam contact I can gift you a copy sooner or later.)
Pynifly already imports textures with the nif if it can find them. They either need to be in the nif's folder tree (as tho unpacked from game files) or in Blender's texture path (under preferences). They will then export correctly.
It will also read png files in preference to dds files if they exist. On export the png extension will change back to dds.
The main advantage of png (and tga, I assume tho I haven't tried it) is that you can edit the texture in Blender. If you're not changing it, dds is fine.
You get a BSSubIndexTriShape if the shape has tri morphs. You don't need it otherwise (and if you remove any shape keys, you won't get one). Do you need more control than that?
Forgot to mention, there is a "pynBlockName" custom property on the mesh object. Set it to whatever type of trishape block you want and the exporter should honor it.
I finally figured out my issues that I was having previously trying to export things for Skyrim SE, where I was getting empty exports out of Blender when exporting fresh models. This tool has been amazing since I got it working.
I have one slight problem though, and it may be that it's just not an implemented feature, but I figured I'd ask anyway.
When exporting a fresh model (i.e one that has never been a .nif before, such as one modeled in Blender, or imported to Blender from another game or something like that), and opening it in-game or in Nifskope, the model will have none of it's textures, even if the textures in Blender were .dds image textures.
I'm of course able to assign the textures in Nifskope just fine and then they will work in-game. But if I want to make edits to the model within Blender after that (pretty common when trying to fix clipping and such on rigged character models), I either have to:
Re-import the .nif back to Blender which keeps the texture data, and try to make edits from there, but having the model become triangulated and losing stuff like shape keys and modifiers in the process (I'm aware you can export modifiers, but they get baked into the .nif at that stage by the looks of it).
Make edits using my original .blend files, which have modifiers, shape keys, and quad-based topology making edits easier, but I then have to re-assign all of the textures in Nifskope again.
I was wondering if it is at all possible to get the best of both worlds here, which would be to export from my original, quad-based .blend file, but have that initial export already show up with it's textures in-game. This would allow me to make model and weight painting edits in a more ideal fashion, while also getting to preview the model with it's textures in-game.
I have noticed that some of the models I've tried importing freshly from Blender do already have a texture set, with the texture pointing to the directory, but they still don't show their textures until I manually re-assign them, and most other models don't show assigned texture sets at all.
It's not a huge deal if there is no best of both worlds solution here, for the moment I'm sticking to making edits with my original .blend file with quad-topology, and previewing the results in-game without textures, but it would be a nice QoL thing if I could get the textures working immediately off of the Blender export.
EDIT: I figured it out soon after making this post, the problem was that my .blend file's texture sources were not organised like a Skyrim texture folder. I simply made a folder named "textures" and reorganised all of my textures to match the way they were organised within the mod's textures folder. I had already made .dds conversions that were organised in my mod folder, so once I organised everything in my .blend's textures folder, I went to my .blend file, and used the "Find Missing Files" function and directed it to the newly organised source files, which made them show up in Blender again. From there, exporting to .nif now had the textures already set up when I went into game. This makes this tool pretty much perfect for me, and now 99% of my modelling and material workflow can be done in Blender.
He means you'd have to rig the new head mesh to the standard Skyrim skeleton/armature for it to work as a character mesh, and you'd also need to create the expression morphs used for the game to handle facial animations and which correspond to Blender shapekeys.
If you don't know what "armature" or "shapekey" mean, you'd probably want to learn the basics of Blender first.
I've imported various vault walls to edit them and on export (or import?) it loses the environment mapping and a LOT of information from the BSLightingShaderProperty block. Each "object" is set to default instead of environment map, doesn't have the environment mapping ticked in Shader Flags 1, and it's missing Subsurface Rolloff, and all 6 Wetness values...it also doesn't import/export the bhkNPCCollisionObject or the NiAlphaProperty which means I have to add those.
This is actually a huge issue for me because I've just edited 15 vault workshop part nifs, the generic ones all have 8 parts which I now have to edit individually to add all these missing values back into...and the rest have 12-15 parts which need editing and it's a slow painful process using Niftools and if I mess up it borks the whole nif. I can't copy from the originals often times because the blocks are labelled differently (for example this one has collision as name [0] where as when I past it it says [28]. This doesn't hurt this particular nif but it breaks the summer shorts nif so it can hurt some of them).
Additionally it looks like it has snap points but they weren't working in game. I'll have to see if that's to do with collision but right now the thought of opening all those parts and painstakingly adding everything back into the nif, and doing that every time I have a single edit to the model, is tanking my drive so gonna put this down for a while. I've got a zip file here with the original vault nif, my blender file, and the nif it exports so you can see the difference....hoping you can help me in some way :).
