Blender Morrowind Plugin

Nov 21, 2021

Getting Started

1 Downloading 31.1 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.2 Latest Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.3 Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Installing 52.1 Standard Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52.2 Manual Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Configuring 73.1 Addon Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4 Importing 114.1 Import NIF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124.2 Import Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 Exporting 155.1 Export NIF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165.2 Export Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

6 Texturing 196.1 Material Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196.2 Material Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206.3 Texture Slots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216.4 Texture Slot Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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Blender Morrowind Plugin

Welcome to the documentation for the Morrowind Blender Plugin! This is an open source project with the goal ofbringing Morrowind support to modern versions of Blender. The plugin is currently in beta status, and documentationwill be an on-going effort.

Important: If this is your first time here, be sure to read through the Getting Started section.

Getting Started 1

Blender Morrowind Plugin

2 Getting Started

CHAPTER 1

Downloading

1.1 Requirements

• Blender 2.93.0 (64-bit) or newer. Available on the official Blender download page. Note that this plugin is notcompatible with 32-bit builds of Blender!

• Windows Users will need the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Redistributable (x64) package. You may alreadyhave this on your system, but running the executable is safe and highly recommended.

1.2 Latest Version

• You can download the latest version from the plugin releases page.

1.3 Recommendations

• Unpacked BSA files will be necessary if you intend to view or edit the original Morrowind art assets. Texturesinside BSAs are not accessible to Blender and will not be rendered in the viewport. There are several tools, suchas the Bethesda Archive Extractor, that can be used to unpack your BSAs.

• NifSkope 1.1.3 is a dedicated tool for viewing and low level editing of NIF assets. While not suitable forgeneral modeling, NifSkope will prove invaluable for verifying and tweaking the results of your Blender exports.Download from the NifSkope releases page.

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4 Chapter 1. Downloading

CHAPTER 2

Installing

2.1 Standard Install

The standard way to install is via Blender’s Edit->Preferences->Add-ons interface. Pressing the Installbutton there will bring up a file-select window where you can select the io_scene_mw.zip archive that you ac-quired in the Downloading section.

Note: For more information, see the Add-ons page of the Blender manual.

2.2 Manual Install

If the standard install method is not working on your system, you can also install the plugin manually. Simply extractthe io_scene_mw.zip archive into your Blender’s /scripts/addons/ directory. The location of this directoryvaries between platforms, so check Directory Layout page of the Blender manual for more information. A correctdirectory layout after extraction should have /scripts/addons/io_scene_mw/__init__.py (and variousother files from the plugin archive).

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6 Chapter 2. Installing

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CHAPTER 3

Configuring

3.1 Addon Preferences

8 Chapter 3. Configuring

Blender Morrowind Plugin

• Check for updates Allows you to quickly and conveniently update the plugin to the latest version. This buttonrequires a working internet connection, and will simply check the plugin repository for a newer versionthan is currently installed. If an update is available you will then be able to upgrade and view the changelogwith an additional button press. Be sure to restart Blender after updating any addon!

• Scale Correction Adjusts how assets will be scaled upon import and export. Imported assets will be scaleddown by the given value and exported assets will be scaled up by the same amount. This is useful as thevery large native scale of Morrowind assets can cause issues such as viewport clipping. In most cases thereis no need to change this value from the default 0.01.

• Texture Paths Provides a way to specify where the importer should look for texture files. This is necessary asBlender requires absolute paths for texture access despite Morrowind assets only providing relative paths.Multiple texture paths can be specified and the importer will always start with the top of the list and movedownward until it resolves a valid texture.

3.1. Addon Preferences 9

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10 Chapter 3. Configuring

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CHAPTER 4

Importing

4.1 Import NIF

12 Chapter 4. Importing

Blender Morrowind Plugin

Importing is done through the Blender interface: File -> Import -> Morrowind (.nif).

Note: Textures will not be imported unless you have first specified the location of your textures directory in the addonpreferences menu. See the Configuring page.

4.2 Import Options

• Vertex Precision Rounding precision used when optimizing vertex data. This feature is similar to Blender’s na-tive Merge by Distance, but differs in that it respects additional vertex data such as normals, uv coordinates,and vertex colors. In most cases there is no need to change this value from the default 0.001.

• Attach Keyframe Data Attach animations from the corresponding .kf file. Requires file names to be an exactmatch. (e.g. when enabled importing ‘xbase_anim.nif’ will attach animations from ‘xbase_anim.kf’)

• Discard Root Transforms Discard the root object’s transformations. In-game root transforms are overwritenwith the values provided by individual cell references. Despite this some meshes do define root transfor-mations, which can lead to unintended results if accidentally applied before exporting.

• Preserve Material Names Preserve material names from the source file. If unchecked materials will be re-named based on their assigned textures.

4.2. Import Options 13

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14 Chapter 4. Importing

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CHAPTER 5

Exporting

5.1 Export NIF

16 Chapter 5. Exporting

Blender Morrowind Plugin

• Exporting is done through the Blender interface: File -> Export -> Morrowind (.nif).

5.2 Export Options

• Vertex Precision Rounding precision used when optimizing vertex data. This feature is similar to Blender’s na-tive Merge by Distance, but differs in that it respects additional vertex data such as normals, uv coordinates,and vertex colors. In most cases there is no need to change this value from the default 0.001.

• Only Collection Only export objects from the active collection.

• Only Selected Only export objects that are selected.

• Export Animations Uncheck to skip all animation data during export.

• Extract Keyframe Data Extract animations and visuals to corrosponding ‘x.kf’ and ‘x.nif’ files. (e.g. export-ing ‘base_anim.nif’ will create additional ‘xbase_anim.nif’ and ‘xbase_anim.kf’ files)

• Preserve Material Names Preserve material names from the source file. If unchecked materials will be re-named based on the assigned textures.

5.2. Export Options 17

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18 Chapter 5. Exporting

CHAPTER 6

Texturing

6.1 Material Creation

The recommended way to apply materials and textures to your Morrowind assets is to use the Morrowind Shaderinterface provided by the plugin. You can find it in under the Material Properties/Morrowind panel in the PropertiesEditor.

Important: In order to view materials made by this interface you must set your Viewport Shading method to MaterialPreview.

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6.2 Material Settings

• Vertex Colors Toggles whether the vertex colors assigned in Vertex Paint Mode will influence the material.

• Diffuse Color Defines the diffuse color to be applied to the material. This color is multiplied with any texturecolors. A pure white color would leave the texture unchanged.

• Emissive Color Defines the emissive color to be applied to the material. Brighter colors will cause the materialto appear self-illuminating. A pure black color would leave the texture unchanged.

• Alpha Blend Enables alpha blending on the material which can be further adjusted using the Opacity slider.

• Alpha Clip Enables alpha clipping on the material which can be further adjusted using the Threshold slider.

Tip: Material colors and opacity can be animated via the insert keyframe hotkey (default: i) while hovering over the

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interface elements.

6.3 Texture Slots

• Base Texture Base textures are the most common type of texture slot. They define the base color layer thatmay or may not be further modified by other texture slots.

• Dark Texture Dark textures are multipled with the base texture and thus will darken colors. A pure whitetexture would leave the colors unchanged.

• Detail Texture Detail textures are multiplied with the base texture and then multiplied again by two. Thisallows the detail texture to either darken or brighten colors. A pure gray texture would leave the colorsunchanged.

• Glow Texture Glow textures are used to apply an emissive effect. Brighter areas of the texture will appear tobe self-illuminating. A pure black texture would have no effect.

• Decal Texture Decal textures are used to overlay additional textures. The alpha channel of the texture definesthe blending between the decal texture and the texture underneath.

Important: The Morrowind engine requires textures to be dds, tga, or bmp format with dimensions that are apower of two (e.g. 256x256).

6.3. Texture Slots 21

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6.4 Texture Slot Options

• Use Mipmaps Determines whether mipmaps will be enabled for the image.

• Repeat Image Determines whether the image will be repeated beyond the UV Map bounds.

• UV Map The associated UV Map for this texture slot.

• Location / Scale Animation transforms applied to the associated UV Map. Z-axis values are ignored.

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