Skyrim ==> Morrowind hair conversion tutorial!

[pasque]

Alrighty, here goes. You'll need:

Blender - I'm using this version because it has all the things needed for working with nif files already bundled in!

Nifskope

A graphics program that can edit .dds files. I use photoshop with the relevant plugins, but I hear gimp can work with them too?

The mesh/nif files for your character's head, and an existing hairdo to steal the ears from

POSSIBLY Outfit Studio, depending on how well things go. See step 2 and 3. :P

1) First of all, grab the Skyrim hair you want to convert. You need the mesh and the associated texture. You can ignore the texture with _n at the end of it, we don't need that.

2) Open it in nifskope. It should show up fine (though probably untextured). If you just get error messages and a blank render window, you either need a more recent version of nifskope or you can open it in outfit studio instead.

3) You need to export your .nif as a .obj file. To do this in nifskope, select the mesh by clicking it in the render window, then file > export > export .OBJ. For reasons I have yet to comprehend, sometimes the export messes up and you end up with a blank obj file. When that happens, I export through Outfit Studio instead - it's basically the same, you click file > export > to OBJ.... That usually gets it right!

4) You now need to import your .obj file into Blender. Blender is the worst at being newbie friendly, so I'm going to try to be as thorough as possible here. Start Blender. You should see something like this:



If there's anything showing in the big grid in the middle, press a to select everything and then press delete. It'll ask for confirmation, so just okay the deletion.

5) Click File > Import > Wavefront (.obj). Direct it to the obj you just exported in step 3, then click Import a Wavefront OBJ. A window will pop up - just leave the options as they are and click Import.

6) Your mesh should show up, grey and untextured and probably upside down or something. Don't worry about that for now! Right click it and the outline around it will turn a very pale pink to show that it's selected.

7) Look at the menus at the bottom of the screen:



Click the square icon (labelled 1) and it should display the same buttons and drop-down bars that I have there (though some things may be named differently). Click the delete button (labelled 2) until the text above it reads 0 mat 0. If the Double Sided button (labelled 3) is dark like in my image, click it so that it's unselected. Click Set Smooth (labelled 4).

8)

Click the circle button (1), then the other circle button if it isn't already selected (2). Click "Add New" (3) and the menu will sprout a whole new set of options!

9) It's okay, the only one we need is this button:


10) After clicking it, it will change the menu to the one on the left here:

Click the "Map Input" tab, and it will look like the right image. It will have "Orco" highlighted by default - click "UV" instead as shown.

11)
Click the... spotted square... thing (labelled 1). Then click the drop-down menu that currently says "none" (2), and select "image." More options will pop up. Are you sick of these yet? :P

12) Click the "load" button that just appeared to the right. This is where you'd input your texture path usually, but we haven't made ours yet. So... just direct it to any file. Anything. Doesn't even have to be a texture. You're going to change this in nifskope later.

13) Almost done with Blender, thank goodness! Back to the top menu, and click File > Export > NetImmerse/Gamebryo (.nif & .kf & .egm).

14)
As above, navigate to a folder you want to save your new file in in the top bar. The one underneath is where you type the name you want to save the file as. Click "Export NIF/KF" on the right when you're done, and...

15) ...more options. /cries

Click "Morrowind" first, then uncheck "smoothen inter-object seams". It should look like the above. Then, finally, click OK!

16) Get a cup of tea or something because the blender section is done.

17) Texture time! This bit is going to be tricky to talk about, because different graphics programs and their dds plugins behave differently. Ugh. Basically, you need to open the original texture in photoshop (or your equivalent), recolour it as desired, then save it. My plugin asks me for a file format to export in - I choose DTX5. DTX1 will remove the alpha channel, and you don't want that! Whatever you're using, you can probably find assistance with it elsewhere online, because a LOT of games use .dds format nowadays for textures.

18) Save your texture, and put it in your morrowind texture folder somewhere you won't forget. I usually save my personal stuff in data files/textures/MYNAME.

19) Ok - go to the folder you saved your nif in and open it in nifskope. You should see your hair, untextured. Time to fix that! You probably already know how, but...

20)
Expand the filetrees in the left until you can see the nisourcetexture part. Click the purple flower and direct it to your new texture. You may not have the "nialphaproperty" part there - if not, right click the hair in the render window and select node > attach property > nialphaproperty. Your hair should now be textured properly! Save it.

21) Keep the hair open, but also open the file for your character's head. Right-click the head, and choose block > copy branch. Swap to your hair, right click the "NiNode" entry in the filetree, and select block > paste branch. Your head will appear with the hair!

22) ...Your hair will probably be in completely the wrong place, though. We can fix that right in nifskope! Right click the hair in the render window again, then click transform > edit.

23) The window that pops up allows you to move, rotate and resize the mesh. Go ahead and do that! Skyrim hair meshes usually need to be made a little smaller to fit morrowind heads - a value of 0.98 or similar in the "scale" field often works best. Start with that, maybe, before playing with rotation and placement. Once you're satisfied, click "accept."

24) Right-click the hair once more, and click transform > apply. Right-click the head, and select block > remove branch.

25) Now you just need to add the ears! As with the head, open the file of a hair with the ears you want, and copy/paste the branch into your hair. I also recommend right clicking the ears and selecting transform > apply after you paste them, just to avoid any weirdness later.

26) You're finally done! Save and test out your hair in game and - hopefully - it should work fine! :D