Okay, so we know blender can import/export skeletons quite well now, however I have hit one annoying problem.

I can import a creature skeleton fine, all the contraints and bones, no problem. But when I attempt ot import the vanilla NPC/player skeleton in all i get is the bounding box. No errors or anything.


Any ideas why i cant import this skeleton?

ThrottleKitty had a good tutorial on the subject that had a link to a working bodymesh.nif that cuteunit and m4444x had setup to make the process easier -- unfortunately the links seem to be dead but http://www.mwmythicmods.com/Archives/CS/Blender%20Skinning%20Rigging%20guide.htm -- you might try PMing TK to see if he still has the file available or any suggestions on getting it working.

You used to have to delete all the havok and constraints data from the nif to import it into blender. But that was 4 years ago, then the nifscripts couldn't import or export ANY havok collision. I'm sure surprised that this would still be the case. :/

the old spell to try would be Spells>remove by ID. It should have everything already in that popup, click ok, and it should be prepped it for import.

Still think having to do this with todays exporters very strange...

Did you try first importing with "skeleton only" and then "geometry only - parent to selected armature" afterwards?
I remember there was something out of the ordinary with just importing a skeleton.nif file in whole from some NIF Tools version on upwards, but in the end I always got it in and out of Blender somehow... if just I could imagine how I did it last time, those 1 and a half years ago...

I had the same problem when importing the skeleton, which had another name than "skeleton.nif". When I imported the skeleton with its proper name, I didn't get this problem.

I don't know if this is the right way to do it or not, but it has worked for me. I can import a skeleton with collision if I select import animation as well, but don't select a keyframe file. It's been a while since I've done this so it's all a little bit fuzzy.

I don't recall if I had to save it as geometry plus animation, though that may have been the case. I do remember that if I saved it by any name other than skeleton the collision would be screwed up somehow and the game would crash. But if I saved it as skeleton.nif I could change the name afterward and it would be OK.

It was a lot of trial and error and it was several months ago and I've forgotten most of it. A little bit fuzzy as I said, so not totally reliable info here.

Import it as .nif but don't activate the IMPORT SKELETON ONLY ... or IMPORT GEOMETRY AND PARENT ... buttons. Activate the IMPORT ANIMATION and IMPORT EXTRA NODES buttons.
This way you will get the whole skeleton.nif imported.

If you only activate IMPORT SKELETON AND PARENT ... button you will get bones (armature) only.