Resolve Broken Seam?

[SickAlice]

This is a shot in the dark I think and I will probably will just scrap it and make a fresh model. I also can't find anything concrete around the internet forums so I thought I'd prompt it just in case.
So I have a broken center seam on a model I made of some hair. For clarity I made it starting with a flat grid plane for a single side and then shaped it, mirrored it and joined it. I had already done the usual steps that would resolve this from the start. I shrunk the selected vertices (see picture #3) and along the X axis in this example. I then welded/merged (tried in this in different 3d programs as well) each vertice pairing. No dice. I then tried a path where I made a single column of faces and stuck it under the tear. Somehow no dice but I "think" that has to do with Freedom Force not being able to render overlapping alpha channeled meshes (the one facing away from the camera will not be rendered at all, this must be resolved inside the nif itself). Double checked the texture and made sure every part was covered in the alpha channel and then some. No dice.

I'm also having the Z Seam(jaggle texturing) issue with the female models head) but to my understanding that's just everpresent in these basic models and it would be covered by the hair anyways so it's not an issue. More with the model itself that I made. I have had the issue but only when I forgot to either zero out the space between and/or weld my verts. Internet forums suggest Nifskope does this to models because it in short it basis tristrips on texture coordinates but there's never any sense given to why that is nor evidence shown of it. Thus the solution given to this is to smooth the normals and update the tangent space in Nifskope via the spells. So I tried it, why the heck not? No dice. So I'm at an impasse here and going to remake the whole thing but maybe to discuss it for future referance.

Here's the screens.
1. Rendered bad seam in CTool2. You can see a white line along the back of the hair running from the scalp down:


2. In game, same thing and because of the aforementioned alpha flaw the ground itself is rendered through the hole instead of the body mesh that should be:


3. The model itself with the vertices selected. This is two sided as you can see btw, not flat and stenciled or something just to cover that ground.

[Randomdays]

Hey! something I might have some ideas on! Probably crazy ones!

I've seen the problem with the rendering of two overlapping alpha channeled meshes - Among others ,the Speed Racer I just did wouldn't show his transparent helmet visor when looking through the transparent windshield

Can you remove the alpha channel from the single column seam?

Why would it need that turned on? If it's part of the main hair, why not separate it out as a different object without alpha and attach it to the back of the head directly?

Does all the hair need alpha turned on? If the end needs it could you split it into an upper non alpha piece and a lower piece with it?

Or, if the main body mesh needs alpha turned on, could you make a solid, black ball, non alpha'd, almost the size of the head, and stick it inside the skull?

Instead of having the halves meeting in the middle, why not extend on side slightly over the other and raise it up a tiny little bit to cancel out the flicker of two items being in the same location?

Or   I see its not showing all the way down to the end, so the cape must not have alpha turned on. Can you extend the back neck piece of the cape, the part that's under the hair and not seen, up farther to the top of the head, keeping it under the hair?


I told you, crazy!

[cranlox]

If you make a kind of line with volume in black to lean carefully on the white line?
It's basically a very trout patch idea.
Surely it's work and it's not ideal but maybe it saves you from throwing your work away and doing it all over again.
I say this just for reasons, I have almost no idea what you are explaining very well.
I hope you can find the solution.

[SickAlice]

@cranlox: Yeah, that was the single column patch. But the problem being FF doesn't render overlapping meshes, it will just delete the backfaced when looking it at head on. So that didn't really work either. And I kind of don't mind redoing all this, it was in the cards anyways that I would want to perfect my hair ideas as well especially my cape ideas here. But I've used the same patch idea before, it's in some of my nifs and it's a smart idea. Normally it works but not this time. I'm more just trying to understand the actual cause of this problem to learn about it is all.

And sorry about the wording, I'm using a lot of industry jargon here. If you need me to explain any of it feel free. I had to take time over the years to understand myself. For example "jaggles" is where the texture appears to bleed or smear over a model. It's due to being on a seam that stretches when the model animated. Z Seam is a term that means something similar, like you look at the seam on a roll of duct tape say and everything is bunched up and weird looking. All of our basic male and female have an issue with the head seam that causes this. It isn't obvious because most have hair or helmets, or they have a flush texturing but it shows up if say you make Spider-mans mask webbing across the top of the head. The texture will be pulled to the wrong side. Like the armpit problem unfortunately these things will be carried over with weight copying and the only way around them would be to make new basic bodies in 3ds Max. Like the VX nifs for example do not have this same issue as the basics all do.

