I've done a fair bit of modding for personal use and want to try my hand at creating and customizing items for my mods. I'm using an older version of Blender, but it doesn't recognize the .nif files and won't open them.

Do I need to convert them to another file type? If so, how?

Any suggestions?

No, you need to stop using blender and buy 3dsmax, the only program that can export to .nif correctly.

That'd be great advice if I could reasonably aford it. The reason I use blender is that it's available free.

Any other suggestions?

I just told you, there aren't any. The .nif export plugin is only for 3dsmax. The only chance you have is if you could find someone who does have 3dsmax and would be willing to convert your models for you.

Sorry to burst you're bubble for 3dsmax, but there is a way to export and import nif files into blender, but you'll need to download the newest vertion of blender and python (blender.org python.org) and then you'll need to download the plug-in for blender at NIFTools! Hope it helps

Nat

Good job reviving a thread from over a year ago, when my answer was correct, to point out my "mistake". Maybe you should check the dates on threads before posting comments like that?

I would think that Necromancy is warranted when the situation changes. _I_ learned from Nat's answer...

It's not just the necromancy that I was objecting to (even though the updated answer can be found in plenty of other threads). It's the fact that he dug up an ancient thread to say "ha ha, you're wrong!!!!" like he actually caught me making some hillarious mistake, when my answer was right at the time I said it.

You are both wrong. You need pythonversion 2.3.5 to use the nifla exporter, not the latest.