Making mesh skinnier

[seraglio]

I'm pretty decent at upsizing a mesh to make it more muscular, I mostly dont even need nifskope, just good old mesheditor tool from back in the day.
But reversing the process to make a mesh skinnier, especially if you want it a lot skinnier, doesn't work. One of the main problems it wile you can control the limbs and head, the torso doesnt have its own "node" I guess, so its hard to reshape it, so you wind up with skinny arms and legs but same size torso. Are there any techniques for this? I' havent had much luck with blender, hoping it can be done with Nifskope.

Also I have tried just "stretching" a mesh, making it just taller by stretching the z axis alone on the handle/scene root/bip01. That always winds up with bad deformation.

[hoss20]

In Blender, have you tried the Shrink/Fatten Along Normals function? I did this with the soon to be released Anaconda skope I'm doing with Laughing Paradox. I grabbed Gren's She Hulk and used the Fatten function to bulk her up a bit and did a little adjusting to balance her torso with her legs. Of course, what often happens is that the keyframes are set to the mesh's original geometry and you get the deformation you mentioned or the adjusted mesh goes back to its original form.

[Cyber Burn]

If you're interested, I believe that I have the Hexxing formula for making a "Male_Basic" Mesh into a "Male_Teen_14", perhaps you could modify that to get what you want?

[seraglio]

That would be great Cyber burn. I'm sure I'd learn something!

[SickAlice]

I almost always skope in a different body when trying to change mass. It's a bit less tedious. As Hoss mentions Blender/and or any 3d program+Blender can be used for the effect.
In Blender:
- Select the main mesh in Object mode and move to Edit mode. Press B and select the verts you want to resize/reposition and S to scale or move the arrows to move. Moving I find is less likely to make a mess and pulls off the same effect (example for shrinking abs).
- Adjust the mesh .obj to your liking in any 3d program then import it into Blender and copy the weights.
Randomdays has a detailed explanation of the process on this site. Free programs and really easy to get the hang of after a test run or two, and much more functionality in your hands than just using hexing.

[Cyber Burn]

Now I have never messed with a Hex Editor, and I found this on an old Disk, so I don't know who to give credit to for this.

W=Width, T=Thickness, H=Height, P=Proportions. If a value isn't listed, just leave it the same.

Spoiler

Handle
P: 0.828

Bip01
W: -2.39
T: 0.009
H: 0.980

Bip01 Footsteps
W: -2.39
T: 0.009
H: 0.980

Bip01 Pelvis
W: 5.960
T: 1.370
H: 1.430

Bip01 Spine
W: 0.996
T: 0.997
H: 0.996

Bip01 Spine1
W: 0.989
T: 0.987
H: 0.998

Bip01 Neck
W: 0.681
T: 0.628
H: 0.998

Bip01 Head
W: 0.594
T: 0.596
H: 0.998
P: 1.140

Bip01 L Clavicle
W: -0.17
T: -0.68
H: 0.244

Bip01 L UpperArm
W: 0.580
T: 0.982
H: 0.597

Bip01 L Forearm
W: 0.613
T: 0.613

Bip01 L Hand
W: 0.831
T: 0.226
H: 0.057

Bip01 L Finger
W: 0.965
T: 0.965
H: 0.999

Bip01 R Clavicle
W: -0.10
T: -0.68
H: 0.152

Bip01 R UpperArm
W: 0.607
T: 0.975
H: 0.616

Bip01 R Forearm
W: 0.695
T: 0.695

Bip01 R Hand
W: 0.953
T: 0.016
H: -0.01

Bip01 R Finger0
W: 0.965
T: 0.965
H: 0.999

Bip01 L Thigh
W: -0.25
T: 0.270
H: -0.97

Bip01 L Calf
W: 0.277
T: 0.277

Bip01 L Foot
W: 0.959
T: 0.967
H: 0.982

Bip01 L Toe
W: 3.422
T: 5.960

Bip01 R Thigh
W: -0.61
T: 0.637
H: -0.97

Bip01 R Calf
W: 0.221
T: 0.221

Bip01 R Foot
W: 0.959
T: 0.967
H: 0.982

Bip01 R Toe
W: 3.422
T: 5.960

Omni01
T: 1.788
H: 1.788

Weapon
W: 5.960
H: 5.960

I don't know how think you want to make the Mesh that you're working on, but there are other options, I believe that Tommyboy's "Uncle_Sam_T" and "Ringmaster_TF" Meshes are pretty thin, and I also believe that Afghan Ant has some thin Skopes for his Miracle Man stuff.

Afghan Ant's Miracle Man stuff: http://freedomforceuniverse.com/pre-published.html

Tommyboy's Ringmaster: http://www.tommyboymeshes.freedomforceforever.com/Marvel%20meshes%20R.html

Hopefully some of this will help.

[Tomato]

Yeah, it's far simpler to just use a different base body than to try to modify an existing base mesh.

A couple of other examples of skinny base meshes you can use:  Tommy's Male_basic_thin base mesh or my own Male_Teen_TM.