apps:
3ds max 2011 (I know people say it's unsupported, but it doesn't appear to have any major problems)
nifskope
geck

I think for now, I simply want to know the most efficient way to get out of 3ds, then into nifskope, with as little modification in there as possible, then get it into the GECK.

I'm just getting started with modeling for FO3 and have some basic questions.

I have followed some tutorials and most don't seem to jive with the apps I have, so I'm trying to start with something simple.

I made a box. put a texture on it, made a collision mesh using the bhkRigidBodyModifier.

Exporting (using 3.5.5.4898) with collisions, generate strips, flatten heirarchy, update tanget space, NIF w/o animation, sort nodes and add accum nodes on (all else off), Root node type: BDFadeNode

I can pull it into nifskope and it looks right to me, textures set (yes, I turned off all the shadow hooha). I have BSFadeNode (0) with the bhkCollisionObject(3) and all its sub trees(2 and 1), I have the NiTriStrips(4) in there as well.

after saving this out and opening in the GECK, I can see it, it lights and textures fine, hit F4 and can see the collision mesh on it, hit "F" to drop it to the floor, and it "collides" fine, settling where it's supposed to, but when I pop into the game, the object had no collision. I can walk right through it.

Is there a specifc way either the export from 3DS or some flags can be set in Nifskope to get the collision mesh, that it can see and display in the GECK, can be properly activated so collisions work properly in the game?

edit: I also tried with "Extra Nodes On Mesh" on and off, no difference noticed

I seem to have solved this -_-

for those interested in the future, it seems if you export selected, even if you select all the objects, it doesn't set up the BSXFlags properly. if you do an export (as in not export selected) and filter what you want through the exporter, then the flags get set and all you have to do is set turn off all but SF_EMPTY and SF_UNKNOWN_31 in the BSShaderPPLightingProperty, and set the texture path in the BSShaderTextureSet. I'll test this out on something more complex than a box and report back if it doesn't work quite as easily.

I created a new NIF from the Nuka Cola machine and had exactly the same problem - the new model looked great in the game but I could walk right through it. In the end, after a lot of playing around, all I had to do was set the BSX flag to 2.