Joining in Blender

I’m using Blender 2.49b, Python 2.6.6 and PyFFI 2.1.11

I’m working with Sid Meier’s Railroads which uses NIFs and KFMs

I originally wrote this for posting on a forum for the game and decided to post it here to see what I can find out. I can post the files I worked with if needed.

I took the modified bn autorack car, which I had removed the autorack part, and added three fifth wheels. I left them all named ‘fifth wheel’.

In the first I renamed all the DDSs to match the car. I named the NiMaterialProperty to match it also.

In the second I left the DDSs as they were. I named the NiMaterialProperty ‘truck’.

In the third I renamed all the DDSs and named the NiMaterialProperty ‘car’.

This gives three different possibilities when I join them to the main structure. The NiTriShapes are all named ‘Fifth_Wheel’.

In Blender the NiTriShapes are renamed to ‘Fifth_Wheel’, ‘Fifth_Wheel.00’ and ‘Fifth Wheel.01’. When I click on each one I get ‘Wheel.01’, ‘truck’ and ‘Wheel.01’ respectively above the ‘1 Mat 1’ block on the lower screen.

I switch to ‘Wireframe’ which is easier for me to work in. I highlite ‘foodcar2’, which is the deck. I’ll join the fifth wheels to this. I hold Shift down and click on the ‘Fifth Wheel.01’ and press CTRL+J and OK it to Join selected meshes. I do the same with the other two. The lines for everything is the same color of pink. I go thru exporting the model.

I get a complaint of unweighted vertices and the center fifth wheel is highlited, the one that did not have the DDSs changed. I’m going to check and see if this is because the DDSs are not loaded into the folder I’m working from.

When I go into Weight Paint all three fifth wheels are blue. I paint them and try the export again and it works fine.

I get a Fifth_Wheel block with three sub-blocks of Tri Fifth_wheel 0,1 and 2, 0 having the different names for the DDSs.

In the original I rename all three blocks so they match and load it into Blender, going thru the joining again.

I now get Food car2 with a Tri food car2 0 and 1.

No matter what I do for some reason I continue to get Tri blocks. Anyone with an answer as to what I’m doing wrong?

Hi snoopy,

thats funny and challenging because thats realy old school blender and game. Maybe upload your file and see what happens. Btw. what are NIFs, KFMs and DDs. Think that will be fun to figure out.

Hi Snoopy55, I think your best chance is a NifSkope forum. Unfortunately, there are no Nif Scripts for the new Blender (version 2.50 and later). If you haven’t already, check: https://forum.niftools.org/24-nifskope/
The new Blender (2.79 right now) is so dramatically better than 2.49b, about the only people that use the old one are those, like you, that need to export .Nif files. Good luck!