Modding unit in Blender(Massive Noob)

[Bagdemagus]

Ok so I have taken one of Kael's units from FFH2 just to see if i could change it and then put int back into the game using Blender 2.49,

I took the Herald of the mercurians, took off the wings and played about with his shoulder pads and that is it really.

It loads in Nifskope perfectly fine and saves fine. Yet it does not show up in game! The XML is correct because the units shadow is there lol.

But no herald! I'm learning this through trial and error - i got a new edited helmet into the game, i cant UV map yet however.

But this is most frustrating i thought it was a straightforward edit just removing the wings and the unit would be there. but no.
Any advice would be greatly received thank you.

 

[SaibotLieh]

There is a lot of easily overlooked settings in the nif files that can have severe consequences if not set correctly. Instead of tracking these in the exported file from Blender, I found it much easier to just use the original nif and just swap in the new stuff. This is nicknamed "Nifswap" and maybe this forum entry can help you with it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unit-requests-thread.157708/page-177#post-9203025

Also, a very good collection of tutorials on Nifskope can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tut-nifscope.305606/

Hope this helps.

 

[Bagdemagus]

There is a lot of easily overlooked settings in the nif files that can have severe consequences if not set correctly. Instead of tracking these in the exported file from Blender, I found it much easier to just use the original nif and just swap in the new stuff. This is nicknamed "Nifswap" and maybe this forum entry can help you with it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unit-requests-thread.157708/page-177#post-9203025

Also, a very good collection of tutorials on Nifskope can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tut-nifscope.305606/

Hope this helps.

Thanks this is most helpful, i think at this stage i am going to just edit unit component parts such as heads and helmets in Blender, seems more reliable at this stage of my learning lol. Long road ahead.

 

[MightyToad]

If I was going to do this on purpose I would just set the material alpha to "0". Then the unit would be invisible in game, but it should be invisible in nifskope as well. Doing a "nifswap" isn't as hard as it sounds. Most times it is as simple as copying and pasting.
Anyway, I don't have this mod so I couldn't begin to guess what it could be. Perhaps the animations are triggering a controller in game making the unit invisible. If you upload the original and the modified nifs perhaps we could see what it might be.

Don't give up so easy, man.

 

[Bagdemagus]

If I was going to do this on purpose I would just set the material alpha to "0". Then the unit would be invisible in game, but it should be invisible in nifskope as well. Doing a "nifswap" isn't as hard as it sounds. Most times it is as simple as copying and pasting.
Anyway, I don't have this mod so I couldn't begin to guess what it could be. Perhaps the animations are triggering a controller in game making the unit invisible. If you upload the original and the modified nifs perhaps we could see what it might be.

Don't give up so easy, man.

I can do nifswaps been doing that a while a few years to be honest but until I recently bought a new computer my Vista computer seemed to prevent me at every corner especially with just downloading python. Maybe it was the PCs safety settings, dunno? Anyway I'm altering the shape of meshes in blender without much skills and knowledge lol.

Thanks for the advice I will attempt to upload the nifs to unit forums later. Thanks for the encouragement too much appreciated.

 

[SaibotLieh]

It might also be the case that you are mixing shadered/non-shadered entries accidentally. Maybe check if these entries are set correctly:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unit-requests-thread.157708/page-199#post-10321122

Otherwise uploading the nifs is certainly a good idea so that we can have a look at them.

 

[Bagdemagus]

It might also be the case that you are mixing shadered/non-shadered entries accidentally. Maybe check if these entries are set correctly:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/unit-requests-thread.157708/page-199#post-10321122

Otherwise uploading the nifs is certainly a good idea so that we can have a look at them.

Sorry to ask how to you upload a file with the unit in, i did this five years ago (forgotten) and when you I try to upload a file it just says unsupported??

Im trying its to upload the unit in its folder,.

 

[Bagdemagus]

Here is my file, apologies for being not too clever took a while to work out lol its been five years since i last did it

Please take a look, its obviously far from finished but i just tried to upload it into game and there was nothing just the shadow under the feet.

Once again i appreciate any help.

 

[SaibotLieh]

Yeah, that nif is missing a lot of important nodes, is it a direct export from Blender?

I got the unit working by nifswapping the mesh information into the maliskirmisher_fx.nif file. Things I did additionally were triangulating the mesh (to go from NiTriStrips to NiTriShape), creating a new skin partition for the mesh with 4 bones per partition, reposition the mesh to x=0,y=0,z=0, since the maliskirmisher mesh is positioned in a different way (x = -0.0422,y = 3.2364, z = 69.6085), and removed all the extra meshes (weapons, horn,...) the maliskirmisher_fx has.

Best have a look at the attached nif and compare it to your original file to see the all the nodes that were missing.

Hope this helps.

 

[Bagdemagus]

Yeah, that nif is missing a lot of important nodes, is it a direct export from Blender?

I got the unit working by nifswapping the mesh information into the maliskirmisher_fx.nif file. Things I did additionally were triangulating the mesh (to go from NiTriStrips to NiTriShape), creating a new skin partition for the mesh with 4 bones per partition, reposition the mesh to x=0,y=0,z=0, since the maliskirmisher mesh is positioned in a different way (x = -0.0422,y = 3.2364, z = 69.6085), and removed all the extra meshes (weapons, horn,...) the maliskirmisher_fx has.

Best have a look at the attached nif and compare it to your original file to see the all the nodes that were missing.

Hope this helps.

Wow thank you! I will learn a lot from the reverse engineering I will do. You are a legend. Cant try it now just about to do some work ready for tomorrow, but thanks again! I will let you know how it goes.

Cheers much appreciated.