NifSkope 1.0 Released

[Shon]

Hello, all =)

Thanks to everyone's hard work testing out the release candidates, NifSkope 1.0 is now ready to download.  Lots of people worked on this release, and the XML changes that come with it, including Amorilia, Entim, Sacarrow, Tazpn, Throttlekitty, Wz, and myself.

Screen Shot
Download

NOTICE: If you don't already have them installed, you will need to Download these Microsoft DLLs.

Here's a summary of the changes since version 0.9.8.  Hope you like them!

* User Interface
  - Expanded help menu and renamed "Reference Browser" to "Interactive Help" and made it come up when F1 is pressed.
  - Merged autodetect buttons into a single button which looks for every supported game so you can auto-detect all our games at the same time.
  - The custom paths you've specified will no longer be deleted by the autodetect button.
  - File names displayed in the load and save box should now always have the full path and show long file names on Windows.  They should also contain back slashes instead of forward slashes.
  - Added Vertex and Triangle Selection to bhkPackedNiTriStripsShape
  - Linux file select fix
  - The BSXFlags selection box works again
  - Improved FloatEdit to accept "<float_min>" and "<float_max>".
  - Added Draw Constraints option.
  - Added check if array is even enabled to "Update Array" spell
  - Created new icons for "Follow Link" and "Flags" spells just for fun.
  - Created an icon for "Array Update" and made the spell instant, so now arrays can be updated just by clicking the icon.
  - Made the Matrix4 edit spell "instant" so that the icon would appear next to the Matrix and the user won't have to drill down into the right-click menu.
  - Created some more amusing icons for the various view toolbar buttons.
  - Reformatted the insert block menu to make a little more sense.  "Havok" instead of "BHK," grouped other Bethesda and Firaxis nodes, etc.
  - Added version matching to XML checker.
  - Changed link editing so if you clear the value and press enter, the link changes to "None."  This way the user won't have to know that "-1" has a special meaning.
  - Fixed block-matching so it works for all versions, though it won't be any faster for old versions since early rejection can't be used.
  - Fixed NiControllerSequence links so that 0x0000FFFF also counts as "empty" instead of showing up as "invalid index"
  - Added the ability to specify what NIF version the new "blank" NIF is when NifSkope starts.
  - Changed relative path specifier to './'
  - Fixed issue where links in old files weren't mapped if the file didn't load completely.
  - The XML checker window's Block choosing button now has the same new menu structure as the Block > Insert spell.

* 3D View
  - Added ability to center the view on the selected node or shape.  Select the node/shape and press the C key.
  - Made it so you can zoom in and out by right-dragging left and right as well as up and down.
  - Added Text Rendering when "Triangles" is selected on the bhkNiTriStripsShape data.  If the top is selected all triangles are numbered if a specific one is selected then only that triangle index is shown.
  - Removed triangle sorting of alpha meshes because none of the games or official scene viewers actually seem to do this.  Improves display of Oblivion hair meshes.
  - Fixed, added, or improved several Havok Constraint visuals.
  - Added support for displaying textures in NiTextureProperty (Nif ver. 3.x)
  - Made selection lines look much less flickery by increasing the line width to 1.5 before drawing them.
  - Added visualization for old style collision boxes.  Lumped it in with "Havok" since it's the same idea as a Havok box shape.
  - A warning will appear if S3TC texture compression is not supported by the OpenGL driver.

* Spells
  - Update Center/Radius" spell now respects CF_VOLATILE and Oblivion simple center searching methods.
  - Enhanced LimitedHingeHelper spell to every constraint
  - "Edit UV" is applicable only when there are texture coordinates present and fixed bug which could lead to crashing.
  - The Optimize > Combine Shapes spell now issues warnings when shapes don't count as matching due to the presence of unsupported NiObjects, such as NiSkinInstance.
  - The Multi Apply Mode spell is now on the "Batch" page of the spell book, and only appears in the Spell menu, never in the right-click menu.
  - Edit UV is now only applicable to NiTriShape or NiTriStrips. It didn't work for NiTriShapeData or NiTriStripsData, but would show up in the right-click menu anyway.
  - Added the ability to not stripify and pad newly created NiSkinPartition objects in the "Make Partition" spell.  Still needs more work to make proper partitions for games which require 4 bones per partion, however.

