Turija Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Does anyone know what the Mesh Tool N7 -- NIF Healer does and whether it is helpful to use? It looks simple enough to use, and it is being recommended on sites like reddit/skyrimmods to fix corrupted .nif files and prevent CTD. According to the NIF Healer Nexus forum, there are corrupted meshes in the vanilla DLCs, as well as Apocalypse Magic, Immersive College of Winterhold (both of which I use) and Immersive Armors, which can be fixed with this NIF healer. Was wondering if anyone here had any experience with this tool or the issue it is designed to fix and could advise whether to bother with this or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hana Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 If there's corrupted meshes in the DLC's we would have fixed them in USLEEP, or let us know and we will fix them. As for the usefulness of the tool ... I've heard pros and cons. Sometimes it corrupts worse. If you have a little knowledge of nifs, one can manually fix meshes themselves. Or better yet, get mod authors to fix their meshes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthmoor Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Also as I mentioned in that Reddit thread, a much safer alternative: NifScan. All it does is report, no changes made. So it's best used by the mod authors. Messing with this kind of stuff is NOT something end users should ever do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilav Posted July 19, 2016 Share Posted July 19, 2016 Skyrim Nif files have a list of used strings in the header, and names of the blocks are stored as indices into this array. NifHealer searches for indices that are out of bounds and tries to rename such blocks by adding new name(s) in the header and updating faulty indices to point to those name(s). I never tried it myself, but judging from comments it sometimes does it wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turija Posted July 20, 2016 Author Share Posted July 20, 2016 Thanks everyone for the replies and the link to Zilav's tool. Sounds like the consensus is that the Nif Healer may be a little unreliable. If there's corrupted meshes in the DLC's we would have fixed them in USLEEP, or let us know and we will fix them. That's good news. I had been wondering if any bad meshes in the DLC would have been fixed by SMIM, but I hadn't thought of USLEEP. I can sleep easier now with less worry about corrupted meshes. As for the usefulness of the tool ... I've heard pros and cons. Sometimes it corrupts worse. If you have a little knowledge of nifs, one can manually fix meshes themselves. Or better yet, get mod authors to fix their meshes. Editing and creating mesh and texture files is something I'd like to learn anyway. I read through your Dissecting Skyrim Meshes yesterday. This is going to take some time, since reading that was like trying to read something written in a foreign language. I could understand a few of the words but most of it is gibberish to me. That's how it was when I first started using Wrye Bash to install mods a few years ago so it will just take time. Read enough and some of it will start to soak in. I've started reading the Nifscope 101. Lots of information there. Great thing about the internet is you can learn almost anything with a little time and effort. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hana Posted July 20, 2016 Share Posted July 20, 2016 If you need any help, or more information, you know where to find me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted July 20, 2016 Share Posted July 20, 2016 The next release of NifSkope will do this automatically when saving any NIF, as long as you have auto-sanitize turned on. Auto-sanitize no longer includes the "Reorder Blocks" spell which can cause issues with rendering in game and also changes the order of the blocks for textureset stuff in the CK, so I would strongly suggest always keeping auto-sanitize on from that release forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilav Posted July 20, 2016 Share Posted July 20, 2016 The next release of NifSkope will do this automatically when saving any NIF, as long as you have auto-sanitize turned on. Auto-sanitize no longer includes the "Reorder Blocks" spell which can cause issues with rendering in game and also changes the order of the blocks for textureset stuff in the CK, so I would strongly suggest always keeping auto-sanitize on from that release forward. Nice. I remember Ehamloptiran complaining about NifSkope breaking the order of NiOrderered nodes when saving and thus being useless when editing such meshes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted July 20, 2016 Share Posted July 20, 2016 He could just uncheck auto-sanitize (File menu) but yeah. Depending on the block structure it's possible it's Reorder Link Arrays doing it so you'd still have to turn off auto-sanitize. I guess I will look into ordered nodes sometime. BTW, since it's relevant to this thread I'll just stash the question here... Does the CTD from out of bounds Name indices only apply to stuff that inherits NiAVObject? Or does it extend up to anything inheriting NiObjectNET, i.e. NiProperty. Or does it apply to anything at all that uses a String Index type string? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilav Posted July 21, 2016 Share Posted July 21, 2016 He could just uncheck auto-sanitize (File menu) but yeah. Depending on the block structure it's possible it's Reorder Link Arrays doing it so you'd still have to turn off auto-sanitize. I guess I will look into ordered nodes sometime. I don't remember details now, but his real problem was inability to save NiOrderered nodes in specific order from his words. Looks like the order of such nodes as they appear in nif files does matter. BTW, since it's relevant to this thread I'll just stash the question here... Does the CTD from out of bounds Name indices only apply to stuff that inherits NiAVObject? Or does it extend up to anything inheriting NiObjectNET, i.e. NiProperty. Or does it apply to anything at all that uses a String Index type string? I check only the names of ninodes, fadenodes, shapes, strips, etc. So NiAVObject I guess. Experienced crashes myself with them, no sure about the rest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turija Posted August 10, 2016 Author Share Posted August 10, 2016 Messing with this kind of stuff is NOT something end users should ever do. LOL, not your typical end user here. I'm more like the Borg from Star Trek when it comes to modding my own game. Not enough creativity or talent to create something truly original or inspired, but very clever at assimilating pieces of other's technology for personal use. I've torn apart dozens of mods, including some fairly complex ones, kept the pieces I liked, rewritten parts of them and discarded the rest and manually merged it into my own Frankensteinish load order. I'm not really afraid to learn how to edit meshes to remove any errors a mod author may have inadvertently left in their work. If you need any help, or more information, you know where to find me. Hey, thanks. I may take you up on that at some point. I'm not in a rush to learn but will take it slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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