BFB and Materials files?

[ShenTirag]

I'm trying to make some scenery objects at the moment, as can be seen in my current projects thread.  I'd quite like to make a topiary out of the rhino statue to complement the bear one I have made, but I am unable to find the .dds files for the statue.  

In the entities/objects/scenery/statue_rhino folder in x100_00.z2f, I can only find statue_rhino.bfb, which when opened in winhex leads to no clue as to where the .dds files are, and also a Materials folder with .bfmat files.  I wouldn't know where to start editing these!

I've checked in the entities/objects/shared folder, and the texture files aren't there either.  Am I looking in the wrong place?

This seems to be the case for a lot of scenery objects (that they have .bfb and .bfmat files, not .nif and .dds files).  If this is so, is it impossible to edit these objects?

Thanks for your help!

[penguinman]

Hi there!

Nope, not at all impossible. Bfb and materials are a new thing that was added in ES to help improve graphics without slowing down machines. So first off, if you are looking in ES files and finding the bfb and materials, check the original game files and there you should find the .nif and the icon.dds file. (a few objects and all mm stuff don't have nif files at all, but very few. If this happens, don't panic, you just have to code it like you would if there was a .nif file).

Now, I think I sent instructions on editing them.. let me see if I can find it. Yup! here it is :

So the .bfb file should be renamed to the same as the .nif file. It corresponds to a .nif file and is rarely seen without one. You open them the same way you open the .nif file. Now inside of it, there will be text that matches each of the materials files that it needs. They may appear more than once so I recomended finding a text in each of them and just replacing that, as always, don't change the number of letters.

Now rename the materials files to match and then open them in notepad. Inside most there will be a section which will have a dds name. Just change that to yours and you are done!


So, you'll want to edit the .nif as well. Now if you're having trouble finding skins, I can give you some pointers, but it can be tricky. If you are making an object that was in original zt, most likely it will be in entities/objects/shared, but sometimes it will be in simple shared.z2f or it will be in like entities/objects/scenery/shared. If you are making one from an xp, they are almost always in the xp files and just in shared. Does this make sense? If you know of a specific skin you need I can look for it too

Best of luck and just ask if you need anything else. (and sorry for such a long post lol)

[ShenTirag]

Ah thanks that was so helpful, now I have found the nif/.dds files for the rhino statue!    Rooting around in the entities.z2f file has also helped me locate the .dds and nif files for the viewing canopies - the texture files just aren't helpfully named! :whistling

Thanks so much penguinman!:wub: