Blender NIF Scripts v2.5.0: Release Notes

If you find bugs, please report them on the sourceforge tracker, along with a .blend or .nif that caused the error and a brief description of how to reproduce the error. Although bugs are exterminated as much as possible, it is unlikely that they have all been found.

Highlights of this Release

This release adds two big new features:

fully functional morph import and export for Oblivion and Fallout 3, via Blender's relative shape keys, and
experimental egm import and export, along with a morph copy script, which means that you can now produce fully egm conformulated nifs straight from Blender (tri import and export will be implemented in a future release), and you can check, preview, and manually tweak the resulting conformulation in Blender.

Numerous bugs have been fixed as well: check the changelog for details.

Using the Scripts

The quick-start guide describes how to prepare your textures and how you can use the scripts. The guide also lists the limitations of the scripts, known issues, and workarounds for some issues.

Support

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender
http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=149157 for reporting bugs

Installation

Requirements

Note: on Windows, use 32-bit versions of Blender and Python. (The 64-bit version of Python lacks xml parsing which is essential for the scripts to work.)

Blender 2.49a or higher.
Python 2.6 or higher (but not Python 3.0 or higher).
PyFFI 2.0.4 or higher.

Using .exe Installers

This version of the scripts should keep working with newer versions of Blender 2.4x and Python 2.6.x (but not Python 3.x.x). At the moment of writing this readme, the following were used during development of the scripts:

Be sure first to log in as administrator!
Download and install Blender 2.49b (32 bit), use default settings, except select "Use Blender's installation directory" when asked where to install Blender's user data.
Download and install Python 2.6.4 (32 bit), use default settings.
Download and install PyFFI 2.0.4, use default settings.
Download and install the Blender NIF Scripts 2.5.0, use default settings.

Using .zip Packages

First, make sure you have Python and PyFFI installed! Also, if you installed Blender using the .exe installer, you're best off using the Blender NIF Scripts .exe installer. If you installed Blender from a .zip, then you should download the .zip, extract its contents, and do one of the following:

For use with Windows, the .zip includes an install.bat file which copies the relevant files to the Blender installation folder. If you have installed Blender via the .exe installer, then it suffices to simply double click install.bat. If you have installed Blender via the .zip, then you should run install.bat from the console. Click Start->Run... and type cmd.exe. A console window pops up. In the console, cd to the location where you extracted the files. Now call install.bat but pass the Blender directory (the directory where your blender.exe resides) as a first argument, between quotes, for instance
install.bat "C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\blender-svn"
For use with linux, the .zip includes an install.sh script which copies the relevant files to your ~/.blender folder.
If for some reason the install script does not work, simply copy the extracted scripts directory to Blender's scripts directory, for instance to
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\blender-svn\.blender\scripts

Restart Blender, and the options to import and export NIF files will appear in the File-Import and File-Export menu's.

License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the NIF File Format Library and Tools project nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.