Can't create mods

[SaintSaenz]

Hi everyone, well, as the title states i can't get to make one single successful mod. I've been reading this guide http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Fallout._Part_1 over and over, I've gone through the same steps for a month and i can't seem to make one single pair of pants appear in the game, at this point i'm kind of giving up but i like the game so much and as a member i feel the need to upload some ideas to the nexus mod page.

 

The problem seems to appear after the model has been made and start setting everything up in nifscope, i swear i'm not lazy i've tried and tried but i can't seem to get it right. From export to import settings going through textures and geck placement...i don't know, i'm doing something wrong but i don't know what exactly.

 

I don't know if there's an updated version of apparel making somewhere or if there's some charitable soul willing to explain it to this noob step by step, it would be very apreciated.

 

Jeez people are making panties and i can't make a single pair of pants work!!!!!...ok i'll let it there sorry.

[dubiousintent]

Have you seen the 'Custom items', 'Armor and Clothes', and 'NifSkope Mesh Editor' sections of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article? Each section has tutorials linked. Also, the Blender Noob to Pro tutorial included in the Blender v2.49b package under the Programs and Tools section is a good resource.

 

-Dubious-

[madmongo]

The first thing you need to know about Fallout New Vegas is that you don't have individual pieces of clothing. There's no pants or shirts. There are only outfits. Some mods get a bit clever and have maybe the pants as the body outfit then use one of the unused extra slots for shirts so that you can mix and match. But that is not the way the standard outfits in the game work.

 

There are a bunch of different body slots. The main one that you need to concern yourself with is the UpperBody slot. The name is misleading. This is the slot that the game uses for the entire body and the outfit that the body is using. It includes the upper body (chest, back, etc), arms, legs, pelvis, and feet. It does NOT include the head or hands.

 

When you put an outfit on, you do NOT put an outfit on over top of the body model. You REPLACE the body model with your outfit mesh. So, if you are wearing short pants, tennis shoes, and a T shirt, your outfit model needs to include the visible human legs and arms as well. Typically outfit meshes do not include the entire body model underneath the clothes, partly because there's no point having bits that aren't visible and partly to prevent accidental clipping of body parts through the clothing as the player/NPC moves.

 

So, to start off with, you generally don't want to make a pair of pants. You want to make an outfit. Now, it is entirely possible to make an outfit that is only a pair of pants, with no shirt and no shoes. You will however not be able to equip shirts and shoes from other outfits in the game, because that isn't the way that they are set up. You can make custom mix and match outfits though by making shoes and shirts that use the BodyAddOn slots (there are 3 of them). You will only be able to equip these mix and match outfits that come from your mod, though.

 

The tutorial you linked to uses Blender, and that is what I happen to use as well (it's free), so I will go through the basic procedure for Blender. I am only going to give you the basics. For details, see the references in Dubious's link.

 

First, you need the right version of Blender. If you want to keep your sanity, stick to Blender version 2.49b and use the version linked to above since it has all of the tools and everything is the correct version so it all works together. There are some folks using newer versions of Blender, but the nif tools for the newer versions have a lot of issues.

 

Start by importing a human body mesh from the game, either male or female depending on what gender of outfit you are making. This will get you the armature (aka skeleton) as well as the body mesh that you want to mold your clothing around. Create your outfit. Do not texture it with materials. Texture it with a UV mapped texture. This texture has to be in dds format. You can use GIMP to create your texture, but you will require a dds plugin.

 

Now that you have created your fancy shmancy outfit, it's a good idea to save your work in Blender so that you can get back to this step if you need to make alterations. Your outfit isn't rigged yet. To do that, you need to parent your outfit mesh to the human body armature. You can use the option to create bone weights automatically. This kinda works, but it tends to have a few issues. I usually end up needing to go through the bone weights manually afterwards to fix the things that it doesn't do right. For example, it tends to have outfit sleeves weighted to leg bones, which obviously isn't right. See the various tutorials on bone weighting for details on all of this.

 

It's probably good idea to save your work again.

 

Now you can delete the human body mesh. If your outfit doesn't completely cover all of the human skin bits, then you won't want to delete the mesh completely. Instead, you will want to go in and delete the parts of the human body that aren't visible underneath your clothing mesh. In other words, if your outfit is sandals, long pants, and a tank top, you will need to keep the visible parts of the feet and ankles, as well as the arms, shoulders, and parts of the chest and back that are visible. If there is a gap between the tank top and the pants then you'll want to keep the body parts under that as well. But you will want to delete the parts of the legs that are not visible, since those don't do anything and your legs might end up clipping through your pants and becoming partially visible.

 

Save again.

 

Now it's time to export your mesh. When you get to the nif screen, select Creature up on the top, and de-select Use BSFadeNode Root (if you leave that selected your mesh won't work and you'll probably crash your game). You can leave everything else defaulted.

 

Congratulations. Now you have created your nif. But, if you try to use it, it won't be visible in-game. This is because Blender did not export the shader flags properly. To fix this, we need to go into NifSkope. Open up your nif. For each part, select BSShaderPPLightingProperty, then find Shader Type and Shader Flags. For the clothing parts, the Shader Type needs to be set to SHADER_DEFAULT, then double click on the shader flags (use the down arrow so you can see the check boxes) and check SF_Skinned and SF_Shadow_Map. For the human skin parts, the Shader Type neesds to be SHADER_SKIN and you will need to check SF_Skinned and SF_Facegen.

 

Save your nif.

 

Now go into the GECK and add your new clothing. You can create a new form, but it's often easiest to just modify an existing one that is close to what you are making. Clothing really needs three models, a male version, a female version, and a world model (how it looks when it's lying on the ground or on a shelf). Just to test your clothing mesh though you can take an existing piece of clothing and only modify the gender that you changed. You can go back later and add the other gender and the world object.

 

A typical outfit will only use the UpperBody biped slot. If you are making something like a space suit though it might also use the head and hair slots (covered by the helmet) as well as the hand slots (for the gloves).

 

Save your new outfit to a unique ID, place it somewhere in the game where you can get to it, activate your mod ,and you should be ready to test it.

 

That's it!

 

If you keep getting stuck, give us more details about what you did and what you are seeing and we will do our best to help you sort it out.

[SaintSaenz]

 

 

Start by importing a human body mesh from the game, either male or female depending on what gender of outfit you are making. This will get you the armature (aka skeleton) as well as the body mesh that you want to mold your clothing around. Create your outfit.

 

You can use the option to create bone weights automatically. This kinda works, but it tends to have a few issues. I usually end up needing to go through the bone weights manually afterwards to fix the things that it doesn't do right.

 

Thanks for your reply sir it's detail was what i was looking for, i just want to make sure of a couple of things so far:

 

1.My import options (female in my case) are as follows: https://imgur.com/a/7lH1c3o

 

2.Should i erase the bones imported with the body at the start and re-import them with the clothing and body selected to relate them as a whole before exporting?

 

3.I tend to copy the bone weights from the body i imported selecting both the clothing and the body at the same time and selecting "Bone weight copy" is that ok?

 

Thanks again sir.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by SaintSaenz