I'm about to release an update for my Armory Clutter and Tool Belt resources, but was thinking maybe I should optimize the NIF files first to reduce overall size and such. I've kind of poked around a little for easy answers but haven't found any so far. That said, I have the following questions:

• What is the best way to optimize NIFs prior to release? (or should I bother)
  
• If running a utility like NIFopt, what are the gotchas I need to be aware of?
  
• Is there already a well-tested guide or article for this sort of thing?

I'm sure this question has already been answered numerous times, but a quick run through the CS wiki and the stickies here (plus a couple google searches) basically just showed me that there are multiple ways to do it. What I'm looking for is the best way to do it without much chance of messing up my NIF files.

Thanks in advance to anyone who responds. I really appreciate you guys.

I just run each NIF through PyFFI after I've finished modifying it and such.

I'll look into that - I've heard of it but never used it. Thanks!

UPDATE: I just did a quick google for "oblivion pyffi" and like the third one down was a forum post in which someone stated you shouldn't use it on helm meshes. Is that really the case? The armor dummies by Meo all have helm nodes in them, although it's possible Meo has already optimized though somehow.

I basically have no interest in helmets at all, so I can't say. Never messed with one even in Blender.

Perhaps this site will answer your question: http://tescosi.com/wiki/Oblivion:Python_File_Format_Interface

Thanks - I'll give this a shot. The instructions seem pretty clear, I'll just check my stuff in-game afterward.

The helmets thing is old news. PyFFI should be perfectly safe as long as you're not using a 2 year old version

Yep, what Arthmoor said. Older versions had problems with meshes that could scale, such as helmets (they have to be bigger to work on the beast races, for example). Other meshes with translucent effects, such as hair, also caused issues.

Ok, guess I'm hitting a snag here (probably doing something wrong). Here's the skinny:

• I've installed Python 2.7 and PyFFI 3k 2.2.0. I previously had Python 2.5 installed for WryeBash, but uninstalled it before installing 2.7.
  
• After installing both, I still don't have the "Optimize with PyFFI" option referred to by the instructions when you right-click on folders or NIF files.
  
• I copied about a dozen NIF files into the /utilities/toaster/in folder under PyFFI's install location
  
• There is no oblivion_optimize.ini as referred to in the instructions, but there IS oblivion_optimize01.ini, oblivion_optimize02.ini, and oblivion_optimize03.ini. Right-clicking on those files only gives me my standard options - nothing specific to PyFFI
  
• I looked at the batch files and the one called oblivion_optimize.bat seemed to be what I wanted. I double-clicked it, DOS window popped up, and immediately I had the comments from the batch for Pass 1/2/3 with "press any key to continue" (which then closed the window naturally)
  
• Fifteen minutes later I still don't have anything in the /utilities/toaster/out folder, and the ones in the /utilities/toaster/in folder haven't been modified

The instructions page was updated November 2011, so I assume I'm doing something wrong...

The PyFFI 3k series is designed for Python 3+

If you need to used PyFFI on Python 2.7, you're forced to use the older PyFFI 2.10.0 (downloads at the same place)

That seems to have done the trick. I was wondering what the 3k was for - thanks!