* Import/Export
  - 3ds and OBJ import updated so that all the NiTriShapes will be attached to whatever NiNode is selected in the tree view, similar to the old right-click->Import method.
  - Added the ability to import the first mesh from an OBJ or 3DS file over the top of the selected NiTriShape object.
  - Added the ability to export starting from the specified node, or only a specific mesh, depending on what is selected.
  - Import and export now warn the user what they are about to do, based on the selection, giving them a chance to cancel the operation if it isn't what they wanted.
  - Fixed 3ds import for shapes with multiple materials.
  - Optimized 3ds import a bit so that group nodes will only be created when there is more than one material in a shape.
  - Updated Import 3ds so that it creates a "Scene Root" node which all object nodes are attached to, rather than creating a NIF file with many roots.
  - Fixed a the same bug in 3ds import as was fixed in OBJ import where "Has UV" was not being set properly.
  - Fixed OBJ and 3ds import and export so that NiImage and NiTexture are created in 3.x files, and are detected during OBJ export.
  - Fixed a bug that was causing the "Has UV" bool not to be set correctly when an OBJ file was imported.
 
* NIF Compatibility
  - Added partial support for the following new games: Loki, Pro Cycling Manager, Shin Megami Tensei
  - Fixed a bug that made NifSkope fail to load the 3.3.0.13 file.
  - Fixed problem with version 3.03 conditions in the XML.  Version 3.1 files can be read again.
  - XML changes which allow NiSkinPartition objects that won't crash Morrowind and Freedom Force to be created.

* Misc.
  - GCC build fixes.
  - Added check for empty QFileSystemWatcher, this removes the nasty qWarning
  - Uninstall now correctly removes all folders.

Hopefully anything that was a regression from previous versions of NifSkope has been addressed.  There are still a few new things I would have liked to get working for 1.0, but I didn't want the testing to drag on and on so I felt it was time for the final release.  Here are the specific things that were fixed since RC3:

* The Make Skin Partition spell now acts correctly when over-writing the data in an existing skin partition when the stripification setting used does not match the existing object.
*Fixes to XML allow creation of skin partitions blocks that Morrowind and Freedom Force can read without crashing.
* Added the ability to "pad" partitions that games which only support 4 bones per partition require.  The existing spell doesn't seem to generate proper partitions when bones per partition is set that low, however, so it still often doesn't work for those games.  Hopefully will be fixed in a future version.
* Removed some temproary debug code that was causing warnings to appear when importing 3DS files.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Cheers, Shon!  Thanks for visiting the Freedom Force corner of the NIFverse! :)

Your download link is not functioning, so I thought I would post this link to the NIFTools Project downloads on Sourceforge.

I and others here have been monitoring your team's progress with great interest for some time.  Thanks for all of your hard work.  :D

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[GGiant]

Beware of direct link! :o

[ow_tiobe_sb]

RC1 still appears to encounter problems with IG meshes such as alien_warrior:


I've had no trouble displaying any number of player-created meshes, but all of IG's original game meshes for FF1 have this problem.  Is the NiClod node to blame?


Just wondering.  :(

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[Shon]

Oops, sorry about the "..." in the link!  I forgot the Bethesda Forums truncated the links like that, and that's where I copied most of the post from ^_^;  I fixed it with an edit =)

And yah, NiClod appears to be something that the company that made Freedom Force added to the format, so it's one of the especially hard ones to figure out since it doesn't really follow the conventions of the rest of the file format.  It took us a long time just to figure out how to skip over it, but we never did figure out what's actually in there or how to do anything with the data.  The priority for figuring it out was moved down when someone discovered that you could use the FF to FFvt3R conversion tool to convert the NiClod things into normal TriShapes.

Getting intrinsic support for it into NifSkope would certainly be something one of your talented hexers could investigate using the XML format file, though.  I'm not saying we'll never figure out what it means, but most people tend to work on the games that they play, and we don't have any devs from the Freedom Force community yet =/  So I'm just suggesting a way you could potentially speed the process along =)  Of course if any of you start down that path, we'd be glad to help you with any questions you might have over on our forum.

[Shon]

Oh, and I recommend installing this in a separate place so you don't break your other NifSkope install because we've already had a significant issue reported... you can't remove blocks without causing a crash =/  This is just the type of stuff we want to hear about, though, so it doesn't make it into version 1.0.

[Shon]

Release Candidate #2 is ready for download =)

Hopefully all the major issues have been addressed now, but I'd still love to hear from you if you're having issues with it.

I updated the first post in the thread with details.

[Shon]

And now I've put out RC3... I've tried to fix the issues that were preventing you from generating proper NiSkinPartitions for Freedom Force in this release, so please try it out and let me know if it works =)  Basically, you should now be able to specify that you don't want the triangles to be arranged into strips, along with the other options that were already there.

