NIF help wanted! Options

[Lena Wolf]

Hello everyone,

I have a NIF problem and I can't figure out how to solve it. Also, I have very little understanding of how NIFs work, which probably doesn't help. So I am looking for help - either in explanations or in actual fixing the model, please!

I am making a companion out of Geralt of Rivia using the Classic Witcher mod. The author made models of Geralt's armour very similar to Witcher 2, and they look great in principle. They look absolutely fine in Nifskope, but in the CS Geralt has an arm problem.

I am only interested in two models from that mod: Raven.nif (the cuirass) and KMgauntlet.nif (the gauntlets) - they are shown in the screenshot. My suspicion is that some nodes on the armour are not connected to the appropriate skeleton nodes, but I don't know how to fix it!

The armour does work in-game, but I am uneasy because clearly there's an issue. I worry that it might be introducing instabilities.

So, is there a kind soul out there who can either fix them for me or teach me how to fix them? Please? Pretty please?

I only have Nifskope, no Blender, that's because I have no clue about model making... I do scripts, not graphics... I figured out doing textures with GIMP, but meshes - that's mostly beyond me.

[Lena Wolf]

Oh good, you remembered!

I did not change anything in the NIFs at all. I don't even know what those flags are, etc. No, I worked exclusively with the textures. Imported the DDS file into GIMP and generated new normal maps, that is, the corresponding _n.dds files. GIMP has a plugin for that.

So, once the _n.dds files were recreated, I opened the preview in the CS, and the armour looked perfectly normal!

Note that it always looked normal in game, the problem was only in the CS. It appears that the game engine is able to handle some errors. But some of the other armour wasn't showing at all (invisible), both in the CS and in game. And that too was due to invalid normal maps.

The uncorrected version of the mod with all the meshes and textures is here (AFK mods). I shall soon be updating it with the new versions, but I can send you a preview if you are itching to see what's changed.

And yes, it is extremely weird, that bone deformation. But it was fixed with normal maps. I was actually trying to fix the invisible bits, I knew that was a normal map problem, and this fixed accidentally as well. Not complaining here!