Post Scriptum before you read: It turned into a journal. If you can send me the required components of .nif compability for Blender I'd really appreciate it, all the text below is me struggling with not finding an actual install-able package of them anywhere.[Note: the image below might help you understand, but it's very incomprehensible even with that]I have my hands on some .3ds models and Blender, and I'd like to export said models as .nif so I can try my hand at rigging some armors for New Vegas.
Problem is, googling for "Blender nif tools" and after following all the roads that redirect to the same download for "Niftools", it landed me with one .zip file which includes a bunch of folders with absolutely 0 information as for where you're supposed to install them, and a .bat file called "install" which is, comically enough, incapable of detecting Blender installed in it's default directory on the C drive.
Watching a old Youtube tutorial from several years ago implied that you need something called "Python" or "PYFFI" to make this work. Once again, the download page conveniently told what the files supposedly do, but there was not a single line of text depicting even the general direction where you're supposed to install it. It didn't even say whether it's a standalone program or an extension for Blender. Nothing on the download page, no text files in the .zip, absolutely nothing at all. Just a mess of folders.
Got them from here:
https://github.com/niftools/blender_nif_plugin/releases
https://github.com/niftools/pyffi
To help you understand better, I've engineered this cringy meme-tier image that might hopefully give you some insight on what I'm seeing on my screen:
- Spoiler:
Perhaps I just need a older version of Blender?
Note: Found several different versions and .exe installers for "PYFFI" on sourceforge.net, and all of them refuse to install Python, which I thought it stands for, Python Format File Interface or something. Makes no sense. Naturally no readme. Whatever the joke here is, it's disgustingly unfunny. Installed what I think was latest one and it implied it had been installed, even though it only allowed me to install "Documentation".
Am I just installing malware? So far none of these files have expressed a single functional... well, function. None of their download pages have expressed where they would belong in order to function.
Did the maker of these just intentionally scatter around parts of something supposedly functional on the internet as some kind of challenge where only the worthy ones get to have .nif compability in Blender? I'm going to sleep, hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I'll have energy to do more than rage at my screen and plead for help / complain sarcastically online. Probably not.
Sorry if my attitude is bad. Illogical lack of information is one of the only things that makes me angry.