Last time, on Adventuring in the Nif…
Finally, after a full day of scrounging for information and reading and rereading tutorials… and even some script tweaking, I get the proper skin partitions to show in Nifskope.
So far, so good. I gripped my sword hilt tightly, ready for the next leg of the journey.
Reverting the Nif in Nifskope
Opening up Nifskope showed me that my exported mesh had the proper skin partitions, finally, but I wasn’t done yet. No where near, as I soon found out.
In order to convert the nif to Skyrim compatible mode, you have to change the User Version and User Version 2 to the values that they had been before you converted it into Blender ready versions.
User Version for Skyrim is 12 and User Version 2 is 83. I do that, and save that as export14_step1.nif. In case anything went wrong I could revert back to an earlier nif file.
The Nexus Wiki tutorial, which I was following at this point, next indicated to delete the Scene Root node. I looked at my nif, and there was no sign nor symptom of Scene Root. I looked everywhere in the nodes, but nothing I saw had any value of Scene Root. Bemused, I skipped that step, as my nif looked appropriate to the next step anyway.
The next step involved deleting properties that were not compatible with Skyrim. These didn’t appear where the tutorial stated, but rather under NiTri for me. The values you have to delete are BSShaderPPLightingProperty, NiMaterialProperty, and NiSpecularProperty by selecting each, and right clicking->remove branch. I made a step save here, just in case.
Some say copy, some say insert. Which is it?
Next, I expanded the root Ninode, the one that, when collapsed and you’re in tree list view, should be the top most NiNode. Next, I expanded the NiTri (full name: NiTriShape) and then selected the child node NiTriShapeData to check on the Num UV Sets. On your version of Nifskope, it may be labeled BS Num UV Sets.
For armors, the setting should be 4097. For a part where it is skin (i. e., bare skin that shows up in game) you’ll want to change it to 1. The steel plate armor has no skin parts, so I left it be.
Next, I checked the Has Normals property. Now, armor has normals, and skin doesn’t. It’s set to yes at this point, so I also left it be. If I was working on, say, the fur or hide armor, I would have several NiTriShape nodes to do this with and make sure the skin and armor nodes have the correct settings.
Skin partitions again
The next step is renaming the skin partitions. Skyrim doesn’t use BP_TORSO, BP_LEFTLEG or BP_RIGHTARM. Those are Fallout holdovers.
So naturally, I went into the BSDismemberSkinInstance node (from now on, will be referred to BSD because I’m feeling very masochistic at this point) of the NiTriShape. In Block Details, I expanded the Partition property and then again on each. My armor has three, since the steel plate covers the entire body. One for BP_TORSO, and so on. What you need to do is change those to Skyrim’s values. You can do that by double clicking where it reads BP_TORSO and typing in the correct values. For TORSO, it’s 32, and RIGHTARM to 34, and LEFTLEG to 37. It’ll rename your skinpartitions to something like SBP_32_BODY, SBP_34_FOREARMS, and SBP_37_FEET.
So renamed, I moved on. If I had extra NiTriShapes, I would do this for all of them. But I don’t.
BSProperties and Properties depending on the version of Nifskope
Now, some tutorials will tell you to edit a PROPERTIES value. This is a bit of an old version of Nifskope- if it appears grayed out and instead you have an editable BS Properties, that one is fine.
The one I was following so far (the wiki one) was describing how to insert your own BSLightingProperty under the NiTriShape node. Another tutorial said to open up the original nif and just copy the BSLightingProperty of the unmodified mesh.
I was all for things being easier, so I opened up another instance of Nifskope, and selected and copied the proper branch. Even doing that, however, many tutorials will tell you that it will appear in the root “directory” for lack of a better term, and have to be set as a child of the NiTriShape node manually- that’s where the difference of Properties vs BSProperties came in. Harrumph, I said. Just selecting the NiTriShape, and right-clicking over it and selecting Paste Branch placed the copied BSLightingProperty under NiTriShape just fine. I checked to make sure that the BS Properties listed it as a child, and it did.
The copied branch contained all the texture sets I needed, and since I wasn’t changing the textures, just replacing them, I didn’t change any properties under those nodes. The Wiki Tutorial was describing a very long, complicated process setting all the things by hand, and it relied far too heavily on the pictures, which are NOT embedded in the post itself. Having to load up and switch windows between images broke concentration and workflow.
I checked over the nif one last time before I saved.
Finally: testing.
I copied the finished nif to the proper folder in my Skyrim\Data folder, and grabbed the appropriate textures. It was time to load up the game.
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Stay tuned for Part 7: Forget the Arrow, This is Ridiculous