Converting a custom creature from Morrowind mod to Oblivion mod

Hello morroblivion users!

I am wondering if I can use the morroblivion converters to convert a custom creature from a Morrowind mod to an Oblivion mod. One of the advertised things I was wanting to use was Morroblivion's nif converter's ability to convert a nif file from Morrowind and export an Oblivion-ready nif with havok data and animations.

I had originally downloaded an older version of the ESPconverter before it was used with the Morroblivion project (early beta version) and had no success with getting it to work due to lack of instructions (and having to translate from French into English... my French is terrible).

I'm not trying to get Morrowind to work in Oblivion here... just trying to use the base tools for a seperate Oblivion mod project so I can get some more unique creatures into Oblivion.

So, specifically, is there any way I can download a Morrowind mod with a custom creature (and after having asked permission to use it in another mod) take the creature's nif and kf files and convert them into Oblivion files? If so, how do I go about using these tools to accomplish this task?

Thanks in advance,

jamochawoke

Last edited by jamochawoke on 27 Aug 2011 - 16:55.

The NIFconverter can not

The NIFconverter can not handle creatures (or any animated object for that matter).

Morroblivion's creatures were done using 3dsmax (tutorial), though technically it should also be possible to do them with blender.

Thanks for the reply!I tried

Thanks for the reply!

I tried this in Blender trying to shortcut the things that didn't crossover with 3DSMax. Everything worked out flawlessly for the mesh export... except for some reason the head and tail of the creature keep dissapearing. Very frustrating! I'll see if I can't find a friend using 3DSMax and try and follow the tutorial step by step and see if I get a different outcome.

Ok.I went over to my friend's

Ok.

I went over to my friend's and we loaded up 3DS Max 7 with all the plugins needed.

I went through the tutorial step by step on how to convert the creature to Oblivion.

At first everything went really well. It all seemed to work. Then I loaded up the Oblivion CS and created a creature entry.

However, when I loaded up my animations I noticed something... off. The head and end of the tail of the creature refuse to animate with the rest of the mesh. I checked the original .nif to see if everything animated and it all played perfectly in nifskope. Then I went to my converted mesh and checked with the original to see if all the bones lined up and everything... Yup everything seemed to be fine. Then I checked with nifskop the converted skeleton and attached one of the converted animations to it and it seemed to work just fine as well.

So I deleted all of my work and started over from scratch... I ended up with the exact same results... mesh and textures converted completely fine, animations refuse to move the head and end of the tail parts of the mesh, those part just sit there floating in mid-air.

I am at a complete loss in trying to figure out how to fix it. 3DS Max is not my forte and my friend was less than helpful. I tried loading it up in Blender and reparenting those parts of the mesh to the armature and weight-painting them... but that didn't work either.

Help? I feel hopelessly lost.

Just for reference... what

Just for reference... what I'm trying to convert is this:

[External image]

I have in-game screenshots of this model bugging out with the head and tail if it will help out any too. But right now I'm just so frustrated after 5 hours of trying to get this to work lol.

Even more frustrating is that it looks AMAZING in-game, if only the mesh would work :/.

Its useful to have the file

Its useful to have the file for reference ;)

Anyways, it seems that the head and tail are not skinned and instead part of the heirachy ... additionally they might have morphs.

There are two ways to go about fixing this:

- If the meshes do not have morphs ... or if you don't want to convert the morphs ... then you can remove the morph modifier in max (if it exists) and then add a skin modifier to the mesh segment and link that to the bone under which the segment is located in the heirachy (detailed instructions here). Examples of creatures that use this techque within morroblivion are the Ogrim's head and Bonelord's Robe.

- If the meshes have morphs, and you want to retain them, then do not remove the morph modifier and export the mesh as usual. Then use Nifscope to move the mesh segments from body.nif to skeleton.nif (under the bone in which they belong in the heriachy) ... alternatively you can make a seperate mesh for these wih a PRN node to attach them to a bone in the skeleton (like helmets in Oblivion). Examples of Morroblivion creatures using this technique include the Ancestral Ghost's skull (uses PRN nodes) and Daedroth's Head (merged with skeleton.nif).

I could email you the files

I could email you the files if you want. Both the pre-converted files and the converted files and the .esp for Oblivion so you can see what I'm talking about.

I'm a complete scrub at 3D modelling (only really good for doing pre-existing mesh edits and retexturing) so I think I'm going to need real help on this as what you just said is kind of over my head :P.

There are no morphs to worry

There are no morphs to worry about ... the war twilight is a modified version of Bethesda's Winged Twilight ... so I know how it works :p

The winged twilight has already been converted (meshes\morroblivion\creatures\wingedtwilight\) ... so you can probably reference to that (maybe even use the skeleton from there).

I forgot to mention that I

I forgot to mention that I had grabbed the skeleton from here of the original converted winged twilight (out of curiosity) and still have the same issues. I was surprised the animations worked as I had believed the models to be unrelated. But still the same unanimatedparts just floating :(. Will I have to fix it by taking the unanimated parts and merging them with the skeleton.nif then?

Well I should warn you that

Well I should warn you that the war twilight is a modified Morrowind Asset rather than a 'made-from-scratch' creature and so getting permission from the modder won't be enough to legitimize its use in an Oblivion project.

Anyways ... you need to use nifscope to "Copy Branch" the head and tail from your converted body.nif and "Paste Branch" them in the skeleton.nif (under the exact NiNodes in whch the original head and tails are present ... ). Then you need to "Remove Branch" the old head and tail from the skeleton as well as your converted body.nif {essentially you move the head and tail from the body to the skeleton} and you should be done.

If you still have problems then you can upload the files on mediafire and post a link to them.

Thanks! Got it to work, I'm

Thanks! Got it to work, I'm way excited :D.

There were some slight texture issues with some of the glow maps I'm trying to work out, but everything else seems to work flawlessly.

Oblivion handles glow maps

Oblivion handles glow maps slightly differently from morrowind. In morrowind you needed to assign a new texture slot from within nifscope ... but for oblivion you just need to end the filename of the glow map with a "_g.dds"

So to convert the morrowind creature ...you should remove the glow map texture in nifscope and rename the glow map file with _g at the end.

Also this article should be helpful.

Yeah I got all the glowmaps

Yeah I got all the glowmaps working. Wish I had seen your post before I spent several hours trying to figure it out on my own haha!

I was also able to go into blender and increase the poly count as well as do some other touch ups to the model and then go in to Photoshop and make his amazing textures a little bit better (and gave it oblivion daedric eyes, amongst a few other things). The creature looks pretty much amazing in-game now.

The only issue I have is that I cannot loot the creature after it dies. I am guessing this is due to the model not having havok data? If it had havok data I'd be able to drag the corpse around with z (which I can't do) so I figured they must be related.

The winged twilight skeleton

The winged twilight skeleton included within morroblivion has Havok (located in meshes\morroblivion\creatures\daedra\wingedtwilight).

Otherwise here is a tutorial on adding Havok-Ragdolls via blender.

Ha, I've had so many problems

Ha, I've had so many problems getting the physics to work with this creature conversion I just went and grabbed the vanilla NPC skeleton and have used its havok data by messing with the bones to "approximate" the original skeleton. It works... sort of... just no where near to my liking.

Ran into a lot of problems with the mesh. So, I just decided to scrap it and build a new mesh based off of one of Oblivion's body replacers... It's working so far.

Wish me luck :/