I have edited two of the nifs to add all the missing info back that I can see and it's now swapping materials correctly BUT....well it's just not working. The snap points don't work, technically ONE does from the middle of the floor opposite the windows, the collision works because I copied it in....but otherwise they're all screwy and I can't even see them without bright direct light :(. Pictures here.
It's not my models. If I export a vault wall with OS it preserves all data (all the materials, mapping, flags, etc). If I import it or any nif to blender and then export it with no changes (just pressing a to select all in object mode) it destroys most of the data. Also as I add that destroyed data back the models turn more solid in the game world and appear better so I know it's the nif data causing this. I could really use your help on this if I've done something to bork export it would save me a lot of late nights to be able to fix it. :)
Any chance you've been able to look into this? I've not been able to make progress so I'm really hopeful you're able to help or offer some insights which might help.
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Short version: Either make sure your nif and textures are in the same folder tree, e.g. by unpacking all the archives into one place
or put the textures in a folder tree and point to it using Blender's filepaths.
(I just saw that Oblivion Deluxe edition is on offer on Steam for 3-4€ but only for the next 40 minutes, too bad. if you want to PM me your Steam contact I can gift you a copy sooner or later.)
It will also read png files in preference to dds files if they exist. On export the png extension will change back to dds.
The main advantage of png (and tga, I assume tho I haven't tried it) is that you can edit the texture in Blender. If you're not changing it, dds is fine.
I have one slight problem though, and it may be that it's just not an implemented feature, but I figured I'd ask anyway.
When exporting a fresh model (i.e one that has never been a .nif before, such as one modeled in Blender, or imported to Blender from another game or something like that), and opening it in-game or in Nifskope, the model will have none of it's textures, even if the textures in Blender were .dds image textures.
I'm of course able to assign the textures in Nifskope just fine and then they will work in-game. But if I want to make edits to the model within Blender after that (pretty common when trying to fix clipping and such on rigged character models), I either have to:
I was wondering if it is at all possible to get the best of both worlds here, which would be to export from my original, quad-based .blend file, but have that initial export already show up with it's textures in-game. This would allow me to make model and weight painting edits in a more ideal fashion, while also getting to preview the model with it's textures in-game.
I have noticed that some of the models I've tried importing freshly from Blender do already have a texture set, with the texture pointing to the directory, but they still don't show their textures until I manually re-assign them, and most other models don't show assigned texture sets at all.
It's not a huge deal if there is no best of both worlds solution here, for the moment I'm sticking to making edits with my original .blend file with quad-topology, and previewing the results in-game without textures, but it would be a nice QoL thing if I could get the textures working immediately off of the Blender export.
EDIT: I figured it out soon after making this post, the problem was that my .blend file's texture sources were not organised like a Skyrim texture folder. I simply made a folder named "textures" and reorganised all of my textures to match the way they were organised within the mod's textures folder. I had already made .dds conversions that were organised in my mod folder, so once I organised everything in my .blend's textures folder, I went to my .blend file, and used the "Find Missing Files" function and directed it to the newly organised source files, which made them show up in Blender again. From there, exporting to .nif now had the textures already set up when I went into game. This makes this tool pretty much perfect for me, and now 99% of my modelling and material workflow can be done in Blender.
You have to do bone weights and expression tris for a completely working head, of course.
If you don't know what "armature" or "shapekey" mean, you'd probably want to learn the basics of Blender first.
This is actually a huge issue for me because I've just edited 15 vault workshop part nifs, the generic ones all have 8 parts which I now have to edit individually to add all these missing values back into...and the rest have 12-15 parts which need editing and it's a slow painful process using Niftools and if I mess up it borks the whole nif. I can't copy from the originals often times because the blocks are labelled differently (for example this one has collision as name [0] where as when I past it it says [28]. This doesn't hurt this particular nif but it breaks the summer shorts nif so it can hurt some of them).
Additionally it looks like it has snap points but they weren't working in game. I'll have to see if that's to do with collision but right now the thought of opening all those parts and painstakingly adding everything back into the nif, and doing that every time I have a single edit to the model, is tanking my drive so gonna put this down for a while. I've got a zip file here with the original vault nif, my blender file, and the nif it exports so you can see the difference....hoping you can help me in some way :).
It's not my models. If I export a vault wall with OS it preserves all data (all the materials, mapping, flags, etc). If I import it or any nif to blender and then export it with no changes (just pressing a to select all in object mode) it destroys most of the data. Also as I add that destroyed data back the models turn more solid in the game world and appear better so I know it's the nif data causing this. I could really use your help on this if I've done something to bork export it would save me a lot of late nights to be able to fix it. :)