NifSkope is a tool for opening and editing the NetImmerse file format (NIF). NIF is used by video games such as Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/NV/4/76, Starfield, Civilization IV, and more.
This is an experimental fork of 2.0.dev9 with many fixes and improvements, including:
- Rendering support for Starfield materials.
- Updates for file format changes in the current versions of Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield.
- glTF export and import for Skyrim SE, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield. Import is limited to geometry only (no textures), and does not support Skyrim skin partitions.
- Resource (texture and material) files can be extracted, either the textures and materials used by the model, or files selected in an archive browser.
- Material and texture choosers, with texture preview.
- Support for saving screenshots with transparency in DDS or PNG format.
- Improved archive browser, all mesh archives in a game folder can be opened and browsed at once.
- Triangle selection with Shift-clicking.
- Improvements to the UV editor and lighting widget.
- Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and (with limitations) Starfield material editing.
- Shading has been implemented again for Oblivion and Fallout 3/New Vegas (it was removed in 2.0.dev7), and improved for many of the games.
- Fallout 76 and Starfield rendering can use cube maps or Radiance HDR files for image based lighting, and as background (skybox).
- Several mesh spells and OBJ import now support BSTriShape geometry, and new spells (including a mesh simplifier) have been added.
- Batch processing of multiple NIF files, with a limited selection of spells (update bounds, remove unused/duplicate vertices, etc.).
- The source code has been updated to use Qt 6 and core profile OpenGL 4, but it can still be compiled with Qt 5.15.
- DPI scaling on high resolution displays.
See CHANGELOG.md for details.
Binary packages for Windows and Linux can be downloaded from Releases. The most up to date builds are automatically generated on any change to the source code, and are available as artifacts from GitHub workflows under Actions. Note that downloading artifacts requires signing in to GitHub. Binaries have been built for CPUs with support for AVX2, or AVX and F16C (NifSkope_noavx2.exe).
You can also download the latest official release from niftools/nifskope, or development builds from hexabits/nifskope.
Notes:
Running NifSkope under Wayland on Linux may require setting the QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variable to "xcb":
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb ./NifSkope
The resource manager in this version of NifSkope is optimized for PCs with solid-state drives. While hard disk drives generally also work, if the number of loose resources is large, load times can be significantly shorter on an SSD when the data is not cached yet by the operating system.
NifSkope can be run without a GUI by passing the -no-gui flag. In this mode the application performs batch operations and exits, without opening any window.
NifSkope -no-gui --ConvertToInternalGeometry <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --ConvertToExternalGeometry <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --ConvertToExternalGeometry <path> -o <folder>
NifSkope -no-gui --RemoveUnusedStrings <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --RemoveDuplicateVertices <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --RemoveUnusedVertices <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --GenerateMeshLODs <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --OptimizeIndices <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --AddTangentSpacesAndUpdate <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --UpdateBounds <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --CombineProperties <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --RemoveBogusNodes <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --ReorderBlocks <path>
NifSkope -no-gui --SanitizeBeforeSave <path>
Running with -no-gui and no further option prints a usage summary and exits with a non-zero code.
| Option | Argument | Description |
|---|---|---|
--ConvertToInternalGeometry |
<path> |
Convert all external .mesh geometry in Starfield NIF file(s) to internal geometry. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. Non-Starfield files (BSVersion < 170) and files that already use internal geometry are skipped without modification. |
--ConvertToExternalGeometry |
<path> |
Convert internal geometry in Starfield NIF file(s) to external .mesh files. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. Non-Starfield files (BSVersion < 170) and files that already use external geometry are skipped without modification. Uses -o output folder when provided; otherwise falls back to the saved output directory from GUI Convert to External Geometry and reports an error if neither is available. |
-o, --OutputFolder |
<folder> |
Optional output folder used by --ConvertToExternalGeometry for writing exported .mesh files. |
--RemoveUnusedStrings |
<path> |
Remove any unreferenced strings from the NIF header. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--RemoveDuplicateVertices |
<path> |
Remove duplicate vertices from all geometry blocks (BSTriShape, BSGeometry, NiTriShape, etc.). <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. Warning: for Starfield NIFs this operation may break any associated morph files; no morph file check is performed. |
--RemoveUnusedVertices |
<path> |
Remove unused vertices from all geometry blocks (BSTriShape, BSGeometry, NiTriShape, etc.). <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. Warning: for Starfield NIFs this operation may break any associated morph files; no morph file check is performed. |
--GenerateMeshLODs |
<path> |
Generate Starfield mesh LODs for internal BSGeometry blocks. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. Non-Starfield files (BSVersion < 170) are skipped without modification. |
--OptimizeIndices |
<path> |
Optimize triangle index ordering for vertex cache efficiency across all geometry blocks (BSTriShape, BSGeometry, NiTriShape, etc.). <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--AddTangentSpacesAndUpdate |
<path> |
Add missing tangent space arrays and update tangent/bitangent data where applicable. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--UpdateBounds |
<path> |
Update bounding spheres/boxes for contained geometry where applicable. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--CombineProperties |
<path> |
Combine duplicate shader properties (NiProperty, NiSourceTexture, BSShaderTextureSet) into a single shared block. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--RemoveBogusNodes |
<path> |
Remove useless or incorrect block types for the target NIF version where applicable. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--ReorderBlocks |
<path> |
Reorder blocks so the game can properly load them. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
--SanitizeBeforeSave |
<path> |
Fix minor errors (for example duplicate block names) before save. <path> may be a single .nif file or a folder; folders are searched recursively. Files are overwritten in-place. |
Compiling NifSkope requires Qt 6.4 or newer, or Qt 5.15. On Windows, MSYS2 can be used for building. After running the MSYS2 installer, use the following commands in the MSYS2-UCRT64 shell to install required packages:
pacman -S base-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-qt6-base
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-qt6-imageformats mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-qt6-tools
pacman -S git
Using the MSYS2-CLANG64 environment instead of UCRT64 is also supported, in this case, the ucrt in the package names needs to be replaced with clang.
All installed MSYS2 packages can be updated anytime later by running the command 'pacman -Syu'. To download the complete NifSkope source code, use 'git clone' as follows:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/fo76utils/nifskope.git
Finally, run 'qmake6' and then 'make' in MSYS2-UCRT64 to build the source code (the -j 8 option sets the number of processes to run in parallel). The resulting binaries and required DLL files and resources are placed under 'release'.
cd nifskope
qmake6 NifSkope.pro
make -j 8
By default, code is generated for Intel Haswell or compatible CPUs, including the AMD Zen series or newer. Running qmake with the noavx2=1 option reduces the requirement to Intel Ivy Bridge or AMD FX CPUs, and nof16c=1 to Sandy Bridge. To build for even older hardware, use noavx=1 or edit the compiler flags in NifSkope.pro.
Adding the debug=1 option to the qmake command enables compiling a debug build of NifSkope.
Compiling with Qt 5 is needed on Windows versions older than 10. The steps are similar to above, but qt6 is replaced with qt5 in all package names, and qmake-qt5 should be run instead of qmake6.
Anyone can report issues specific to this fork at GitHub.
You can fork the latest source from GitHub. See Fork A Repo on how to send your contributions upstream. To grab all submodules, make sure to use --recursive like so:
git clone --recursive git://github.com/<YOUR_USERNAME>/nifskope.git
For information about development:
- Refer to our GitHub wiki for information on compilation.
Refer to these other documents in your installation folder or at the links provided: