Easy skinned armor

Skree's Easy Skinned Armor Import Tutorial (V.1.0)

Overview

Ok after playing through the process of making and skinning armor etc, heres my list of revised instructions, using Jaysus' Fallout3 Skinning Workaround Tutorial as a base.

The overall Armor creation process goes like this: -Concept & Design

-Creation in 3d program

-Texturing

-Skinning to a skeleton in 3d program

-Nifskope

-TESConstructionSet

-In Game

This tutorial covers the fifth step, Nifskope. Next to skinning the model, this is probably the next most complicated part. With this tutorial you can take Skinned & ready armor meshes from your 3d program (Blender/Max/Maya) and get them ready to go into TESConstructionSet

What you need:

-A Skinned Armor/Clothing mesh in your 3dprogram of choice

-Nifskope

Basic Summary of steps in quick point-form

-2. Make & Skin mesh in 3d program

-1. Export mesh from 3d program (not skeleton)

0. Open target mesh in a second Nifskope.

1. Your Nif: For each NiTriShapeData, set TSpaceFlag to 16, Update 3 arrays

2. Copy Your Nif's NiTriShapeData

3. In Target Nif; Paste Over its NiTriShapeData with yours.

4. Make Target Nif's NiTriShape's NiSkinInstance's Bone List match that in Your Nif's

5. Copy & Paste Over NiSkinData (Your Nif to Target Nif)

6. Copy & Paste Over NiSkinPartition (Your Nif to Target Nif)

7. Apply Textures to Target Nif

Expanded Tutorial with Details explaining each step

for purposes of my tutorial, ill be using 3dstudio max.

3dsmax: -Create and skin armor to the oblivion skeleton(Make sure no vertex is weighted to more than 4 bones!)

-Select JUST your armor, (not skeleton or anything else)

-File>Export Selected (you dont want to export anything but your armor)

-(3dsMax Nif Export window): make it like this:

Nifskope

For the Nifskope part, it can be a bit confusing for new people.Follow along the following steps with my handy tutorial-picture(tm):

For purposes of clarity, i will refer to 'Your Nif' and 'Target Nif'. 'YourNif' will be the nif you have open in the first copy of Nifskope (the one that popped open automatically upon export) 'Target Nif' is explained below:

3dStudioMax's Export window should have automatically opened your freshly-exported mesh in Nifskope. -open a second Nifskope, Load a target vanilla Oblivion mesh, something very similar to yours. if you are making a Cuirass, find a similar Cuirass, etc. This i will call the 'Target Nif'

-In the Block List, of Your Nif, you should see one (or more) NiTriShape(s). Click your mesh's "NiTriShape" parts one by one and do the following for each:

1.

-find the NiTriShapeData in the drop-down list of the selected NiTriShape.

-in the Block Details window, set TSpace Flag to 16

-below that, click the green arrow button (to update the arrays) next to Normals

-click green arrows next to Binormals and Tangents (they should have just moved up)

2.

-In Your Nif's Block List, right click the NiTriShapeData and pick 'Copy'

3.

-In the Target Nif's Nifskope window:

-in the Block List, find the matching NiTriShape you want to over-write.

-same as above, find the NiTriShapeData in the drop-down list of the selected NiTriShape

-right click the NiTriShapeData and pick 'Paste Over' (the Target Nif's 3d model will probably look screwed up at first, this is normal)

4.

-In both Your Nif's and Target Nif's Nifskopes Block Lists, open the 'NiSkinInstance' item in each of those NiTriShape's

-Notice the NumBones in each, then click the [+] next to Bones, expanding the bone list

-Make the Target Nif's Bone list match Your Nif's Bone list. Here's how:

• In the Target Nif, spot the Number next to each bone in the list, and rearrange (by typing the numbers) so that it matches Your

Nif's bone list. (NOTE: you might want to write these numbers down because as soon as you start replacing them, they are lost)

• If your Nif has a different number of bones:
• Rearrange the bones shown, then in 'NumBones' type in the number of bones your nif has, then hit the green arrows icon. This will

update the list. Finish matching the list. (the Target Nif's 3d model will probably look VERY screwed up at this point, this is normal)

5.

-In Your Nif, find the NiSkinData block and right click, Copy

-In Target Nif, find the NiSkinData block and right click, Paste Over

6.

-In Your Nif, find the NiSkinPartition block and right click, Copy

-In Target Nif, find the NiSkinPartition block and right click, Paste Over

7.

-If your mesh is using different textures than the target, this is where you would fill them in.

-In Target Nif, find the NiTexturingProperty block, expand it

-In the NiSourceTexture block, click the FileName detail entry, and point it towards your texture. (note that your texture should be located somewhere within Oblivion/Data/Textures/)

All Done.

Save As, Test out in game.