Hi all,

I am new to Oblivion modding at the custom model/physics level, and Blender is just giving me fits. I've been trying to export a number of custom weapon meshes for a mod I've been working on - and so far I've had basically 0 success with exporting them with physics/collision. I did get a crate to export properly, but that's it so far.

I've followed several tutorials to the letter but regardless, 1 of 2 things happens - usually, the collision mesh (which is visible and clearly there in Blender) isn't exporting along with the model/nif (and yes I have it selected along with the model at time of export). The more rare (and arguably severe) issue is that I do get a weapon or item to export with basic collision (I can click it in game) but it has no weight and cannot be moved around. For example, I made a donut for a friend and I planned to place a bunch of them on a table so they could be moved around/etc. But as soon as I pressed my Grab key to try and knock the pile over my character clipped through the floor and fell into the void/empty space cells and worlds exist in.

As I said above I've looked at several tutorials and I'm replicating these steps to the tee. I'm not sure if there is an export setting I'm getting wrong (not many tutorials address that aspect for whatever reason), but I have the most up to date Blender/Nifskope, and Niftools/plugins.

Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated. Its basically killing my desire to work further on my project, much less mod in general.

Mystress, gettting collision out of Blender with the more recent Blender Nif Scripts is really not that hard. Unfortunately, the documentation is lacking which makes it hard at first. Assuming that you have the correct collision type for the weapon in question (for bladed weapons, cylinders that become bhkCapsuleShapes in the .nif file for example), you need to set Drawtype to Bounds and Wire, also set Cylinder in the same panel. Once you get to the Blender Nif Export screen, click Weapon and Metal. You may also want to adjust Mass. Set the Weapon Body Location to Back or Side, depending on the weapon. This should get you close. If you do this and everything works as it should, except the weapon bounces crazily when you drop it, copy a bhkRigidBody or bhkRigidBodyT from a similar vanilla Oblivion weapon and adjust the links. Good luck.

I wrote pretty much exactly the same thing as Vince, but he beat me to the punch. :laugh:

I will add that learning how to set up nif files properly can be a pain at first, but you'll start to get the hang of it. I usually spend several hours studying a specific type of object in NifSkope by comparing a selection of objects until I understand the general architecture of the file. It seems like a lot of work at first, but it makes finding and correcting errors a lot easier and results in less frustration in the long run.

Thanks for the replies you 2 - when I get back (driving out of state for most of the day) I'll take a shot at implementing your suggestions.