How To: Make Leaderheads! Ekmek's Guide

Hey, I'm moving my questions here... I will follow your guide when I redo the leaderhead but for now, you told me to check for distortion

I have an exported modified and reskinned Cochise head joined to a Washington body. When I add it to the Washington skeleton in Nifscope it looks perfect, except for a couple unrigged vertices. Does this mean there's no distortion? Shouldn't there be at least a little bit?
 
When I import side objects (like items) how do I attach them to the main body in 3ds max so they are exported as a single branch for nifskope rather than 2 separated objects?
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Basically you could try to group the item(s) and the main body. There are also menus for boolean operations like AND. But I bet this will screw up the skin partition. You would then have to rerig (I think that's what it is called when you assign weights to the vertices) the mesh which would be a big work. I always keep the parts seperated...
 
Well, I've managed to replace the existing helmet with mine:
Spoiler :
jjwpiu.png

(placeholder now, I am making a "power armor"-wearing warrior leader from Fallout). But I have no clue how to place helmet there (it's the shaka's body so someone did it already).
Is it possible to assign some children "value" just from the nifskope without external rigging/animation? If it's possible, please explain :). I'd be very grateful.
 
Is it possible to assign some children "value" just from the nifskope without external rigging/animation? If it's possible, please explain . I'd be very grateful.
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I never tried that by my own and never heard that anyone else did - on the other side I am not that deep in matter and it wasn't necessary to discuss that with anyone, so Ekmek & Co. could have done this without my knowledge - but theoretically... It seems like Nifskope doesn't provide the option to add a SkinInstance, but you could copy it from another one. In the meshs main node you could then refer to the copied SkinInstance node. Then you would have to alter that new node. I've seen that there is a member that stores the count of the vertices the mesh has. You will also find a bone list which are used for the animation and a member storing the count of the bones controlled by the skin. Also there seems to be nodes for the vertex weights storing the vertices ids and their weights. The vertices aren't shown in the 3d view (I never recognized an option to enable that), so you would have to find out neraly all data via Blender or 3dsmax (vertex id, count etc.). Finally there is a risk that the ids got corrupted when exporting (in other words the vertex id you want to set the weights of can be different in Nifskope and 3dsmax / Blender) and of course that would mean great work with few comfort. And there is still data I don't know what it is for...

In short: I would keep the items separated. I can think of an advantage you'd have if they wouldn't be separate, that would justify that great work. But well, maybe Ekmek is smarter then me. I have to say that I only corrected minor glitches so far, so Ekmek does know much more about that then me.

Sorry, that I can't provide you a tutorial about where to look for the data I described, but my time is somewhat limited and I am almost sure it would be wasted because it wouldn't work. I am also quite sure that if you open a nif in Nifskope, select any mesh, set the view to tree view and have a look at the meshs children, you'll find the same things then I did within some minutes.

EDIT: Of course it is possible to set some properties without having the SkinInstance touched. In general you need to do what I wrote in the last sentence of my original post (before EDIT). If there is some special property you'd like to change, you would need to tell us which in order t get a specific answer. Also, some properties, like shaders, are not so simple that it would be easy to just set a single value. So let us know what you are searching for if it is not the SkinInstance.
 
For now I think I will try to use side ways to avoid complex issues and just use what is appropriate. I was able to attach the armor to the cape of the model (Leonidas leaderhead as base) and now this leaderhead is finished, I am going to publish him soon :).

Thank you for your answers. The only thing I wonder: what to do next. The First Citizen Linnette or Ghoul leader? Linnette may appear out of Boudica + Ghandi glasses and some remodelling/retexturing :).
 
Hi guys, I followed all the guides in this forum on making leaderheads as closely as possible, and made one. Only a few minor tweaks with the shape of his face, lengthened hair, and re-coloured.

The problem is, the .nif file of my leaderhead isn't working with the animations when I view it in Nifskope, and when I try to load up the leaderhead in Civilization IV, the leader's Civipedia page is completely blank, but everything shows up with the original leaderhead.

I've noticed that the file size is smaller than the original one (400KB compared to 788KB), but I'm not sure if that really matters.

Also, in Nifskope, my edited leaderhead has NiTriStrips instead of the original's NiTriShape.

Help would be very much appreciated, the leaderhead is the only thing I'm missing in my mod. :)
 

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When you click the leaderhead it's supposed to "turn green", but this doesn't happen. All I can do is select each part of him, and this makes the part 'white'. Like, if I click on his armor, the NiTriShape of his armor is selected, but nothing else.

Edit: I've tried to go around this problem by separately changing each property to match the numbers in the original one, and have copied all the bits I'm missing from the original one to my edited one, but it still doesn't work. The file size has almost doubled, though.
 
you have to nifswap all parts of your model (can be more than one, therefore it´s fine that if you select the armour only the amour and not the entire mesh is selected)

Also could you please expand the NiTriShape and control if you have a NiSkinInstance there, if this is missing you lost the rigging information through your import / export and the model will not be animated (even if nifswapped)

edit: you attached the animation? (spells -> animation -> attach .kf)
 
I tried attaching the animation, but it gave me an error:
"The following controlled nodes were not found in the nif:"
"_EYE_TARGET"

This happened with both the original one and my edited one, but in the original one the animation still worked perfectly, whereas in my edited one the little moving 'skeleton' did not match up with the body (Screenshot below).

As for the bit about finding the NiSkinInstance, I could see it in the NiTriShapes, but weren't there in the _HAND_R_CONTROL, _ELBOW_R_CONTROL, etc, if that's what you meant for the control bit.

I've imported the original one, edited and exported a LOT of times, but with the same result. Is there something wrong with my scripts or settings?

Thanks for the help guys, really appreciate it.
 

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Ok, so I managed to finish the leaderhead, but when I open Civipedia, it's a mangled, animated mess as you can see in the first attached picture.

I've seen quite a few people with similar problems, but I have no idea how to solve it. I'm sure it has something to do with the shader that you see in Nifskope (I don't know how to explain it, see the second screenshot attached). Without the shader turned on, nothing shows up apart from the eyeshadow, the teeth and the tongue. With the shader turned on, it shows up but is a mangled mess.

I'm making a shader version of the leaderhead, by the way.
 

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Your .nif scripts don't seem to work: when I try to install them, it insists that I don't have Blender installed: I happen to have Blender 2.49. Does this have something to do with the problem?
 
yeah blender 2.49 needs newer nifscripts. you ccan do a google search for them. i'd post the link but a bit busy now.

kablooiee said:
Ok, so I managed to finish the leaderhead, but when I open Civipedia, it's a mangled, animated mess as you can see in the first attached picture.

I've seen quite a few people with similar problems, but I have no idea how to solve it. I'm sure it has something to do with the shader that you see in Nifskope (I don't know how to explain it, see the second screenshot attached). Without the shader turned on, nothing shows up apart from the eyeshadow, the teeth and the tongue. With the shader turned on, it shows up but is a mangled mess.

I'm making a shader version of the leaderhead, by the way.
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Kablooie sorry i dint see your post. i think you may have imported a skeleton with another skeleton already in blender this is the usual sign of that. post a blend and i can confirm it.
 
I can't open nifscripts that I got on CFC. Do I need a newer blender? It won't even display files from CFC to import from. Also, the PowerPoint wasn't that clear to me. I don't know how to get the files into color.
 
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