so last night i meddled a bit with the usual pre CS madness...

heres what i found out:

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porting models without rigging aka statics and weapons, not armor:
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requirements:
throttlekitties modified nif.xml, get it here: http://dl.dropbox.co...ifTools/nif.xml
and put it into your nifskope installation directory

1.
you export the mesh as an *.obj or *.3ds

2.
you open a skyrim mesh of similiar properties, aka a sword if you want to port a sword and select the nitrishape node of the sword mesh

3.
click file->import->import *.obj and select your exported *.obj file
this will overwrite the currently selected nitrishapedata and even keep UVs intact!!! (thx ghogiel)

4.
click the nitrishape again and at the very bottom of its block details click on "properties" expanding the fields below, enter the index number of the bsdshaderproperty that emerged below the whole tree of that nif when you imported the *.obj, this will attach the bsdshaderproperty to your mesh and hence allow it to use textures

5.
delete the imported materialproperty from that nitrishape branch

6.
assign textures and copy paste properties etc as you need, save and done, a gameready mesh

7.
for weapons its advisable to also copy/paste over the imported nitrishapedata over those shapedatas inside the two branches titled blood somin
this will allow the blood effect to be applied to your mesh, if you dont at least delete the existing one or youll have blood floating around in midair


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getting the item ingame:
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1.
open TESSnip, (a tool inside FOMM or fallout mod manager)
(The Hologram was nice enough to post his selfmade version of tessnip for skyrim, give it a try if you like:http://www.mediafire.com/?c1h4hb6lqx73j09

2.
open skyrim.esm

3.
delete everything except GRUP (WEAP) (if your item is a weapon that is), GRUP (CONT) (which are chests and so on)

4.
delete every subentry inside GRUP (CONT) except the one you want to modify or clone, delete every subentry inside GRUP (WEAP) except for those you want to modify or duplicate, preferably one with stats close to your new item

5.
duplicate the one entry in GRUP (WEAP) that you kept, double click it, in the upper right change FORMID to something in hex but also something the game probably did not use yet

6.
while still having your new CONT (WEAP) entry selected, double click EDID (lower left field) and give it a new id, thats not the name just an id inside the CS)

7.
double click MODL and change the path to your new model

8.
doubel click DATA and change the numbers on the lower left to set a price
(dint find out whats damage yet or first person model yet)

9.
now click on the GRUP (CONT) item you kept and in the lower left again select one of the CNTO entries, those are the items inside a chest, select one and hit ctrl+c, select the CONT(whatever i chose) again and hit ctrl+v, thast duplicates that CNTO entry and you got it twice inside your chest now

10.
double click the new CNTO and in the lower right change the FORMID to that FORMID you gave your new item in step 5

11.
click on TES4 at the very top of your esp and uncheck every box!! change unknown 2 to 00000000 and unknown 3 to 0000000f

12.
save your esp, youre done and can now find your stuff ingame inside that chest you put it,
if you put it into a CONT entry starting with "merchant" the merchant using it will also sell your item

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rigged items mini tutorial and tipps for 3DMax by Ghogiel, The Hologram and RX31:
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Mini tut:

1: Delete all the crap in the skeleton.nif that isn't F3 stuff, I just wiped those 2 trees at the bottom, leaving the regular skeleton data and the bones themselves. Change user versions 1&2 to 11 and 34. save.

2: Import into max. Make outfit. skin. add dismember. Export as a F3 nif.

3: Open in nifskope. In this order: In the Nitrishape block details change the num of properities to 0. THEN change the user versions from F3 to Skyrim versions.

4: Open a skyrim nif, copy branch your NitriShape and paste into the root node. steal one of the shader blocks and hook it up to your nitrishape in property link 1. change Unknown Short 1 to 0. change anything in the BSDismemberSkinInstance partitions to match what ever it is.. or not.

5: Profit. http://www.skyrimnex...1321960294.jpg#

AND

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3178

@CS
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:SkyEdit has been released, still alpha but enough functionality to start using it yet

Interesting. Does that mean we'll start seeing some completely new armor meshes coming out?

I hope this is not an indication of how hard it will be to get simple items into Skyrim. It sounds like a work around at the moment. Is that the intention, to provide a short term solution, with a long term nifskope with plugins etc to make Skyrim porting easy?

@MissRarity

no,
for new armors we will have to wait for the 3dmax or blender exporters since you need to "rig" your meshes to the underlaying skeleton which is impossible (or simply too tideous for a human who only lives about 80yrs) inside nifskope...

you can have completely new weapon models and statics with that as soon as invalidfate releases his UVmap fixes for nifskope which will require phython installed tho, without it your items will be completely black...

and you can create "dirty" mods yet which might conflict a lot more than with the CS since items dont get added via questscript and formids could end up being duplicates, however thats better than nothing, you can have a merchant sell stuff, put treasure in chests, add your most beloved obvlivion weapon (which is hopefully from JaySuS Blades Volume 2 Pack ) and generally have alot of fun lol

@thekarithian
yes its a short term solution, might still be viable after the CS and nifskope get released but its mainly thought for nwo while we have nothing but our bare hands, sweat and some rusty but trusty tools

Good on you for giving it a go.

