Late to the game questions

[eluvium]

what imports do I need to import and export meshes for both  and  where are they located, I'm not getting alot of input on my nifskope inquiries so I'm going to use steam's blender program instead and teach myself

[mac402]

What version of nifskope are you using? I remember you remarking that you couldn't get the meshes to load. Newer versions (2.x) seem to not work well or at all with Freedom Force games. From my anectdotal experience 1.0.22 works very good though.

As for where character meshes themselves are located its:
custom\art\library\characters for downloaded custom meshes
<modname>\art\library\characters for meshes from mods
For vanilla assets they're in Data\art.ff file. Treat like an archive to open with 7zip etc.

[eluvium]

I got blender and its accompanying py programs to allow me to edit nifs, I believe I have the right nifskope, I also can't seeem toopen the armored female lantern mesh's standard skin from litter box on gimp

[detourne_me]

http://freedomforce.ewzzy.com/Blender.php

This is a pretty great tutorial for you, especially with links to the best programs to use.

[SickAlice]

With mac402. Mine is v 1.13 Nifskope. I also stopped as later versions are buggy. The old versions have a grey background much like this forum does. Later versions have a black background. Old grey versions can't open nifs that have particle effects among other things nor can they be used to work with keyframes properly.

LitterBox is my site and works though I don't know which mesh (I made several "armored" female lanterns?) nor which texture (standard is not a texture, it's a directory?) to check and see if there is a flaw. I also don't use Gimp, I use Photoshop. All of textures for those are TGA's with or without an alpha channel for it's worth, I don't know how Gimp opens them.

As elsewhere, this very forum is a site full of tutorials. It also sounds like you need to learn the basics of Nifskope before going ahead with anything, again I think you are going to be a fast learner there.

[eluvium]

no the dds files won't open in Gimp

[SickAlice]

You need to download and install a DDS plugin for your program is why. Google the one that matches whichever version of Gimp you're using. The same thing has to be done when using Photoshop and other painting programs when it comes to DDS.

[mac402]

To add to what SlickAlice said there is one caveat when toying with dds files that you should remember, so it will save you some headscratches later. Dds format are compressed files, meaning each time you save a picture as dds it will compress its size and subsequently lose some quality. When you edit a dds file multiple times each time it will lose some quality so the end result will look more grainy than the original. Hence when editing textures it is better to work with tga's and only convert to dds at the end, leaving a copy in tga format for further improvements.
works with tga. works with both tga and dds but you can experience problems with textures not loading in tga format so it is better to use dds.

[eluvium]

thank you

[oktokels]

To add to what SlickAlice said there is one caveat when toying with dds files that you should remember, so it will save you some headscratches later. Dds format are compressed files, meaning each time you save a picture as dds it will compress its size and subsequently lose some quality. When you edit a dds file multiple times each time it will lose some quality so the end result will look more grainy than the original. Hence when editing textures it is better to work with tga's and only convert to dds at the end, leaving a copy in tga format for further improvements.
works with tga. works with both tga and dds but you can experience problems with textures not loading in tga format so it is better to use dds.

Nice info, thanks

[SickAlice]

That's solid advice. For  at least I find character textures do not have to be DDS, I prefer not to work with them myself. In that case the person who requested those, CB, also requested DDS to match FX he was making. As Mac says though there are game glitches if you don't use DDS, I find that happens with FX and map objects in  so I always use DDS there, at least after a certain point I did. Mind you the current plugin for the version of Photoshop I'm using these days (CS) for DDS is a bit of a bloated pain in the butt so I try to avoid it when I can.

Side note, I realized the need for basic and easy to find tutorials on Nifskope and otherwise and am planning on making some. A note for anyone who would be game to working on that project. It will be later for me, still sorting out some things on my end, like the apartment (I decided to just buy a house in the desert, it's cheaper than paying even low income based rent right now in most counties to pay a mortgage). I will also vanish again for awhile at some point between now and the next few months, I'm looking at a two thousand and a half plus journey soon and won't be online or doing hobby. But after I get set up the plan is to be able to devote more time to all this and finish standing projects and requests so if anyone wants in then I'm game.

[eluvium]

A video would be amazing like what Benton does, I find syntax a little bit of a overstimulating censory experience, I have the focus for the tedious part but I am a very visual hands on learner. Its long over due for me to have learned, I have an avatar by Daglob but have contributed very little.

[SickAlice]

I mostly due step by step with screenshot and highlight type tutorials. I'm not good at making videos anymore than more than I am at webpage layouts. I'm partway on some, I intend to include work files since I think manually doing it is the best way. As said when it comes to Nifskope especially this stuff "look hard" at first but when you learn it it's real simple. Else I always suggest to everyone just scour this very forum via the search box and tear apart the games files. All of them. Make copies of course so you don't ruin the originals, look and see what's inside and do experiments. My mantra is "Everything You Need to Know Is In The Chicken Nif". That nif contains the very basic set-up for things in this game. Likewise look at "X_basic_X". Male/female_basic_effects, Male/female_basic_FX, so on. It's all very standard stuff and always comes down to settings. Between this forum and just playing with files was how I learned the right way to do things.

[eluvium]

and keyframe transfer does not work on  meshes correct?

[SickAlice]

are easier to keyframe transfer and work with.

[eluvium]

USING THE M25 transfer tool? sorry for the capslock

[SickAlice]

I don't use that. It was good in it's day but I think Nifskope exceeds it now. I just copy and past in Nifskope. You can also finely tune keyframes in Nifskope if they're  whereas it's a little tougher with  keyframes. I only make stuff for  now so I don't typically need to worry about though.

[oktokels]

I don't use that. It was good in it's day but I think Nifskope exceeds it now. I just copy and past in Nifskope.

hmmm....this is interesting, i've been using the transfer tool with success, but haven't been able to do it like you do by just copy/pasting. The structure of the keyframes in nifskope is presented in a very complicated and coded way and also some keyframes have a totally different structure than others. Not that i haven't been able to achieve some things, but still i haven't been able to achieve much by just copy/pasting .

[eluvium]

so you have found that the m25 keyframe transfer does worki for meshes consistently?

[oktokels]

so you have found that the m25 keyframe transfer does worki for meshes consistently?

not for all meshes, the meshes used must be relatively similar in their nif structure

[eluvium]

right

[SickAlice]

@oktokels: I use 1.1.3 for keyframes as I do particle emitters personally, it handles everything well enough for what it's worth (0.9.1 for OBJ/model importation). Process is just Block > Copy Branch. Then scroll down to the bottom foot and Block > Paste At End. Works every time without fail. Of course so long as the keyframes are matching type/have been converted. Then the clean-up after, getting rid of excess string names. Seeing if the animation is even compatible with the signature by looking at in game (I've been compiling a list of what works with what, another thing I really need to finish one of these days), so on. But just as far as taking a keyframe from one set to another sure. You know keyframe tool was around because we didn't have Nifskope and/or it was still too Beta (grey background versions have issues there as they do particle emitters). Like way back in the day we had a hex program we used to make early "skopes". You had to fly blind with that, it was a real hoot to work with.

[eluvium]

I remember back in the day, that stuff was hard to use, maybe you could try the flight fx thing I've been on about I keepot trying but I don't think I'm doing it right

[SickAlice]

I don't know the specifics of the issue you are having but I use flight fx a lot and it just is about the time scales in the keyframes/naming conventions. I host Windblown's tutorial on this page here about all that, that's how I learned the right way to do it myself:

http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/pages/workbench.html