Part IX: Getting the size right

Now matter what the wife or girlfriend tells you. Size does matter.

Making a new spoon for the game that's as big as a house or a new house that can sit on a table isn't any good to anyone. Getting the size just right for the game is a simple task.

Now. Problems, problems.

Exporting an object file in Nifskope turns the original model on its axis. This can be bloody annoying and nothing more but for the sake of continuity I like to export using Blender.

Of course you can tweak your models size in Blender if you really want to but like everything else Blender makes it over complicated and this is a Wings tutorial so we're going to do it in Wings.

First of all let's start with what model we have made? Let's say it's a new style of window for a house. What we need to do is decide how big we actually want this new model and then chose an existing vanilla model from the game that would be around the right size.

I will simply open up the window nif I want in Blender then export it as an object file. With my new model already loaded in to Wings I can now import that object file.

Before you import the object file it might be a good idea to hide your model by clicking on the eye in the Geometry window.

Once imported I always remove the collision mesh from the model so I can see it better.

An easy way to do this is right click on the material named "None" and "Select". This will highlight just the hull mesh and you can safely press the delete key to leave just the model as above.

Now we need to grab the models size. To do this we're going to highlight the entire model and then from the top bar menu Tools, Bounding Box, Save Bounding Box.

This will put a dotted green box around the model showing the restricted area. Now press the delete key as we no longer need the original model.

As we can see from the above diagram (after un-hiding my model) my window is quite a bit bigger than the vanilla one which might make it look odd in game. To rectify this I'm going to highlight (body) the entire model and then from the Bounding Box menu in Tools I'm going to chose "Scale to Bounding Box Proportionally - ALL"

This will drop our model down to the same or at least similar size to the original. To ensure that we stick with continuity we're going to do one more thing whilst we have our model highlighted. Back up to Tools, Bounding Box -> "Move to Saved BB - ALL"

This will now position the model to the same centre as the vanilla model which is VERY important if you are making a replacer for instance.

As you used the proportional scaling your materials and textures will not have changed and our model is now ready for export at the correct size for the game.