ok guys, it seems like we are all approaching this the wrong way. the methods we are trying are great for modifying armor parts in the CS *if* it is something like vanilla parts, recolored or something like that, and mixing and matching them in the CS, but these are completely new models. yes, they may be derivatives of the vanilla, and in the case of my armor mod they are replacers of the vanilla, but what is really the goal, is to add NEW models to the CS that have little or no relation to the old models. so some of the things we are all trying may never work from the "CS mod" angle. it may have to be added like a completely new suit of armor.

the reason i say this is because the only one that was somewhat successful was the ones that i attached bracers to the morang tong gloves and renamed on export (and these were examined nifs that were deemed too damaged to be of use) and the only issues were the bracers always appeared, but the hands were either invisible completely, or just the right hand. and this was added as a new item completely, not as a replacement of anything. and to be truthful i would rather they were added that way so the player has a choice between just the replacer bracers, and the gauntlets.

also one of my collegues has gone through the nifs that are supposed to be ok, and they are missing lots of nodes, keyframes, and other items i am not aware of. i am not as savvy doing the whole blender/nifskope thing and pinpointing what morrowind needs for a nif to work. i probably just got lucky on the replacer mod, and even he is having problems trying to fix them in nifskope, so these things have to be fixed before the export to a nif. names have to be right, anything missing has to be fixed or added. i know blender likes to strip the animations sometimes and screws up transforms and skeletons, and i have no idea what to look for myself, so whoever decides to look at these things in blender has to realize this is not going to be a quick fix. the whole outline has to be gone through and fixed before export. it has to be nitpicked to the tiniest detail because nothing is working. apparently there is so much missing or out of place that nifskope editing is not going to work at all. it just makes a bigger mess, and makes things disappear/move at odd angles. just a few of the things he pointed out were keyframes missng, rotation instead of linear, Bip01 Spine missing. and i have no idea which one of these models that was on but there is a lot more problems caused by blender import/export than just a few things. in short this is going to take the attention of someone who is a modding god to decipher and fix and i dont think i have met anyone here yet that fits that description. now in the mean time if someone can figure it out great, if they can walk me through it step by step without trying to just ditch me and give me a pat answer to get me to go away, better. i would rather learn something than just have someone "fix" it only to find out that it is not fixed. or learn something than have someone fix it for me where i learn nothing.

im not. blender is, python is, and linux is. if the plugin for blender was working like it supposedly was designed to work, then it would not be complicated it would be straight forward. but it tends to mess things up on import and makes it worse on export. structures, no problem. they are easy cause no animation, no skeleton, no weird names for blender to add to the tree. and even if it does there are easy fixes for those.

skinned armor or guantlets are entirely different though. it has to be 100% correct or it will not show in the CS for some reason. since i cant see exactly what is going on (not that i really know how to do it, but i can learn) and i dont know myself how to do it successfully, there is no good way for me to troubleshoot somebody else. it is all trial and error, and it is complicated whether i want it o be or not.

but the problem really is in the way the python script handles the import. it does not account for things it should on import, and does not force it to export a certain way either. so things become complicated just by the nature of python, blender and nifscripts for blender. when you have three complicated things rigged together with duct tape and paper clips, things dont work right.

there is a reason stable plugins for other modeling programs work better, they dont have to adjust for the constant changes in python or blender. they are stable because the programs they work in tend to be more stable and not so experimental all the time. that is probably why there is no good nifscripts for blender 2.74, and the closest working one for blender 2.49b is still not up to par. because the developers got cold feet every time there was a change to python or blender. so development is halted until they stabilize those two things. that and python and blender are not really backward compatible. if you have a new version of python, by design in linux, it forces you to use that version rather than the one that works best for whatever a program requires or even the most minor change can cause issues with a program, there is no backward compatibility written into the code or if there is, then the patch is shoddy, only now is it being though of and i think it is years too late. and also the hacks for that are dodgy, trying to make something in python 3 compatible with older python versions kind of works, but is buggy. blender is another thing as well. they keep changing the api structure, and so developers of plugins have to play dodge ball with the new program functions, and scripts dont always work for it even if they were built for a specific version of blender, because of minor changes in python. plus windows handles python differently than linux.

it took me months of headaches to even understand all that, and now im trying to make this duct tape and paper clip monster work on my linux, and it just wont work right. it is kind of out of my control. i wish it was not but it is.

that and some things have to be done meticulously. if the problems of import and export create problems that are not present in windows, then they have to be handled differently and they have to be done all the way, step by step and in detail. im sorry but there is no quick fix for this, and it will take a huge learning curve to get it to work.

