EDIT 3: Last desparate measure - can sombody anolyse (or fix) my mod :-) >>>-----> http://www.filefactory.com/file/b00f9b7/n/ClothingMod2.7z I've put the files in the same structure I'm using, so its easily installed/uninstalled using OBMM. Also incl, the latest Blender save, source files etc.

I've reshaped an upper body clothing mesh to fit a new upper body mesh. The clothing is the type that also needs the body to be visible. It looked invisible in CS, so I joined the two meshes hoping that will fix the problem. I don't think I need to redo the upper skellies since that is already part of the body mesh. Also, the textures should already be in place since I'm converting existing ones. Since joining the two meshes, the nif exporter failed saying some parts have no weight painting and it highlighted the lower part of the clothing. The trouble is, I thought weight painting was meant for the bones and not the clothes.

I'm really confused now, can anyone help?

EDIT:
I just remembered that the original upper body clothing mesh I reshaped came with a full skellington or at least the legs added. Perhaps that's the missing weight paint since the clothing mesh overhangs the legs, even though the slot is set for upper body. So it looks like I need to find a way to attach a new bone set to the new combined upper body & clothing mesh. But wouldn't this clash with bones attached to any other lower body items the NPC will wear?

Still confused.

EDIT 2:
I imported the skellington.nif to replace the armature belonging to the upperbody mesh and the original clothing mesh. The import settings included Import Skeleton + Parent Selected & Realign bone tail Only on. I shift-selected the upperbody body+ upper clothes + skelington and then Ctrl-P to parent to the armature (no groups). The upperbody and clothing were not merged unlike above but the parenting box did appear twice for that reason. Not sure if that is wrong or not. Anyway, each time I put it together in CS, it now crashes.

Confused and pulling bricks out of walls. Need urgent assistance!

EDIT: Exported nif look black when re-imported into Blender, but look fine in Nifskope. I have gremlins!

Update: The crash problem is fixed but now the NPC doesn't appear to wearing the clothes in the inventory in CS. :brokencomputer: It looks fine in nifskope though. I'm not sure if its the clothes part not showing up

I imported a skellie from an existing cuirass mod instead. I noticed that the bones in this case doesn't resemble the bones I imported from skelington.nif (as per the wiki tutorial for a curaiss) or the jumble of bones from the original "unmodified" clothing mesh. Not sure why they look different since they are all set to the same type in Blender. They look more like placeholders to me. Anyway, after the first fail, I made sure I parented and hit ctrl-a, but it doesn't help. According to a wiki tutorial, the problem can stem from badly parenting the skellie to the mesh (or meshes in my case) or not having a normal map. The normal map is there but its the original one. But I doubt if that is the problem since all I'm doing is reshaping.

Can anyone help? I'm running out of bricks to pull out of walls. :banghead:

I been at this for ages now - can someone have a look at my blender file or the nif please Here it is >>>-----> http://www.filefactory.com/file/b007fd3/n/ClothingMod.7z

What are your export settings? Export Skin Partition must be part of them.

Don't join the body and the clothing mesh. They should be separate objects.

Delete all bones that import with the meshes (body and clothing).

Select both objects and cntrol A. Import a fresh skel with the settings you mentioned. Now export as it is once the skeleton has imported. No need to cntrol P. (I don't anyway)

Just looking at the blend file, what is immediately obvious is that the clothing is not parented to the skeleton and it has no weight painting what so ever. The only part that is actually rigged and parented is the upper body mesh.

Had the clothing been parented, blender would not have allowed you to export it. Instead you would have got the un-weighted vertices message.

Also, you are going to have really bad clipping on the tummy and nipbles. That needs to be fixed before you do anything else.

When you have fixed the clipping,

- delete the skeleton
- import a lower body to match your upper body
- delete the lower body skeleton
- combine the upper and lower body into a single mesh using the join command
- use the bone-weight-copy script (at quality 3) to copy the body meshes weighting onto the clothing mesh.
- delete the body mesh
- import the upper body mesh only
- delete the upper body skeleton
- select upper body and clothing
- import full skeleton nif (skeleton only and parent to selected, no animation)

The next step would be to use manual weight painting to neaten up the rigging, but I don't think you are at that stage yet in the learning curve. That is a skill you will have to develop.

At this point you should have enough to get this mesh in game (assuming textures and paths are correct).

It will get easier for you. If you do this often enough it will eventually become second nature.

Thanks Khugan! Sorry about the delay (needed to sleep). Export settings are default for oblivion, although when I clicked restore, one setting changed to exclude animation. Looks like I need to see a readme for all those import/export settings.

The export skin partitions is selected and also flatten skin.

Don't join the body and the clothing mesh. They should be separate objects. - done.

Delete all bones that import with the meshes (body and clothing). - done.
Select both objects and cntrol A - Ah I think I parented and then ctrl-a. Although the import should parent automatically I've recently heard.
Import a fresh skel with the settings you mentioned. - Should I use the basic skellington.nif, or another from anothers modders skellie. I noticed they look different. One like an actual skelington (sort of), but the other looked like tiny separated horizontal bones. Not sure why they look different. I went with the latter using silverlights armor mods skellie.
No need to cntrol P. (I don't anyway) - yeah, I think thats true if you have Import Skelington + Parent selected set. Looks like I was parenting twice.

I'll try again soon. Thanks for your advice.

Thanks for the step by step instruction and inspecting my file RedGuard Mage2!

I have done weight painting in a tutorial once, I think it makes the meshes and bones work togther. I never seem to remember how to use Blender if I stop using it for a microsecond I used the lattice method to shape the clothing mesh but its not good fo fine tuning. I might look into the brush or sculpture method for the clipped areas. Also I'm using the original normal dds for now. Not sure if that will cause problems.

I didn't know I should have imported the lower body mesh but I'll give that and the bone-weight-copy script a try. Is that because the dress overhangs the legs? I noticed at one time the export did fail, and highlighted the lower portion of the dress asking for weight-painting.

When you say "Import the full skelington nif..." Should that be the basic skelington only nif or one from another clothing mod. As I said to Khugan above, they always look different. One resembles a skelington shape, but the other looks like a bunch of tiny horizontal bones.


I'll go through your (and Khugan's) advice and see what can be achieved. You guys should write a tutorial.

Thanks!

RGM2 has looked at your actual nifs so listen to what he says. Seems you have some weight painting to do, or at least copying. I say this because copying doesn't always get it right especially in the shoulder/armpit area.
Are you using previously modded clothing? If so I'm not sure why you don't have any bone weights. If you are simply adapting already working clothing nifs to a new body, then the basic weights should be present already.

Fresh skeleton means the regular skeleton.nif in the _male sub directory.

The scripts remove unused bones. What you see when you import a vanilla upper armor part contains the used bones of the default skeleton.

EDIT:
Control A can be done at the time that all editing involving scaling or rotating is finished. It doesn't have to be done only when the skeleton has been added.

Yes, the dress I'm modding belongs to Enmod for Eshmes better bodies. It was meant to replace the starting prisoners rags. I need it for a mini quest associated with my companion mod but I now use HGEC. Good choice for a first project because it's only a temporary dress. I think weight painting is there, but when I export sometimes, it would highlight the lower part of the dress to show the missing information. I think it happened because I used the bones from another upperbody that didn't include the legs. Well that's my assumption.

I'm starting again now, so no doubt the forum will hear my howls of frustration :violin:

If it's highlighting verts on export, either the weights were removed in your editing, or they are new verts. Which ever it is, weights must be added to those verts. Which skel you use in this case doesn't matter.

Do you know how to work on different layers? Familiar with Bone Weight Copy?

Re-import the original dress and move it to another layer and Copy Bone Weights to your mesh.

Also, if you know how you can hand paint those verts by viewing the mesh in weight paint mode. Select a bone from the list on the left lower panel and you should see dark blue spots where the verts were high lighted. Only if you know how, try to match the weight paint color on those spots. Select other bones to see if there are more spots. If you select a bone and all of that area is dark blue then do not add any weights.

I still have a problem after following these steps. Invisible clothes or whatever...

[i]- delete the skeleton- import a lower body to match your upper body- delete the lower body skeleton- combine the upper and lower body into a single mesh using the join command - use the bone-weight-copy script (at quality 3) to copy the body meshes weighting onto the clothing mesh.- delete the body mesh- import the upper body mesh only- delete the upper body skeleton - select upper body and clothing - import full skeleton nif (skeleton only and parent to selected, no animation)[/i]

In the CS, the NPC with the dress in her inventory just look naked. I can't tell if the dress is there or the clothing textures are missing. It looks fine in nifskope & Blender. Here's an image of the http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/1725/nifskopeblock.jpg. The relative addressing to the dds files looks intact. I have no idea if the nif file structure is healthy. All meshes looked parented, because there is a dotted line going to the root. Sigh...

Sorry to ask, but I need more help

Sorry, I missed your post.

I found the Bone Weights copy script and try the layering method with it- but if I recall correctly, I'll need to select the two layer buttons. One thing I'm not sure of is if the r-clk selection order is important in order to signify source and target - or if the script would know, even if I just hit the select all key (a).

The main problem is the character wearing the clothes just appears naked in CS. Would that signify a texturing error?

Another puzzle is that even though the world nif (_gnd) is the same as the original (just the file renamed). No point in me editing it. For some reason, if I place the clothing in the oblivion world, it can't find the texture. Even though it's really the original file. It's nif addressing targets the same dds used by the main nif. I'm sure I've done the CS side of things correctly.

:confused:

I would suggest that you test your methods at each stage of the process. Get the CS part sorted out first so you are absolutely sure that that part of it works.

Overwrite your edited nif with the original Eshme nif. Look at the NPC in the CS and see if she is wearing the clothes. We know that the original nif is OK, so if she is not wearing the outfit then the problem is in the CS. If it is OK then move to next step.

Import the Eshme nif into blender. Do not make any changes to it. Export it back into the location where the CS points to, overwriting the nif that is there. Look at the NPC in the CS to see if she wears it. If you kept the CS open from the first test, you will have to close it and reopen it, otherwise it will not update to the new version of the nif. If she is not wearing the outfit, then the problem is in your import or export settings. If it looks good then go to next step.

Import the Eshme nif into blender and delete the Eshme body, but do not delete the skeleton or the clothes. Select the skeleton and import the upperbody you want to use, settings should be geometry only, and parent to selected armature. Now select only the skeleton and press the G key. Now move the mouse around so that the skeleton moves it's position. All other parts of the mesh should have moved with the skeleton. If any part of the mesh did not move with the skeleton then it is not parented to the skeleton. Press Ctrl+Z to undo the move.

Export this mesh and test in the CS. (you will have to reload the CS again) If it does not work then the problem is in the Skeleton/parent/sceneroot.

If everything worked, then you are ready to start reshaping the clothing.


edit: If you can figure out why the ground nif texture is not showing, that may indicate where the problem is.

I think your right. This is strange because when I use the original Enmod/Eshme models incl. their own plugin, the world texture nif (which I am using too) works fine. As soon as I use it in my own plugin, I get the missing texture symbol. I can't figure out what the problem would be. The only trouble with it is a warning about old skin info needing to be re-exported.

In my plugin, I created the Editor ID for the clothes, add values and set the biped, world and icon to target the corresponding nifs & dds. The only difference is the dress only appears under clothing only in the object window, and not a subfolder within clothing. I don't know how those are created. I thought it was supposed to reflect where I placed the main nifs. In my case Meshes\clothing\Test, but Test doesn't appear under clothing.

The NPC creation is something I'm familiar with.

I'll try those other tests you described - thanks.

EDIT: I tried modding the original Enmod Eshme plugin to point to my nifs - no luck there.

Ok, there was an error for this test. I get a featureless two-tone body. The upperbody is mid brown, and missing the usual body features. When I exported, I didn't do anything like ctrl-a. Just a straight import/export making sure I clicked on restore default settings.

EDIT:
But when I did the same thing for another set of armor, jojo's silverlight curaiss. It worked perfectly with the default settings. I tried to find documentation on those settings but I can't find them. :confused:

Here are my settings: http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/9974/import.jpg and http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/74/export.jpg

EDIT:
I'm practically giving up, so if anyone wants a challenge ---> Here's the WIP so far. I've not fixed the clipping yet., because I wanted to be sure it works before I fix that up. http://www.filefactory.com/file/b00f9b7/n/ClothingMod2.7z
I've put the files in the same structure I'm using, so its quickly installed/uninstalled using OBMM. Also incl, the latest Blender save, plugin and source files.

I tried your ESP and it was as you say, not showing in CS. The problem was in the material properties and the alpha setting, or at least that is how I got it to work. In blender I deleted the material properties on the clothing and gave it new material properties with basic settings. I added the alpha properties in nifskope.

I put it in game and it works. I will post a link tonight so you can dl it. Can't do it right now 'cause I'm at work.

P.S. on your import export settings you have selected to combine material properties. Uncheck that, you do not want to combine material properties.

Excellent! I can't thank you enough. It looks like this wasn't an ideal noob project after all. I've been going in circles for 3 days with it. Sorry that the clipping wasn't fixed my end. It's even worse with the legs attached. My companion NPC will look forward to her new clothes when I script her to be imprisoned.

Feel free to upload it as your own HGEC C-cup conversion mod. If not, I'll will but give you the lion's share of the credit & others like Khugan who helped with advice too. But I'm not sure if I need the originals modders permission though, or if they're still active. Someone called kicker I think.

I'll look up the information about the material and alpha settings. Should the collision properties in the export panel be set to skin - or left at wood?

I didn't say I did the conversion. All I did was fix the material properties so that you can see it, and made a couple of other small changes. I didn't change the geometry or rigging. I left that for you to do and I believe that you can. This is still 100% your project.

The way I see it is that any project that challenges your abilities or compels you to learn new things... that's a good project. Lots of meshers advanced their skills by doing conversions. After having a look at this in game, I think there are many HGEC users who will like it, but I don't use HGEC, so I would be the wrong person to be doing this. Also, I'm focused on my own Avatar Na'vi Race Mod project, so I don't have a lot of free time right now.

You can download it from here http://rapidshare.com/files/349860192/ClothingMod2.7z

I added it to the player start inventory to check it out in game, you wouldn't want to do that in the released version but, it can be very useful when testing things out.

A few other observations

icons should not have any mipmaps (fixed)
icons should also be in the menus50 and menus80 folders (fixed)
The icons in the menus50 folder should be 32x32 (fixed)
The icon you are using has an alpha channel, but it does not really make use of it. In the inventory menu your icon does not blend like it should. The way to make it blend is to blacken the alpha channel around the clothing item. It will be easier to do this if you use a picture from Blender's render or in Nifskope, then you can use a mask on the background to create the alpha. The white part of the alpha will show and the dark part will not show. It should be saved as DXT 3 explicit alpha.

I redid your normal map (Eshme's normal map?). It wasn't causing a problem but it was completely flat, which is not what you would want for clothing, so I gave it some bump.

Also made a small adjustment to the alpha channel on the colour map.

I did a total re-rig of the ground nif. It is now rigged to a simple 3-bone skeleton which allows it to bend and twist as you place it on the ground. It's a little bit twitchy so you might not want to use it, but it's there so you can have a look at it. That sort of collision is something I'm still learning how to do. :shrug:

I did not make any changes to the rigging or geometry, you will have to do that. From here on I think you can handle this.

Frustrations are to be expected, it is something that everyone goes through. It's not so long ago that my own failure rate on exporting clothing meshes was around 90%. You just keep pushing forward and learning new things and it will all come together. :grad:

Downloading now!

Already I have learned so much from this thread. As long as I don't accidently mess up the import/export again, I should be fine. Texturing and making normal maps is something I've yet to discover how to do. I might try another old Eshme style clothing mod later, now I know what the pitfalls are. Or make others for the different cup sizes, especially if I release it as a mod. There's not enough c-cup modders out there :shakehead: .

Good luck with the Na'vi race mod. If your adding new voices, there is a Na'vi language (linguistic) guide on the web. There might be enthusiasts who are keen to do voice overs, just like with the LotR's elvish tongue.

Thanks again. :tops:

EDIT: Just loaded it in - works great! Even the "test" folder is appearing in the object window. It always puzzled me why it didn't before.