I've created a new, high poly body model using a makehuman. After exporting to blender I've cut the body into it's parts and imported the skeleton. The node tree looks right in nifskope and the parts all have the correct name. The problem is that I can't get the new model to show up in the game. Is there a tutorial that shows how to link a model to a body part so that it can be used in Morrowind using just blender & nifskope?

I don't know a lot about this, but it sounds like you haven't assigned any bones or that the bones are not named correctly. You should take a look at the Better body/Vanilla NIFs if you haven't already.

I wish I knew more about how far you were, exactly so that I could keep from telling you potentially worthless information.

Another thing to watch out for is that the rename vertex group scripts don't always work right. Sometimes you end up with "Tri Tri Right Hand" and whatever, you need to check the bones and body parts in nifskope after you export.

This might sound stupid, but did you name each part so that it would replace the original nif's or did you name them differently and than not assign the meshes to the specific body parts in the CS? I'm guessing you replaced them to take over the originals in which case, I'm at a loss for why they wouldn't work.

I had the same problem in 3d max and the solution was to make sure the body parts are linked to the bip01 bone. Otherwise they won't show up ingame

Well I've got all the parts correctly named and parented to the bip01 bone correctly but it still doesn't show up ingame. I still need to assciate the vertices with the aproppriate bones for the animation to work. Checking the female check box for my test character was another, rather embarassing to over-look problem.

Body parts can be skinned/physiqued ? set bone weights (in other words have NiSkinInstance for NiTriShape nodes) like e.g BBs or segmented without any bones/skeleton like vanilla models. Simple linking a mesh to a bone does not work.
Not long ago I have posed on Psychodog Studios Forum (answering on Morrowind Modding subforum) a long tutorial/recommendations how to create new bodies in Max. I guess it is possible to recreate that also in Blender.

Um ... any chance of a screenshot?

I should be able to dig that up and gain some insite. Thank you.



Not here. You can look on the better bodies forum or at Great House Fliggerty in the WIP thread "Distractions." At 14k faces and not even converted to triangles the current model isn't viable in the MW engine on almost all computers.

Aha, you are skinning! That's the most challenging part of the story. I have seen many skinned bodies from games, books, tutorials, etc. IMHO the best are Oblivion (Eye Candy and Robert's). There are easily beating even professional. Probably, only Poser Victoria 4 bends better, but she is high polygon not a game model.


Shrinkwrap is definitely can be a useful tool (I have tried to use Max anolog of this mdifier but it is not as powerful as the Blender one).
http://vimeo.com/4103576


Full automatic weightpainting of new or existing meshes with Blender 2.4.5 and above by Growlf (The Blender BONE WEIGHT COPY script allowes to copy the weights from original body to any mesh you wish.).

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14325 (German)
http://obliviontextures.wetpaint.com/page/Easy+Rigging+in+Blender


BlenRig 3.0 Alpha (Blender) can be also useful.


By the way there is no need to split meshes in Blender just assign new materials (textures can be the same) and exporter does the splitting job. This is the cleanest way of having no normals seams.

Making a new body? wow.
Hey good luck.

14k faces? not too bad. It will definately work on MW unless your computer svcks. It renders much easier in the games than in the program you made it in.

As for rigging the thing. Expect redos and tweaks and stuff. Lots of it. It's never perfect lol. There's always clipping and incompatibilities.
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/ss132/Thissguy_Mannperson/ThissguysBodyModel.jpg


The team (yes I think it was a team) that made Better Bodies actually took over a year I think to perfect it to work with all of Bethesda's stuff.

Yep thanks - curiousity satisfied - from some of the posts on GHF sounds like clothes etc are quite possible to do as well - is this for Carrie or were you just distracted?

Exactly, clothes/armor down compatibility is the main problem. I am often making new bodies exclusively for NPCs with few clothes/armor pieces designed specifically for them.

Probably, the easiest way will be to convert custom made Oblivion bodies. E.g. from Robert's OB body mod readme:



But I think in case such mods will come to a public release it would be necessary to ask him for permission.

I did such partial conversion in the past for fun. I have no problem with fps on my not the best rig. However, there is another serious problem with textures: without normal maps OB textures in MW look very "plastic" and I am very bad texturer. So, I have abandoned this idea.
Actually it is easier to adopt MW animations to modified (simplified) OB skeleton than to transfer Robert's OB body to MW skeleton.

OOOoooo toys! You're definately acurate about this part being challenging. Though now that I've gotten started I'm finding it more along the lines of detidious and time consuming.



The title of the GHF thread is because this project has distracted me from my work on Carrie.




I've been through the developement threads fo the BB project & they didn't have the advantage of the tool I'm using. Makehuman was able to do the work done by the BB team in 2003-2004 in about 5 min.

If I can get this project completed depends upon developing two versions of a male body (anatomically correct & ken doll) as well as making clothing models. As far as clothes go, because I'm not good with textures I would merely make a variety of UV mapped models and release them as resources. Do I forsee this being a viable replacement for BB? No.

Hmm... if not you I'm sure someone will pick it up - I think there is huge potential here to have different sized NPC's and possibly variants for the char gen - if animation could only be improved as well - then goodness I think you might have a game changing mod

The mesh itself, skinning, texturing was only a small part of BB project. They worked without importers and Max blank animation Max files. BB skeleton is a very good approximation. They have found it empirically, by trial and error, back and forth, Max-game-Max-game?. They have elaborated a completely different from vanilla body meshes working scheme of splitting skinned body meshes, correct bones and body part names without NifScope and information we have now. They have found how to apply overlaps and caps in order to minimize appearance of holes when clothes and armor are applied in the game. They had no possibility to test their work with original animations from the game in Max (an obligatory procedure for skin testing). They worked with buggy and unstable physique modifier? This was a huge work and brain storming of many experienced modders. All what is so obvious for us now was discovered/created from the scratch by BB team. We are simply using their solutions.

There were several unsuccessful attempts in the past to create "better" BBs. I myself from time to time have also such temptations (actually I was again collecting tools and information for another attempt when you have started this topic).

I wish you good luck, this is really very exiting.

With the advice I've gotten and a bit of practice implementing it I've gained confidence that this project is doable. I've rebuild my original model with a smaller chest, trimmer waist and more curvacious thighs. I'm reducing polys the large sections of the body such as back, stomach arms and legs where detail is less crucial but maintaining the higher poly counts in more detailed sections of the anatomy. The texture will be mapped with front to back as apposed to the BB mirrored texture.

more later

I'm really excited to see what you come up with - there's a few very good high res anatomy sites so depending on your texture map it might be possible to come up with something extra special

The UV Map will be split up into several segments: ( front, back, top of hands, bottom of hands tops of feet bottoms of feet and groin). This UV mapping should work well for anyone wanting to place a non symetrical tatto on the body. It is for those resources specifically that I'm doing the UV mapping in this manner. The finished model will be significantly higher resolution than the BB model and will not be usable on many computers. I don't have a top of the line power system myself. I'm hoping that any PC able to run Vista would be able to use this model.

I used MakeHuman for a while, and after chopping off the head, I usually ended up with about 14k tri's (not poly's) w/o having to mess around optimizing it.

I would be careful about reducing polycount around the stomache and back, higher polycounts are usually intended in these areas to allow for better skinning/rigging.
Rig it then reduce the polycount if possible. Exciting stuff Nicholiathan, even if you don't see it as a replacement for BB, it'll be a must have for me. :foodndrink:

While its cool that you are doing new bodies, I was really hoping that you were working on new male bodies as well as female, I'ld love to see some models like those in "Robert's Male bodies" for Oblivion, if for no other reason than the female form is already so loaded with clothing mods in morrowind, that switching away from Better bodies females is almost a scary prospect.

Well once i thought to convert some oblivion body mods but the complatibility problems with old bodies scared me off

I'll be developing 2 male bodies (anotomically correct & kid-safe). I've started over with a model that has a smaller chest. The model has been reduced from 14k to 10k and could use with further reduction. New pictures are up at GHF.

Today, for the 1st time I was able to load an NPC into the game using this body. There are a some of issues that need to be address before she's ready for release.

• Seams at joins - assumed to be the result of quickly applied weight painting
  
• Texture lighting - the knees, lower legs and feet are correct the rest of the body is black
  
• Lack of texture - if only the likes of Westly would offer a hand as I'm not a texturer
  
• Male body - repeat the whole process twice more for the male bodies

Interesting, will keep an eye on this thread.

Cheers