It's hardly Blender's fault if the nif pugin does not work correctly... unfortunately, nif is not an open format like other 3d file formats, so there are restrictions in working with them. If we had the tools the developers use for making them (that is, for exporting them from 3ds Max if I am not mistaken), it would possibly be easier.

But I also wish there was a stable nif plugin for newer Blender versions.

I have 3ds Max with NifTools plugins, if you upload a .3ds file I can export it to nif (I don't know where to upload it though, I might send it via e-mail).

well the problem with that is even if i was to upload a 3ds of it, the truth is blender is the issue. it renames everything with decimals, and that causes issues. it renames materials, nodes, bones, everything with decimals. all of those have to be fixed before i try anything else. i just have not had time yet. i just fixed the boots material because of that very thing, but i had no idea until i looked at it in nifskope. that is a minor issue though since that is just one part, so it was easy to fix in nifskope. but anything related to these gauntlets is going to have to be gone through with a fine toothed comb before export because there are more parts and more room for error, and of course there are still a bunch of things named with decimals. that is just how it is. if there was a setting i am not aware of in blender that changes that so it does not make everything numbered into decimals then i dont know where to change it. all i know is that is one issue.

the other issue is when it was imported, things got messed up. so somehow the keyframes are missing, and the nif will not work without it, so those were stripped on import, and wont get magically replaced on export, so until i figure out how to add thsoe back right it is pointless to try and export the file to any format.

things are still not parent/childed right either, and that also has to be done before export to any format. so until that is done it is also pointless to try and export it.

no matter how you look at it, these thinga have got to be fixed before the export or the nif will not work, and on top of that trying to fix the nif is a nightmare. im tired of spending hours trying to fix a nif when there is no undo button and it just ends up being a confusing mess.

yes if i was working in 3ds max i would not have any of these issues at all. i would know my way around it and how to fix things like this, and i am pretty sure the parent child thing would be easier too. but im not and i am on linux. so any file generated from my computer is going to have some issues. that cant be fixrd by exporting it to a 3ds becuase the file will still have the same issues. and to tell the truth it could make things worse. exporting it to obj or 3ds can effect it badly. i just transferred files today that were exported from nifs to obj and 3ds and faces were flipped, it got supersmoothed for no reason (and i dont use that setting in blender it is unchecked but still got supersmoothed on export) and the poly count was way over the top for no reason. it had to be cleaned on the other end because blender did that.

now i think a better idea would be to take the raw materials, and someone who has 3ds, could assemble those like i did. i know it is doing the same work over but the only way i can see to make it work is to eliminate my blends from the equation as much as possible, since they have the issues, perhaps someone else could replicate what i did from the beginning and start as fresh as possible with the gloves. it just makes more sense to me than chasing problems over and over.

so, here is the formula for the CS version

1: i took the morang tong gloves and imported them with nifscripts, so the first step would be to import those in max

2: i took the vertices where the wrist covering is, where it flares out and selected them all on that edge, the rest of the glove i left alone. i simply took those vertices and merged them into a cone shape, then exported the gloves as a nif. i did that for both the first and 3rd person morang tong glove models. then i named them something like c_dwemer_gloves.nif and c_dwemer_gloves.1st.nif.

3: then i took my bracers (working) and the gloves (not working yet) and the ground mesh (already done and working in CS and game) and the icon for gauntlets and the textures to replace the original textures, and sent them over to my colleague.

He took them and put them in the CS and tried to make them gauntlets that way by using the bracer and the gloves and assembling them using the CS, but the problems the gloves have from import and export in blender make them impossible to work with, they are invisible. and this is due to a lot of the things i mentioned, and becuase these need an animation, even just a simple keyframe. and because of that they dont work.

so if someone wants to try and do it right i would suggest trying it that way and replicating what i did. because anything i do on this end is going to have issues that need to be fixed, and it will have even more issues no matter what format i use to export it to. sorry but that is mainly a linux/blender issue and i am limited to what i can do. so instead of me sending a mess back and forth, it might be better for someone to recreate the gloves using max or some other program that has a better working nif export.

You're making this wayyy too complicated. Give me like 2 minutes and I'll post a picture tutorial.

1. Import some vanilla gauntlets (chitin here) into blender. (http://i.imgur.com/p9wheHF.png)

2. Append the new gauntlets you made. (http://i.imgur.com/AlVt6hy.png)

3. Copy the original gauntlets transform coordinates to your new ones. (http://i.imgur.com/PjRcGJs.png)

4. Go into edit mode and align your gauntlets with the originals. (http://i.imgur.com/kA1uZT4.png)

5. Parent them to the same object as the originals were parented to. (http://i.imgur.com/z01hEgd.png)

6. Copy over the originals vertex groups. (http://i.imgur.com/D3yQVlS.png)

7. Go into edit mode and assign your vertexes to those groups. (http://i.imgur.com/8ppirlP.png)

8. Delete the old gauntlet and fix the name on your new one. (http://i.imgur.com/57pPW7x.png)

9. Export it then open it up in Nifskope beside the original. (http://i.imgur.com/cv9tt4x.png)

10. Copy/Paste your new version into the originals nif file. (http://i.imgur.com/uJgJrAV.png)

11. Save and test ingame. (http://i.imgur.com/QoRN5Kf.png)


I only done one of the hands, but the same process applies to the other. I also didn't have your texture files so the final screen is just some random chitin texture I applied.

and as i said i have tried to do just exactly what you are doing, but for some reason my blender in linux is not cooperating. how am i making it complicated, if my computer is causing the issues, wouldnt it be better to eliminate that and have help from someone who doesnt have the same issues? how is that complicated?

if i import the chitin nif as you did, i dont have it on the same axis as you have, they will overlap the gauntlets i made and so the transforms and the coordinates will all be off to begin with. they will not be at 90 degrees from the ones i made as you demonstrated. so i will be starting off wrong to begin with. it is that way for both models, only the first person one is off from where it needs to be and so is the other one. how do you think i got the bracers and gloves assembled in the first place? by doing exactly what you did only i just imported the chitin or whatever and tacked the bracers on. and it imported 90 degress off from where your imported chitin is. that is why i keep getting weird parenting anomalies where the gloves want to drop to the ground when i try to parent them. every once in a great while i will import something and it will import correctly, but that is hit or miss. and usually then the animations and skeleton are stripped. and that to me is useless. that is where the numbering issues start happening, when i have to import more than one nif just to assemble everything. or have to import the nif in parts. so there is no way i can duplicate what you are doing. i do not know why this is, but my version of blender in wine acts different for some reason. i think it may have to do with it being a portable version running in wine. the more complicated the model (animation, keyframes etc) the more can go wrong and does on my end. you can send me all the tutorials you want but it does not explain why things dont work the same for me. heck i cant even save the state of blender on close because the permissions are locked out in the virtual drive for some reason, it keeps telling me i dont have access, so if it closes i cant recover my last session. and that is because im running it in wine. so all the other problems are related to running it in wine, that is what my gut tells me.

now if i was in windows instead of linux and blender 2.49b was in its native environment (windows) instead of wine, then perhaps it would work the way it is supposed to, but it wont. i cant control that. it took me forever to even get what i got out of it using it in wine. you have no idea of the headache i have had trying to even get both blenders working in linux. 3ds max will not work in wine or i would be using that instead.

just because things work for you easy, doesnt mean i am making things complicated. put yourself in my shoes. you can ask Pikachuno how long it took me to get things working and all the headaches i went through just to finish my armor all on my own. at first i was so discouraged i was only going to retexture the vanilla armor it was so bad.

the only other way for me to possibly rectify this issue is to find a way to install blender 2.49b in linux so it is running natively and not in wine, then perhaps it will behave normally, but so far i have not been able to figure that out. in order to do it i have to make a user made isolated directory of both python and blender 2.49b and then somehow find a working version of the nif plugin and unfortunately the tutorials on how to do that are not complete, or they link to an long complicated method that is confusing as hell... so i got tired of trying to make it work and another user sent me a copy of the portable version, which sort of works.

it works great for structures or anything that doesnt have a lot of bones or animation. and i think i got lucky on the cuirass when i did that one. but for this other stuff, and creatures, it becomes one endless battle of confusion. same with the native blender 2.74 which i also have installed. it imports structures fine, but the creatures and armor get all screwed up, and the skeleton might be ok, but the parts are spread all over creation so there is no good reference for things being where they should. at least in blender 2.49 they import almost the way they are supposed to and better than in 2.74. so that gave me a bit of hope, but as you demonstrated, they are still off from where they should be. and since i cant get them to import like you did, i cant correct anything the same way you did.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rao2ej3s1qfm5g0/Blends.7z?dl=0's a link to all* vanilla assets imported to Blender by myself. Hopefully your OS can handle extracting a 7z archive.


Also, post your Import/Export settings - Blender and Python should both work fine on Linux, not sure about PyFFi though...

*put the Blends folder in DataFiles for relative texture paths to work. It doesn't include creatures/bodyparts/etc, but I can add them if you need.