Hi

I can edit any nif in 3DS, and then save it ok, but if i later go to re-edit it at a later stage, i get this message below when exporting the nif

http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/5599/errorvd.jpg

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/6154/nifimport.jpg
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/9792/nifexport.jpg

The nif's also gets extra NiNode's on each texture once i save them, i read on the net its only meant to have one at the start. So i presume its my settings? or do i have to do something to them. Plus i only just came across this, i have 98 meshes that are going to have this problem, can i easily fix them?

Ok on the export settings, removing the tick for "Extra Nodes on Mesh" allows me to export them, but is this good or bad?

Extra Nodes on Mesh is not harmful or helpful imo. I almost never ever use it. It just complicates the nif hierarchy adding every mesh object to it's own ninode< I believe this is specifically for other games where you had to do this. like freedom force or something. If it's rigged, it may actually break the mesh in ob, unless you do some nifskope fiddling. :shrug:

Bascially I would just set up extra nodes on my mesh manually if need be, or set them up in max manually before export. like multiple collision and multi Prn attachments in a single nif

anyway your error is something that only happens on rigged meshes. Always tick Flatten Hierarchy so you get a plain flat list to all the bone refs.

untick collision> rigged meshes get their collision and ragdoll from the skeleton.nif. All this will do is export a BSX flag into the nif. You can leave it if you want, I have had transforms not exporting correctly if I had this unticked. but all transfroms are reset on rigged meshes anyway so it doesn't matter in this case

leave Export Hidden unticked, I usually have things hidden in my scenes, whether its body parts, variations, highpoly meshes I used in baking- Just unhide anything you want to export, and hide everything you don't want to export.

anyway assuming you haven't done anything silly, try these settings, just not the Fallout nif version. http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/209926-1274905546.jpg

Actually its required for any Animated.nifs as most of the available Controllers target nodes and not meshes so they need to be under seperate NiNodes -> also its useful for .nifs that have multiple seperate Collision Objects.

Doing this post Export for some of the Activators I have created would have taken me a week as some of my more complex act's have 200-300+ controlled Nodes.

That error is because he has two objects with the exact same name parented inside of a heirarachy -> Max does not care if you have multiple same named Objects and for alot of games allowing this behavior is absolutely required -> but the Exporter will kick back this error if you have two objects named the same and they are parented to two different objects.

Thank you Ghogie and SaidenStorm, that pic made it nice and quick to setup. Plus i noticed for the first time vertex colors on export(I must be blind), i have had a few nifs for some reason go crazy on vertex colors on export and then sit there with nifscope to fix them. This will be great, those probs should be gone.

extra nodes are created automatically on all mesh objects that have keys for transforms. I am using Niftools nif w/manager to get the base nif structure, and I am not using Extra Nodes on Mesh. extra nodes on mesh will just create NiNodes for everything, even if it's not part of the animation. Which is just a little redundant imo. So I almost never use it. Even with animated nifs. but I will keep that in mind if ninodes end up not being created in any animated nifs.