Newbie modder here -- how to remodel clothes and armour to fit modded body models?

[CatsfromElsweyr]

I've only done retexturing work in the past, but I'm interested in editing armour meshes to fit the body mod I have installed. But it seems like every talented modder on the Nexus was just... spawned -- I don't know if I'm just blind, but I can't find tutorials for it anywhere.

The extent of my knowledge is that I need NifSkope and Blender (but maybe I'm an idiot and need something else? lol)

I honestly don't even know where to start; I have the armour model loaded in NifSkope and I'm staring at it like 'please just do what I want you to do'


If anyone who can point me in the right direction, I'll be in your debt.

Edited March 28, 2019 by CatsfromElsweyr

[Striker879]

Don't know if it will help ... but here's a link to something I ran across long ago:

 

http://grotto.moddersrealm.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=e37c1dfacd1cc23d923bb948e738f6c1&topic=9519.0

[CatsfromElsweyr]

Thank you!!! It took about a day straight of fiddling to figure it out (and a few moments when I wanted to throttle these meshes), but I finally got the dang mesh set up.


Would you happen to know why it's invisible in-game? I mapped the mesh to the female body I'm using, and it shows up perfectly in NifSkope, but makes it look like the NPCs are wearing invisibility cloaks in-game (and without clothing in the CS). I figure it has something to do with the textures?

[Striker879]

In Oblivion the textures are assigned via properties of the mesh. Invisible is the game telling you it can find neither colour map nor normal map (so it can't find <NameOfTheTexture>.dds and <NameOfTheTexture>_n.dds). Those can be assigned using NifSkope (expand the NiTriStrip to expose the NiTexturingProperty and expand that to expose NiSourceTexture).

 

An important note when setting the path to the texture file ... do not use absolute paths (so do not start with C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\...). The path shown next to the little purple flower should always start at the Textures folder (so Textures\Armor\MyCoolArmor\MyCuirass.dds). Normal maps must be named exactly the same as the texture and be in the same folder structure (so using the previous example the normal map would go in ... Data\Textures\Armor\MyCoolArmor\MyCuirass_n.dds).

 

Because the game uses "_<x>.dds" to denote different types of special textures (_n.dds is normal map, _g.dds is glow map etc) avoid using conventions like MyCuirass_r.dds for a red cuirass texture name but rather use RedMyCuirass.dds or similar.

 

Skin is a special case for texture naming. To accommodate a simple way to assign proper race specific skin textures to meshes the material property "skin" is used for NiMaterialProperty and the Imperial texture will always be assigned for NiSourceTexture (so Textures\Characters\Imperial\Female\Footfemale.dds for all HGEC body parts except hand for example). The game then replaces the Imperial texture with the appropriate corresponding race texture assigned via the race record in the Construction Set.