[OBLIVION/3DS] Partial working NIF exporter

[Razorwing]

I'm having an unusual problem which may or may not *be* a problem... I'm not sure.

I'm trying to export one of my emperor parasols with the Civ4 exporter, this time using the "Textures > Original images" option rather than baking the textures into each NIF, which is daft really because there's eight parasols at the moment all using the same textures. The problem is that it seems to work :pop: - but I have no way of cooberating if it works on other computers than mine, or in other words, if the NIF is reading the textures from where it should. Even stranger is that the textures aren't even located in the Data folder, so, that would seem to indicate that the NIF is reading them from my Max directory.

But there is also a theoretical possibility that the parasol NIF (attached) just has a setting that says it should read images from the "default" location. If so, then it's possible that it displays textured in the CS because I have other parasols, with the same textures baked into them as the texture-less parasol uses, already loaded into memory. However that's just a wild guess on my part.

I downloaded a hex editor called "XVI32" and checked it out, but it didn't yield any useful information. All I saw was the names of my meshes ("StRwParasol05_CapTop" etc) and the names of my texture maps ("01 - Default" etc), while the rest of it was mumbo-jumbo.

Would be really cool to find a solution to this to keep the megabyte count down. Any help is appreciated.

[Quentin Fortune]

Alright, I gave it a quick check and the main difference I can see between your mesh and those of Bethesda is that there is a distinct path for their textures.

For the glass longsword it's textures\weapons\GlassClaymore.dds

Further more I've seen that your bump map can also be found in the mesh. I extracted various of the .bsa files and in the texture folder there is not only the colour map, but also the bump (or normal) and sometimes the - I assume - specular map.

I attached an excerpt from the texture folder for Daedric weapons and when you have a look at it you'll see that all textures have the same name with additional extensions for bump and spec map ([I think B]n[/B] is for normal map and g for glow map).

Strangely enough you don't find references of the other textures in the meshes when you look at them in a hex editor, but I found a reference for your bump map (as stated above).

I have no idea, if this will help you in any way, but this is what I could read from your nif so far.

Greetings

Quentin

P.S.: Regarding my retexturing work I have been terrified to see that all the meshes and textures of - for example - boots are named boots and you just get the distinction from the various folders there in.

This means that I have to work of a logical system for my textures so I won't confuse my stuff. Have a look at the two mesh folders and it's the same for most of the textures. So there is a huge difference between armour/glass/boots and armour/ebony/boots. It makes it easier to find the stuff in the CS, but retexturing without a proper tool has just become hell

Greeting

Quentin

[Razorwing]

I think I may have been right. :pop:

I was working on another parasol variant and used a wholly new texture which hadn't been embedded in any other parasol NIF, and it turned up missing! Yaay! So, all we have to do is embed textures in *one* NIF and then all NIFs can use them!


Edit: Dang, we posted at the same time
Thankyou so much! Maybe that's why my bumpmaps isn't showing up!
I'm going to test what happens if I name them like Bethesda did.

Edit (2): Nope, sorry... didn't work. I can't get bump- or other maps to display. I figure it must be the exporter's limitations.

[Razorwing]

For those other fellows here who might be using the Civ4 exporter, here is a screenshot of the location of the "collision box" static in the CS. Painstaking use of this static means you can give your exported models the illusion of being solid. I use it extensively myself.

[Siegfried]

Is anyone attempting to get the exporter to have collisions, fancy mapping, and havoc physics? Does anyoen even know how to?

[Zarf]

Sure. Several people (Including myself to a minute extent) are trying to get them working properly. There's a big huge thread about it in the Official Forums.

It's right here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index...10659&st=0

Four pages so far. They have been experimenting with adding stuff to models in 3D Studio Max through the "User Defined" section. I think they are on the threshold.

[Siegfried]

Thats awesome

[mjy]

well it work for me i did add a tower into oblivion with max 6 and the nif exporter didn`t work for 6 so i tried 7 and it did work very nicely

thx for the help

[Garrett]

You know, I was just thinking the other night about how bounding boxes could simulate collision--and now it's proven! :goodjob:

Well, even without Havok it's still progress. With most environmental objects you wouldn't really notice that you could stand on an invisible cube perimiter anyway (nless you play in third person... riiiiight...)

Now that that's confirmed I'd better get back to planning the mod I need the collision for... I think I'll keep it mostly a secret for now so when I fail abysmally (which is likely) it can just fade into obscurity without any embarrassment. Good plan, huh?

[slap]

Hi guys, my first post here and Im afraid it is to ask for a bit of help with the new Nif tools. bare with me..
I have managed without much problem to import various architecture models from Oblivion into 3DSMax, using the exporting functions of Nif tools into .obj format. I have then been able to edit the meshes and export them from Max using the Civ4 exporter. But this is where my problem begins. The only way I can get the models to show up again in NifSkope is to use the feature of the Civ4 exporter that uses the original texture, and not an embedded .Nif. When using the Original Images to export function, they come back into NifSkope fine, but come up with errors regarding an embeded one. I have tried all the compression options in the Civ4 exporter like DX1 Compressed,High Colour,Original and they all export the model fine, but only the Original Image option seems to work and show the texture. But this method causes the TES4 CS to not display the texture in the engine, but rather a purple ommission where the texture should be. I have checked and rechecked texture paths time and again but cannot find the cause of this rather frustrating problem.
I am sure it is this embedded texture that is the cause but simply cannot get it to work correctly. The error below is what I get when trying to open a freshly created Nif with "embedded texture".

failed to load block number 7 (NiMaterialProperty) previous block was NiPixelData
failed to load nif from file "C:/Program Files/Bethesda Softworks/Oblivion/Data/meshes/architecture/farmhouse/farmhouse03W1.nif"
texLoadRaw() : unsupported image depth 0

Could some kind soul help me with this please. Im getting a little frustrated.. :lol: