I've been trying to strip down a couple centurions to just their heads, to be used as a misc object. The point of this is to create a part that can be taken from a dead companion centurion and used to rebuild it. I thought using the head of the dead centurion would be a good visual, but I've had some trouble with the nif file.

I've stripped out all the keyframes and body parts that I don't need, and positioned the head on the XYZ axis so that it's supposed to sit flat on the ground. The problem is, when I drop the items in game or in the CS, they end up floating a few inches above the surface they've been dropped on. It seems to be a collision box problem, but I just don't have enough skill or knowledge to be able to fix it.

I was wondering if someone could take a look at my meshes and tell me what I need to do to make them sit on the ground properly, because there's so many messy nodes and I don't quite know how to describe them properly. I've uploaded them http://roadhunter.com/~stuporstar/files/ProblemMeshes.rar. If someone more knowledgeable could take a look at these I would really appreciate it.

My guess is that it has something to do with the bit of skeleton that it's still attached to. Maybe try copy/pasting the meshes into the Dwemer helm file (since the collision for that should be about the right size)?

I've tried copy/pasting them into another file, and all I get is an error message saying it can't attach the node to its parent node. It won't let me do it. :shrug:

Okay, then try this-- copy each piece of the head mesh and then past it into the scene root (as opposed to onto the skeleton, if that makes sense). That way, it's independent of the skeleton and you should be able to paste it into other files.

Bear in mind, this is all kind of speculative on my part, I'm no expert. Still, hope this helps. :wave:

Well, let's say your surgery on the centurion has not been very clean, still some things left over that shouldn't be there, plus pivot points at wrong location, animation still there and stuff...

Fixed that, but couldn't test ingame yet, cause I haven't installed mw on my pc now.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TQ2MSPMD


TheDaywalker :rock:

Thank you! I'll download this and have a good look when I get home.

I'll compare the old one with the one you fixed so that I can learn more about nif structure. Was there anything you changed in the actual data? Because all I did was erase nodes and I didn't know what to look for otherwise.

I did not use NifSkope at all. Imported nif into Blender, got rid of all parent->child relations and erased all stuff except the mesh itself. Then centered the pivot point new and applied scale/rotation to ObData. Finally exported geometry only to get rid of animation.

Some things are better to be done in a real 3D-application, saves a lot of time!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Ah I see! Thank you! I guess nifskope surgery on creatures is inherently going to be a mess then. I had no idea!

I've now added these to my game. I had to adjust their XYZ co-ords, and now they work great! Thanks again!