[tommyboy]

Excellent work on the RC3.
Thank you.
The NiSkinPartition Spell now works with at least the one random mesh I tried it on, both in-game and in Ctool2, both with the default values and 4bones per partition.
Sadly, it doesnt seem to have cured the "ghosting of multiple copies of the same mesh in-game" as I'd hoped it would, but that may be a matter of finding the correct settings, not any fault of NifSkope itself. (Or, it could just be that my theory was just wrong).
Whichever it is, we are now able to at least try to fix the problem, thanks to you.
Kudos on a great utility that has pretty much revolutionized skinning and meshing in FF and FFv3r.

[Shon]

Thanks a lot, Tommyboy!  Glad it works for you, though Conduit still found some issues with it =/  Seems like the spell was never that great at partitioning things with only 4 bones.  But at least it's some progress.

The final version of NifSkope 1.0 has now been released.  I modified the post above with the details =)

[the_ultimate_evil]

so what does this actually do

[Shon]

so what does this actually do

It's basically an editor for NIF files =)  NIF files store all the 3D art used by the Freedom Force games, and their internal structure is kind of like a tree of data. As you can see in the screen shot, NifSkope shows you both that tree of data and a 3D view of what it looks like. You can edit any piece of data in the file, and there are also little functions called "spells" you can execute to automate common tasks like changing a texture. It's not a 3D modeler, but lots of people find it very useful to prepare what they export from their modeling program for the game, or to make quick changes to existing files that don't require altering their shape.

There's more info about NifSkope on our wiki including some nice Freedom Force oriented tutorials by Symon =)

Also, check out this thread to see some of the cool things your fellow Freedom Force modders are doing with NifSkope =)

[the_ultimate_evil]

so what does this actually do

It's basically an editor for NIF files =)  NIF files store all the 3D art used by the Freedom Force games, and their internal structure is kind of like a tree of data. As you can see in the screen shot, NifSkope shows you both that tree of data and a 3D view of what it looks like. You can edit any piece of data in the file, and there are also little functions called "spells" you can execute to automate common tasks like changing a texture. It's not a 3D modeler, but lots of people find it very useful to prepare what they export from their modeling program for the game, or to make quick changes to existing files that don't require altering their shape.

There's more info about NifSkope on our wiki including some nice Freedom Force oriented tutorials by Symon =)

Also, check out this thread to see some of the cool things your fellow Freedom Force modders are doing with NifSkope =)

yeah thanks man, i know about nifskope and use it quite often, what i meant was what was the new features summary and such

[Shon]

yeah thanks man, i know about nifskope and use it quite often, what i meant was what was the new features summary and such

Ah... well there's a list of the changes since the last version up in the first post in this thread.  Did you have a question about what some of them mean?  There are so many different little things that it's difficult to provide a short summary like "In this release, we focused on..." because it's really just a bunch of unrelated small improvements.

[the_ultimate_evil]

yeah thanks man, i know about nifskope and use it quite often, what i meant was what was the new features summary and such

Ah... well there's a list of the changes since the last version up in the first post in this thread.  Did you have a question about what some of them mean?  There are so many different little things that it's difficult to provide a short summary like "In this release, we focused on..." because it's really just a bunch of unrelated small improvements.

ahh not a problem man, i'm not that great with coding and such(can work on the art side fine lol) i'll have look through it, and if i have any questions i'll ask. thanks again

[ow_tiobe_sb]

NIFty, Shon.  Very NIFty.

... 

What?  :huh:

;)

Many thanks for all of the rapid updates and development, Shon.  The UI seems to improve significantly with each new version, and the programme's capacity for viewing and modifying/creating NIFs has increased tenfold since version 0.8.2 (which is the first version I downloaded and installed--the current version at the time).  I am rather pleased by the fact that it can now import .3DS files, so that even those users who do not have the gmax NIFTools exporters (big thanks for those goodies as well :thumbup:) can export to that file format straight out of the box and import geometries into NIFSkope. :)

Grand work!  Congratulations on reaching this milestone! :)

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[Shon]

Hehe, thanks a lot, ow_tiobe_sb =)

There are new exporters that I think should work for FF for Blender now as well =)

[yell0w_lantern]

I'm really going to have to learn how to use NIFSkope beyond changing note keys.

[detourne_me]

it doesn't work for me.  same issue as before.  the graphics don't show up....
do i need to find another XML file?

[Symon]

Ah look what happens when my back is turned, I change jobs, move flat and vanish for a month!

Maybe it'll work on my machine?

[Outcast]

I installed NifSkope on my D drive. Problem is when i double click on the NifSkope application, a message appears saying "The handle is invalid"  :huh: