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.

[LJ]

Congratulations to you and your team!  Thankyou! :mrgreen:

[JimmyB76]

*thread stickied*

[Nighthawk]

excelent news shon!
before I make any mistakes with my meshes (lol), does this support skeletons for BC?

[Shon]

Thanks, everyone! =D

before I make any mistakes with my meshes (lol), does this support skeletons for BC?

You should be able to load and change your NIF as usual, but if you move the skeleton in NifSkope, the 3D view will not update the shape of the mesh because we haven't learned the exact workings of the old-style NiSkinController yet =/  I don't think this will affect the file because all the data will be retained... it will just make it a little bit more difficult to preview the file.  For example, any animation in the file that moves the skeleton won't move the mesh so you won't really know what it will look like until you put it into the game.

[Starforce2]

What is this program and can we host it on bcfiles?

[cordanilus]

Excellent.  I'm going to have to try it out.
The import and export fixes caught my eye, that's for sure.

Too bad there isn't a list of what the BC nif can support and what it can't.  I've tried many things and am finding out a number of things it can support but I'm still figuring out how to set up other things as well.  I have no idea if they're set up properly as I can't find any tutorials or other reading material on what I'm looking for exactly.

Anyway, before I start to blab away here...Excellent.  I'm going to download right now and give it a try.

[tennessee_boss2k7]

how do i use this to import sfc3 ships to bridge commander

[Rob Archer]

how do i use this to import sfc3 ships to bridge commander

you dont for that you use a program called Milkshape 3D and the Star Trek plugins for it

[Jernej]

Nice tool, i found it very useful, but you got the NiRawImageData NIF image pixel data wrong.. it's BGRA, not RGBA.. i posted that as a bug on sourceforge too.
 
edit: NVM, i screwed it up, it's RGBA.
 

[Worf359Alpha]

Neat program, i used it to rescale several of my ships, notable the Norway class that was much larger then it should have been, great work! 8)

[Captain_Licard]

The program is great for getting ships OUT of bc for my own, personal, purposes. But when I tried to import a ship from a .3ds model and convert it to .inf, my game crashed and Model Property Editor wouldn't open it.

[Vladko1]

The program is great for getting ships OUT of bc for my own, personal, purposes. But when I tried to import a ship from a .3ds model and convert it to .inf, my game crashed and Model Property Editor wouldn't open it.

lol, I though I was the only one having this problem :eek

[Saquist]

Does this work with 3DSM 10?
I'm having problems turning my .3ds file into an .obj or nif...

I have no idea what to do.

[captainkirk1]

I opened a NIF file and now only the model is all Grey. Anyway to get back the color?

[tiqhud]

I opened a NIF file and now only the model is all Grey. Anyway to get back the color?

easiest thing , is make sure the textures are in the Same folder as the nif.

[captainkirk1]

easiest thing , is make sure the textures are in the Same folder as the nif.

Please explain step by step if possible. I am a complete novice to Nifskope.

[tiqhud]

Whatever folder your nif is located in, place your textures [tgas]

Example: I have a ship Nif, in Shielp folder , but my model textures [tgas] are in Shielp - High folder
so I just highlight all the tgas in shielp - high folder, and move them to Shielp folder.

[cordanilus]

I'm curious to know what nifskope 2.0 will have, and it's capabilities.  I did request a feature on their forum and I plan on writing up a manifest as to what the BC .nif can use.  I even surprised 'throttlekitty' that BC uses Voxel Data.  Well, time to get into a cataloging mode.  :-P  I already love the features in nifskope 1.1.0...able to get rid of duplicate verticies and prune faces.  Good stuff.

[BCAriakas]

Even if you have the textures in the same folder as the model it may not load them. In this case you will need to point NifSkope in the right direction to find them. This is the process for that:

1) Load your model in NifSkope
2) Open the Render tab and click on Settings at the bottom
3) Click on the Rendering tab
4) Then under Texture Folders/Custom click on Add Folder
5) Then go down to where it says Folder, click on that and Choose a Folder

I hope this was helpful. Good luck, -BCAraikas