NifSkope (by NifTools Devs)

[z929669 9]

Just providing a pointer to the NifTools site. I have been playing around with NifSkope in order to "fix" some of the "issues" I am assuming exist in the Soul Gems Differ meshes. I noticed that they have some decent documentation, but it is a bit outdated.

We generally need to collect relevant info on modding tools and resources, so I thought we could create the threads with pointers under this forum category and begin to share knowledge about these tools and resources .. this might also help to formulate bridges among the disparate modding-related communities out there.

Standard release and documentation --> NifTools - NifSkope | PyFFI | NifLib

New Alpha release (recommended)

 

NifTools IRC

 

AFK Dev Thread

[DoubleYou 15]

The only limitation I can see MO having on it would be the same as with other utilities: BSAs that do not have a corresponding plugin enabled won't be read. But that's assuming that Nifscope reads the plugins list to load plugin-loaded BSAs (totally don't know). I do know that TES5Edit (see DynDoLOD) will not see BSAs through MO that are not plugin-loaded.

[GrantSP 87]

Learning curve on this one is high, but worth it.

Now for the 'dummy' moment, I made the incorrect assumption that the textures shown in the meshes displayed in NifSkope were somehow stored alongside the the *.nif, and not in the textures BSA. Duh.

Now as I look again the path displayed in the *.nif does show the correct location of the texture, I was just thrown by it because it is used by a number of different meshes with different uses and the 'restaurant' sign is just a minor one.

[zilav 54]

The only limitation I can see MO having on it would be the same as with other utilities: BSAs that do not have a corresponding plugin enabled won't be read. But that's assuming that Nifscope reads the plugins list to load plugin-loaded BSAs (totally don't know). I do know that TES5Edit (see DynDoLOD) will not see BSAs through MO that are not plugin-loaded.

BSA archives are registered manually in NifScope options.

[alt3rn1ty 33]

Old NifSkope will only load textures ( defined by the meshes path for its textures ) which are installed as loose files

So you need to extract the texture from the games textures bsa, and install them loose in Data \ with the same file path as it had in the bsa

It will not load them from bsa.

 

New NifSkope as pointed out by Zilav above, has acquired the ability to look in bsa for the required textures.

Aswell as GitHub see also this topic https://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4136-nifskope-20-dev/

 

Something made quite recently with this new version is MadCats Soul gems https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65531/?

 

 

Edit : What happened to previous posts ?, this post does not make sense anymore because it was a continuation of the conversation.

Edited June 18, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[TechAngel85 18]

Posts limit per page is 15, I think, so the next post will always be placed on a new page.

[alt3rn1ty 33]

Posts limit per page is 15, I think, so the next post will always be placed on a new page.

I think you have assessed that right, I was looking at page 1 and replied it with the box at the bottom, so then all the page 2 posts I had not seen before came up in front of my post  :facepalm:

[z929669 9]

Old NifSkope will only load textures ( defined by the meshes path for its textures ) which are installed as loose files

So you need to extract the texture from the games textures bsa, and install them loose in Data \ with the same file path as it had in the bsa

It will not load them from bsa.

 

New NifSkope as pointed out by Zilav above, has acquired the ability to look in bsa for the required textures.

Aswell as GitHub see also this topic https://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4136-nifskope-20-dev/

 

Something made quite recently with this new version is MadCats Soul gems https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65531/?

 

 

Edit : What happened to previous posts ?, this post does not make sense anymore because it was a continuation of the conversation.

Actually, that is not my experience (see prev post). I can't get loose to work with 1.1.3, but BSAs do work fine. The Alpha resolves (see other prev post)

 

OP updated with more links

[alt3rn1ty 33]

Actually, that is not my experience (see prev post). I can't get loose to work with 1.1.3, but BSAs do work fine. The Alpha resolves (see other prev post)

 

OP updated with more links

Maybe thats because MO was providing the called for textures already extracted ?

Old NifSkope on its own cannot extract resources from BSAs, they need to be pre-extracted and installed in the expected path as defined in the nif

New Nifskope on its own .. Can

I am not talking about via MO, nor was Zilav in this post

 

You can probably appreciate during the course of making Vanilla Reduced Textures, and not being a MO user, I have had many an occasion where installing an original extracted texture to see how the original looks from every angle on its mesh has been a necessary evil to compare with my latest efforts on the mod textures. Where not having the originals installed for in game with VRT installed was the norm for a few years testing the actual mods textures in game.

Edited June 23, 2015 by alt3rn1ty

[z929669 9]

No, I ran outside of MO as well. You can allocate resource archives via File > Resource Files, and the textures are loaded from the archives.

EDIT: the resource files only allow BSA archives, so that seals the deal for me :P (below is the window that opens up when you select File > Resource Files under NifSkope 1.1.3)

 

... then again, I may be bat**** crazy ... perhaps you can verify my insanity?

[zilav 54]

Ability to read BSA archives was added before version 2, somewhere last summer afaik.

[alt3rn1ty 33]

That will be the reason, I am probably not running the most recent old version of NifSkope, but one which is still compatible with some special scripts I found a few years ago ( may have been updated since but I havent bothered to check, the setup did what I needed )

[Gutmaw 10]

So just loaded up NifSkope 2.0. and set it to load through MO.  Setup per initial post above in Option/Settings to path Skyrim/data file, and all my BSAs archives.  Textures (not sure from which BSA) seem to be loading to my meshes fine.

 

Couple questions...

1)  is there a way to tell which texture is loading to Nifskope from which BSA?  I see above that the texture being loaded should be in accordance with MO Managed resource prioritization, but is there a way to verify that (any hidden ways I can view texture path, etc?)

2)  I was under the assumption that since Nifskope can now read BSAs that I could, from within Nifskope, open a .nif from a loaded BSA.  Doesn't seem like I can do that still.  Should I be able to open a BSA archived .nif from within Nifskope?

 

Thanks!!

 

Edited September 5, 2015 by Gutmaw

[GrantSP 87]

Is there a way to compare two or more *.kf, *.nif files with this to see what differences there might be?

 

Obviously I can open two instances and do a manual check, but if there is a more efficient way.