Weird blotches in Nifskope - need some advice

Beard3D Bandit

Hi guys, wonder if I could get a little bit of help with a model i'm importing into Skyrim, it's very blotchy and really doesn't seem to look right at all.

here is a nifskope screenshot:


in game screen:


Any help would do, I would appreciate it!

snoop

those look a lot like smoothing errors to me. what 3d package are you using to export the model with?

Beard3D Bandit

I modeled it in Modo, exported as an obj and then into nif.

hmm..weird.

Swizzle

Modo doesn't always export vertex normals in a way that's readable by outside programs. If possible, you might want to try exporting as an FBX, or using something like Max or Maya as a go-between.

Beard3D Bandit

Okay I'll try this thank you guys

Har

In 3ds max the "normal" modifier can probably fix this.

jamesman82

having done quite a bit of work in GECK, i can tell you that i typically experienced issues like this if not every face had a smoothing group value applied to it. of course the process is a little different in modo versus max, but the problem still stems from a lack of any kind of smoothing/surface normal information.

Beard3D Bandit

yeah, I followed the official Bethesda tutorial for the obj to nif process using nifskope etc and there are two results:

1. if I start fresh in nifskope it gives me a completely black material with no diffuse etc.

2. i I open an existing skyrim piece of furniture (nordic 1 benched table) it will create the blotched look as Ive provided. when i look closer it shows the tris in that manner..so im guessing I need to play witht he normals/smoothing groups.

Thanks for the help guy, I appreciate it!

pixelpatron

Have you put other assets/models through the pipeline? Meaning this the first asset you've made/exported to this engine?

Beard3D Bandit

So guys, i increased the smoothing angle in Modo, and it provides what the model looks like in game except I have taken the texture off.



I adjusted the surface normal preference in modo (smoothing angle and smoothing) and its presented this:



hopefully this will do xDD

Beard3D Bandit

Hi pixelpatron, you would be correct yes!

The process can be seen as tedious, to simply install custom meshes/textures, but I'm all for learning about the engine quite robustly.

pixelpatron

If that is the case, this being your first test/model......I'd suggest starting with a cube a sphere & cone as a new asset (simple subdivided mesh primitives) and export those with a basic material and make sure they are displaying correctly. Apply a shader from the library (that you know displays correctly) on the default primitives (something you didn't create, texture and material from the game that pre-existed)......Then through process of elimination, determine if it's a shader (your new shader) or mesh/texture issue; try different things to break the model, flip uv's, put weird soft hard edges on parts of the meshes, have uv's outside 0/1...etc. Every engine is different and has constraints that are not obvious. See if you can:

A) Get a mesh through the pipeline without flaws (something easy/basic crate with slapped on texture).
If you do achieve success on getting through the pipeline...attempt to break it, try to replicate the issues your seeing on your current asset by doing things to meshes as described above.

Once the issue is identified; it should inform you on what is breaking the process on your model, then of course you'll have the education to fix it. Either way it can't hurt to further inform you on what is going on during the different parts of the pipeline.

Beard3D Bandit

This is why I love the people on Poly Count!

Thanks pixel! I shall find out what the constraints are and beat this! xD

I'll try a quick wooden crate and see how it goes

Cheers dude

pixelpatron

Another thing I forgot to mention is the UV sets; This engine support multiple UV sets or lightmaps? Those shadows might simply be lack of a lightmap UV set, or improper texture for the lightmap UV's. Not sure if this engine supports lightmapping, or you simply need to turn on/off lightmaps for this object, or bake lighting to generate new lightmaps for this object. Either way I'd still start on those basic primitives, it's always faster to troubleshoot stuff with a basic setup (cube, crate, sphere, soccerball texture). But if you still have issues I'd investigate that as well.

battlecow

In nifskope try Spells>Bach>update all tangeant spaces
Also skyrim normal maps have an inverted green channel.

Beard3D Bandit

@pixelpatron - Appreciate the advice man! I've been up endless hours just searching online for solutions, I thought I fixed the issue when I went into nifskope and toggled 'no' to vertex colors. but that only turned the entire asset a shiny black. I wont stop until I know how to prepare the 3D models for skyrim.

another thing im wondering is, the bethesda art team primarily use 3ds max, so I'm wondering if it's something to do with the program im creating the asset in.

I'll do all the research and I might make a pdf with all my findings and methods/tests for other new artists having the same problem I am, to help them.

When you mention light map uvs, are referring to high to low poly bakes? I might be confusing myself haha.

@battlecow - hey man! welcome to the cluster F**k that is me, trying to figure this out haha.
I tried this in many ways, but it just didn't seam to do anything xD

When you mention the inverted green, could you elaborate. also, I've tested an import of the model without textures, and it still seams to proceed looking like the images above

An interesting thing is...once I import the asset mesh and textures, it looks fine, until the very moment I save as skyrim>data>meshes>furniture>*file*. Then it literally flicks and changes lmao.

