Since the other thread got closed .....
and because it could be valuable informations for others as well ...
Is about to pick a trollboneskull and make it work ingame as an helmet ...

I will skip the part where I modify the skull in 3dsmax to make it adapt to be exported so I will suppose you already have the modeled item there and you need to setup to make it work ingame ...

It covers the fast rigging , export , niftool use and implementation ingame .


is pretty simpe to make it work :

1 import the model head skull without any bone or else
2 import another similar shape helmet that you need to copy the structure
3 add a skinwrap modifier over the bone skull of the troll
then set inside this modifier face in the deformation engine rollout to face deformation , while lower check the little box to weight all vertices
4 press add in the window parameters of the skinwrap and click on the referenced imported helmet , this will create a new skin modifier above when you will press the lowest button convert to skin
5 delete the so now the skinwrap and leave only the skin modifier in the stack
6 go to the advanced parameters of skin and set bone affect limits to 4 from the 20 and lower set to 0.05 the remove zero limits .
7 now delete the other model helmet and leave only the bones imported and the skull helmet u are doing ...
8 Add now BSdismemberment modifier on top of the stack over skin and you can even leave what is already as long as you slect all the polygons in red under torso head or the like , I usually take head but you will change this in niftools
9 now select the bone helmet and do export selected

the settings should be in export all unchecked
in mesh check only flatten update tangent sace collapse transforms and zero transforms in skin modifier check all apart generate strips and in misc check only sort nodes ,
then choose scene root node type as ninode , this is the node needed for animated armors and stuf , while for static objects you shoudl use bsfade node

click export


now open two istances of niftools

with one open your exported model , the other open the helmet you want ,

1 rename in both the files the scene root to the helmet you want to call it like trollbonehelmet_1

Copy the nitrishape by rightclicking on the mesh and chose block then copybranche , go to the other mesh ( the working helmet you imported )
paste the nitrishape there ....
2 Copy and paste in this file the Bslightningshader property and go to properties of the nitrishape of thetrollboneskull and set the first to the number corresponding to the bslightning and the second ( unless there is an alpha ) to none
and then delete the removed ones that will go out of the stack and delete the material property and the bsightning etc ...
then delete also the other helmet mesh , so that only yoursstays ...
3 go to bsdismemberment skin istance and open , go to partitions and set bodypart in the line doubleclick and select sbp_31_Hair ( this will remove top hairs and leave the long and the face visible extruding out of the main helmet ).

save the file as trollskull_1 save again as trollskull_0 for both morphing files more or less the head doesn't morph much so shoudl be fine ...

In CK

1 find some other helmet and check the files just replace the _1 file for male or also for female if you want to make a second model you need to repeat the whole stuff above ...

now I have no time to check also in CK but there you replace the world object model perhaps with another static like a trollboneskull modified to be smaller or even leave like this for test ... then go to the window where you dinf the helmetAA , double click m rename and replace your model , ( possibly check the bone nodes to match with the hairs and the stuff you want hidden ) and that you have set in the niftools) save as new record ... so finally place inworld you new helmet ( perhaps if you didn't chance the worldmodel will look like the helmet you chose , but remember to rename and create a new named helmet , put in where was the old helmet AA your new trollbonehelmetAA save both windows and put inworld and test ....

it shoudl work perhaps with some other minor tweacks needed ... I didn't test but I had to make a similar helmet for my mod so I will upload here for all to reference to see how is setup .. I haven't tested yet ... but shoudl work ....


http://www.speedyshare.com/GrxkU/Trollboneskull.rar

I'm quite familar with this process. I followed so much monster's armour tutorial religiously when first learning how to make minor tweaks to prexisting stuff. Thanks for clarifying it though. There were a few things like bone affect limits that I didn't know of.

It still crashes on export. Thanks for providing me with the skull, but sadly, if I ever want to make unique content, i'd have to get past this issue im having, and it simply won't go away. So with that being said. I take my leave.

Thanks for taking the time to type all that up, though. I very much appreciate it.

the only reasons why it should crash is that you didn't setup well the bsdismemberment selecting all polygons , or some bad export setting , or a corrupted installation of the plugin , When I tried to open your file in my max it didn't work and so I did from scratch with another trollskull ... check your installation perhaps , I do use max 2011 anyway .

I'm running 3dsmax 2012. All polys were selected and all the export settings were fine too.

Whenever i remove BSDismemberment I was able to export, no problem. Or whenever I reshaped something (no deleting prexisting polys) I was able to export it too.

I've tried building it from scratch a number of times, and I always get the same error.

I wonder how Bethesda manages to do all this and we can't? You'd think if they give us the ability to mod their games, they'd give us the same tools and plugins they work with.