@Randomdays: I know the solutions to the overlap issue. My Mutagen Man for example I had to do it with. His organs would not show up inside the glass. You change settings in the nif itself. The issue is you have to sacrifice controlling the alpha via the texture then. Now if you are making a character and you want them to be able to switch costumes by way of the alpha channels in the textures hiding and showing costume parts, well? Yeah then that isn't workable. That is the case here with X-Men characters (Emma Frost and Selene) so I can't apply it. But I am also of the opinion in this case it still would resolve the seam issue because...why is it happening? I seriously don't know the actual cause of this one. Seen it before too, when I make things out of a flat plane and/or by making one plane after the other. Where if I sculpt from a geometric shape, say a sphere, there's no seam issue then even I have split and rejoined the parts.

No, I can't remove the single column. The character switches hairstyles thus different hair meshes and that piece needs to vanish during those instances. And see that and above for why it needs alpha channels turned on. I almost exclusively work with alpha channels for the sake of skinners and skopers. It's why I only make stuff for  , as the alpha property is broken in  . Example:



Side note, I ran into the alpha issue on the one on the left where that cleavage window that's supposed to be fishnet is placed. I got out of it by making a fake texture of the lower chest on the raised part and a bit of optical illusioning. I also had an issue with texturing the fishnet itself since the space is so small and PS just will not do pixels that tiny so I kind of made an illusion. There's a downside of these games not being HD I suppose.

Anyways, the idea here is not to avoid it, it's to understand why this is occurring. I repeat, this is a discussion to deduce what causes this issue. I am not looking to learn basics to resolve it for a specific thing. This is for the community for later usage because I know this is a common problem in nif based communities. I've made nifs, animations, textures and so on for over two decades now. I don't really need primers on that stuff.

So I did actually after I type this try extending it via extrusion just like you are saying? No dice there, the issue is there. So it is something in Nifskope or something in  . But again, what?

No I can't do the cape thing. The cape rests at the neck joining shoulder point and lower down to the breasts depending. It has a special trick cape that a skinner can change depending on what cape they want to have by using, yep, the alpha channel on the texture. See Emma Frosts different costumes and cape types to understand that one.

Otherwise no. The problem is a seam as I said.

Yeah it's crazy alright. But worse there IS an actual reason. It's always that. It's I don't know the reason and if I did it would be "Oh, well I am a horses patoot! That is totally simple and I should have known". But in this case I don't and it seems even the best on the web are just taking guesses on this one as well. Everyone at least seems in agreement that Nifskope is doing it and it has to do with how it reads tristrips. But no specifics thus no solutions. And again, this is just for completions sakes. I'm remaking the thing anyways but it is a curious thing.

[Deaths Jester]

Have had this problem before but never found a way to fix it, myself.  Usually end up just painting the hair colour on the underlying meshes - both the other hair and the head section - to cover breaks like this.  Part of it is Nifskope but like you, I don't know where it is that the problem occurs.  Wish had an answer but don't and guessing is not helpful....

[SickAlice]

Underpainting is smart, I use the same. Just was doing with Mr. Sinster but, well the rest of the hair that follows along the cape animations. I mean it isn't a problem for this work since I'm just going to remake the model a different way that I know does work, as a single piece from the start but I would love to understand exactly why this happens. I can't seem to zoom in on the cause and that bothers me. I'm retentive and don't like when I do not understand why a thing happens.

I did already fix it by the way. The patch I applied was since I had made inner faces as well as outer and the inner where slightly smaller I just moved the center line of vertices of the inner over to the right enough to overlap. Then I added a Stencil Property to the mesh set to Draw Backfaces (3). The reason this works fyi is how I textured the model where I both made a second inner set of faces and I also reversed the vertex order. Otherwise this wouldn't work and we would be back to vanishing away face problem. And I'm going to add a patch on the female basic texture's head just for good measure since DJ brought it up.

The cape model is being remade no matter what. There are things I don't like about it like it isn't friendly enough to skinners in parts. Like if you look at the right picture which is her Hellfire Gala costume the texture is stretched along the out edges. This Selene one is prep for Emma later so I want all that to be perfect. That's okay btw because I'm actually having fun making this particular model.

*Edit: Sorry, yes please. For completion here is the patched hair in game. She's telling my Last Hunt Spider-man that she is going not going to go fight those thugs with a bat's in the stage and someone will have to care of it. Selene has better things to do with her time.