Thanks for your comments guys, it helps motivate me to continue figuring this out

Beard3D Bandit

Quick little update 01:

I'm going to be doing several tests based from pixelpatrons advice.

I've basically needed to see if the issue at hand was caused by either my modelling in general, my texturing (general texturing and allocation of textures within the data folders for skyrim), whether I need to try different programs to model for skyrim (Im using 'modo') and finally the materials and smoothing groups etc.

The first part of the test are beginning with primitives. I've made a very simple sphere, cleanly unwrapped it (spherical projection) and quickly applied a test texture color boxes with numbers inside.

I created a quick diffuse,normal and mask texture as suggested by the bethesda nifskope tutorial. and I have tried 2 methods of importing the obj into nifskope and saved as a .nif, the textures are (spheremodo.dds, spheremodo_n.dds and spheremodo_m.dds)

My first finding:
1. no more mesh glitches - I think pressing 'TAB' converts the model from 'faces' to 'subdivided' (but it doesnt increase number of polys.

So perhaps it's not the models, and maybe I just needed to include simple subdivision. Ill try creating a more complex shape with and without edgeloops and see what the difference is.

2. the sphere looks lovely...BUT ITS ORANGE! Im thinking, it may be a material problem perhaps, or I may not be linking them correctly, this is something i will test when im home tonight.

current modosphere model ingame

what it should look like


Any way gang, I'll just keep posting, as these findings are good for me anyway.

Beard3D Bandit

update 02 - exploring the textures

So, looking through forums and tutorials, it has been advised to use saved textures from .bmp images:

example: [image (png/jpg)] >photoshop > save as .bmp as RGB 16bit > re-open .bmp >save as .dds

done a few experiments to see where i may be going wrong here.

before I continue, I am directly placing the texture in: SKYRIM > DATA > TEXTURES > FURNITURE > COMMON

for experimental purposes, im guessing this is the best way to go about doing this.

here is the small experiment with toggling some of the options in nifskope. my guess here is that im messing something up here with the texturing side, perhaps the incorrect format, I dont know.


I'll search for texturing specific tutorials but most of the tutorials are 'here is an already existing mesh and texures...lets put it in nifskope'

pixelpatron

For your next test, can you make a simple cube and apply this to it (no normal map).

Then post the outcome?

Beard3D Bandit

Okay cool! i can try that, really strange how the texture didnt apply though. I'm looking through some tuts now, so i'll try and apply some basic textures to a crate.

Beard3D Bandit

hi pixel patron, I used that texture,thanks for that, I created a primitive cube and applied the texture:



I followed a tutorial, in which he created the mesh, textures and using an existing skyrim mesh for reference etc. and this is the result:



Pretty sure something is not right haha.

Im having 2 thoughts:

1. the problem is during the export, and its not exporting the material/textures due to the face that the meshes look okay.

2. Skyrim hates my guts xD

I create the normals and a mask just in case for extra testing and correctly too

Be hilarious if there's a single switch I needed to press lmao

pixelpatron

Looks like you just need to apply the material to the mesh. There any sort of material editor? Can you steal/clone another material and replace the textures with your own?

Beard3D Bandit

Yeah it does look like that way, hilarious how much trouble this is giving me haha.

I'll certainly look into that in the morning, I know its a completely different engine, but I plonked the OBJ of the crate into unreal engine and had everything with it, so it's strange.

Thanks pixel, once i get this sorted it will be awesome and I can continue with the project xD

Beard3D Bandit

Yeah it does look like that way, hilarious how much trouble this is giving me haha.

I'll certainly look into that in the morning, I know its a completely different engine, but I plonked the OBJ of the crate into unreal engine and had everything with it, so it's strange.

Thanks pixel, once i get this sorted it will be awesome and I can continue with the project xD

Beard3D Bandit

So the past 4 days have been hair pulling to me, models from Modo have not been exporting correctly for some odd reason into the Skyrim 'creation kit' via nifskope.

Pixel recommended that i start testing with primitive shapes (cubes etc) and STILL was having issues.

I quickly figured it was a material problem for whatever reason, so i decided to create the primitive cube (instead of Modo) and...it actually worked fine. It's a tad dark, but I can work with that with some easy adjustments.

here are some in-game screenshots:
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/573438521447328206/06233EFDB2038CEA49F936DA5951B4A5E6451FDA/

the normals are a bit too strong, but I can tweak these.


and a 3rd person shot for lols


So, i've gotten to the root of the problem, which I think is incorrect exporting in Modo.

My next thing is probably not to keep spamming this page, and just say thanks to you guys. I'll figure out the proper export methods for Modo and continue with my mod.

Peace out guys!
Love beardy

Nolt

Nice man! It's been awhile since I added stuff into Skyrim (http://steamcommunity.com/id/9thKnight/myworkshopfiles/). Looks like the issues you were having was a smoothing group issue (I think nifscope takes like .3ds and .obj or something.) One file would give me bad smoothing, the other would give me the right smoothing so you might try changing your exported file format.