Right-o, after beating my head in the wall for 4 hours i've deiced to call it quits and call for help, basically I have a finished assault rifle model that I want to export into the GECK/game. I've done this before for Fallout 3 using the replace the parts method, but apparently you should be able to make a more or less ready model just by exporting from Max with Niftools and the editing some with Nifscope?

To desribe what I've done i'll list the steps.. I figure im missing out some importnat step:

1) Have model and tex
2) Import Beth 3d model to base the thing on.. I used the Assaultrifle.nif (Chinese assault rifle, not in game but nm) and overlayed my gun on top of it, rescaled everything and renamed the parts etc. I also have 2 extra parts, a scope and a silencer, which are separate from the main assault rifle parts. Then I linked my parts to corresponding bones, deleted the beth mesh and selected everything including Collision helper and mesh and exported as a FO3 nif with animation. Wrong or right?
3) Then i fixed the shaders in nifskope and saved
Result? Gun looks OK in geck, but in game it is at the feet of the charater, bolt moves but not in the correct place.. In nifskope it looks okay, only the BSFadenode or whatev is not present, only the root NiNode. What am i doing wrong here exactly?? I dont want to go back to the stupid renaming workflow, esp with up to 6 meshes per weapon...

Hope someone can help me.

Not really the best idea to base a weapon on an FO3 weapon that did not get ported ? -> as the animations it needs do not exist and the FO3 ones can not be used.



Did you Reset the X-Form after scaling ? because you need to.



Technically the only anim controllers required to be in a weapon.nif are Non-Transform Controllers -> usually the Clip and/or fake projectile bullet gets a NiVisController.



You did not create a NiStringExtraData attachment node -> Prn -> Weapon.



Alignment and/or Parantage are incorrect.



Just rename it...

I see you found my older topic on custom weapons... glad to see it might be of some use to others.

I must admit that I still have much to learn about the process, but perhaps I can help a little. Listen to SaidenStorm first though... not me lol. He's the expert.

Saiden brought up a good point about basing your New Vegas weapon on a Vanilla Fallout 3 mesh. I don't own New Vegas yet, but it sounds like the Chinese assault rifle is not in the game... meaning if you named your new model's parts after the Chinese assault rifle parts to borrow the original animations... the animations probably would not work in New Vegas since they don't exist. About the only purpose importing the Chinese Assault rifle could serve is to give you a sense of scale... if you want your model to be the same size anyway.

As for the part about the weapon appearing at your feet... my first guess was that maybe you did not use Reset Xform on all of your weapon's parts. I'm still new to Max, but I've found that whenever I export something and it doesn't appear where I expected... it means I forgot to use Reset XForm on the object.

I'm not sure what Saiden meant about the NiStringExtraData attachment node -> Prn -> Weapon..... I never did this when I created my simple custom weapon. But listen to his advice first like I said...

You also did not mention aligning your model's pivot points with the pivot points of the donor weapon(Chinese Assault Rifle). In my older forum topic, I was told to do this in order to make use of the donor weapons animations. Once again though... I don't think this would work anyway if the Chinese Assault Rifle is not found in New Vegas.

I'm also not sure what you meant about linking your models parts to corresponding bones. The only bones I created for my weapon were the ShellCasing and Projectile Nodes.

As for the BSFadenode not exporting, that seems to be normal when exporting from Max. Just right click on the root NiNode=>Block=>Convert=>Bethesda=>BSFadenode.

I've never had much success getting animations to work with the weapons I've created. Its likely that I don't fully understand the process though. In fact, I thought weapons did not need any animation controllers in the .NIF file to work properly... but Saiden just mentioned otherwise it seems.

All I can say is that custom weapons from Fallout 3 work in FNV (while you may want to correct reload animation into more proper) without any converting. It might be problem with IS mode, however those i use still work as well. Not sure what is that problem annouced to "zero"/reset NiTriStrips.

Ok, thanks for replying Saiden and flightsim. I tried to make the weapon node, still same erratic behaviour. So now I'll resort to the power of PICTARS!!!

My model in Nifscope:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/8346/nifskopet561.jpg

3d studio max:
Basic layout, all have resetted Xforms and moved Pivot points
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/4347/3dst561.jpg

Model visual
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/3846/3dst562.jpg

Hierarchy:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4691/3dst563.jpg

Export options
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7687/3dst564.jpg


Hope this can help someone to help me, thanks in advance!

Hmm... I wish I could say why... but your Nifskope file does not look right to me. At the very least, you should only have one BSFadeNode... and your picture shows two of them. The BSFadeNode is always the first entry at the top... and I've only seen one(not two) in every NIF I've looked at from the game.

I can't say much about the hierarchy since I'm not really good with that yet.

As for your export options... you might try exporting with the "Extra Nodes on Mesh" option enabled. I'm not sure... but I think you need to use this option when exporting more than one separate object from Max at a time. Also, you probably don't want to use the "Hidden Nodes" option because this will export any objects that you've hidden in the scene. You can use this to your advantage by hiding any objects you don't want to export... rather than deleting them. And you also don't need to use the "vertex colors" option unless you've added vertex colors to your model. Everything else looks good from what I can tell..

Nice model btw... I'm sure it took a lot of time to make. Hope you get it working.

theres lost of stuff wrong with it...

that 2nd fade node doesnt belong there
you miss the new NV nodes (iron sights for example)
the prn is not yet there
etc, cant say much more because your pic doesnt show everything

easiest way: open an existing rifle from NV and copy/paste over the nitristripsdata blocks piece by piece

The NV BSA contains all the weapon models and animations from FO3. I've ported several weapons based on FO3 skeletons using Reload E without issue. Copying the ##SightingNode from an NV weapon works fine as well.

My problem is with NIFskope. A while back (probably when my machine was infected with the Win7 virus), NIFskope lost the ability to play the animation for the sniper rifle. Now, none of the new NV animations will play. Curiously, all other FO3 weapons meshes play fine.

I've updated to the latest beta release and even set NIFskope to run in XPsp3 compatibility mode, but no joy. What am I missing?

Windows 7 isnt related. I run it 100% fine, if not better then it ran in XP.

Try the copying/pasting of the nitristripsdata blocks like jaysus suggested.

HA! found another one like me! *g*
(maybe) interesting facts:

-A] i can change the ni-node-position of a moving part(edit transformation), but the nistrips won`t move in nifskope for a FO3-Model, but the animation plays

-B] i can change the ni-node-position of a moving part, AND the nistrips DO move in nifskope for a FO:NV-Model, but the animation will not play

- the spacial relation of node and ni-tri-strips may be different in the game than in nifskope or maybe the nif-file-default/defined position of a given node (e.g. "magazine") is overridden by the game (animation/starting position or something), because sometimes it is mis-aligned only after a reload animation played. (the latter case seems more likely)

-in case A] the ni-node in nifskope can visually be moved by editing the translation factors (don`t forget to edit all of the ones concerning the part you are workin on ).

- by trial and error you can align the moving parts (magazine/bolt) with the fixed parts of the gun by moving the niNode and the NiTriStrips (moving means editing the transformation)
(use a small cell for this, it reduces lading time ) [look at the gun ingame, move the niNode in nifskope so that the mesh of e.g. the magazine lokks similar than ingame, then move the mesh (the niStrips, not the node) to alignment, safe the nif, reload the game and check again (try shooting and reloding to be sure), repeat until it works)

- This works for A] and B] (yes i tried both, case A was the chinese assault model as base and B] was the sniper rifle (which animation doesn`t play if i use the version from the F:NV-bsa)
- to be honest, i think i had to rename the nodes (matching the ones of the service rifle) of the chinese assault rifle because it wasn`t moving at all at first ... but this may be because i selected the wrong animation or something ....

(as stated before): adding (copy&paste from a existing .nif) the sighting node and renaming it to "##SightingNode" makes ironsights usable and adjustable (by moving the SightingNode in nifskope)

all of this are purely observations, stated reasons for the observations are educated guesses only.

hope this helpes someone somewhat

...
...
and i wouldn`t mind if someone with knowledge of the inner workings of animations and nif-files would explain some of my observations *g*

First off just because the animations are named the same DOES NOT mean they are the same animations that existed in FO3 -> for 1 every IS animation had to get re-created just because of the difference in how the 2 games are dealing with Iron Sights also quite a bit of the anims got re-vamped meaning those did not make it and all of the animations specific to weapons that did not make the transfer are obviously not included ! and that is just the list of the animations we KNOW did not make the trip.



Alot of Beth Weapons have NiTransForm Data attached to them and as such the NiNode positions are being overridden.



If a Node is Managered (animated by .kf) then it is 100% controlled by said animations and the ONLY time it will ever inherit its default positioning is if no anim has acted upon it yet -> like for instance Mags and Reloading/Jamming.

All the rest was bad information -> do not move the NiNode(except to align it to animated positions), as no matter what you do this will inherit its position from the animations that are acting upon it -> move the Mesh itself as their positions are never managered.