I can't believe they have "supposely" a new engine and they are still using the =$(￡$￡=$￡%!￡"$&&%%"￡?=￡$( nif formats !!!

they said theyd use ID5 i read somewhere but in the end used the "creation engine"... wohaaa... well its the same old gamebryo stuff they use since morrowind tho this time with a better havoc support it seems, they also said they replaced speedtree but i assume they simply modded that too so they wouldnt have to buy a new version lol
but hey at least "their modders know how to use the nif format"... ya... we can see that lol, just give us your exporter/importer then and we wouldnt have to wait and rely on those good souls in the niftools team... thanks a ton to them (the nifskope team i mean)!!! and hurry!

They never said they'd use ID5 for Skyrim. It was way too much in development before Beth bought Id.

offtopic aside, it was kinda a logical conclusion... they bought ID, they announced that theyll use a "new" engine for skyrim... ID had just finished ID5 (or at least shown demos)... ID5 must be their new engine!, who in loki's name would honestly have believed theyd use gamebryo again lol...

Just to let everyone know on this board as well, I can already import custom models with UVs intact using only nifskope:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1321904145.jpg

New engine? Come on, theres even old leftover console commands that dont work anymore. This engine is as new as my car after I give it a good shine.

Its an updated engine, thats all. They just laid on the Marketing a bit thick.

Im getting confused here. So the ingame models are nif format yes? And we are waiting for a nifskope that will handle them, plus Blender, Max, Maya and whatever plugins? Or is there something else?

I'm rather happy they didn't use the ID5 for Skyrim. There's no public toolset for ID5 and from the sounds of it, there won't be because of the complexity of a large portion of the fuctions (and something about the megatexture cooking that takes days and weeks).
Bottom line, Creation Engine is very modder friendly, ID5 not at all.

pretty much.

The there is an updated nif.xml which can parse all the new blocks, so the nifs are readable, but there is a lot of unknowns in the blocks. You can manipulate them to an extent and import custom static models, limitations is that the shade block is full of unknowns and the material settings are a mystery. But all the good stuff is yet to come when the exporters needing updates. no new outfits yet.

how the heck do you import the uvs ghog? O.o
im using that new nif.xml myself , lol go share the knowledge dude! i command you! yes i do!


....please

There are only about 3 ways you could even try. I can save you the 10 minutes it would take to work it out.... It's the most simple way: obj import into a skyrim nif over one of the nitrishape blocks. Don't copy/paste any nitrishapedata. Easy.

oh hell youre my hero lol, 10min? i spent like 7h yet lol...
the trick is to highlight the nitrishape block before clicking import obj -.-
that way it gets pasted over instead of added... woot!!!!

I noticed it the other day when playing around with a wip nif.xml.

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/457148-graphics-modding/page__view__findpost__p__3834305

Seems it is possible to add new items to the game using the TESnip approach. The trick, it would seem, is to get new items to store in saved games. I added some armor and with a little work was able to purchase it, craft it and enchant it. But its gone when loading from a save, whether in my inventory, a followers, or just lying on the ground.

One flukey thing I noticed was the Full Name field appears to be encoded somehow. I can edit as a string and it appears properly named in game, but the viewer identifies the entry as an invalid ID. It seems to read as corrupted even if I don't edit the field (just save with TESnip). The viewer properly reads the Full Name field on vanilla armor, but it seems to be mapped somewhere that I cannot find.


Have you made any progress towards persistence in-game?

Did the armor have a REF ID? I know with the Fletching mod that all arrows made have a REF ID of nothing..

Naw, this is different from the fletching mod. Fletching adds recipes to generate vanilla objects, which persist without problem. It is new objects that are problematic. Never bothered to look at any RefID in-game, but don't see how it is applicable as I am not placing objects.

I'm looking at stupid stuff now. ESMifying seems to make no difference.

@earache

had the same problem, not sure what fixed it but i guess its the formids, i used 00999e0 - 7 and those didnt seem to work, changed em to somin else and made other minor tweaks and now they stay after reloading lol
edit: could also be that the tes4 header in your mod is still declaring your esp as an esm... had that problem too and fixed it in one go with the formids when the items stareted to work after reload...

just didnt figure out yet where to add em so i can improve em at the grindstone, i assume its an FLST entry but which lol...
edit: COBJ includes the entries for grind stone (sharpening wheel) use

Bah. Just realized I've been using IDs that start with letters. Think I've been down this street before.

Skyrim doesn't use formlists quite like previous games. Keywords are the new trick. Crafting is just a matter of having the right recipes.

ya... the first three digits should be 000 anyway as those get replaced by the mod index numbers ingame

and well, it still uses formlists, alot, its just kinda hard atm to figure out the connection between different things that go on, to get the weapons to be grindable i just had to create an entry for each under that COBJ group, not sure what those keywords actually do lol...

Hmmm, jay do you know whats the average polycount for a weapon in skyrim?