Pineappletree

Getting a static obj into the game is easy, making a full character out of it, able to animate, equip items, etc. is not. You'll probably have to chop the mesh into the right pieces, you'll probably have to manipulate those pieces to fit other game assets, you'll definitely have to weight the pieces so they'll work with Skyrim's skeleton / animation system, you'll definitely have to export the pieces and their textures into file formats Skyrim can use (*.nif for models, *.dds for textures). And, of course, you'll have to use the CK to make an actual follower out of all that material. It's all doable, but if, as it sounds like, you don't have much experience in the field, be aware it'll take quite a bit of time and effort to gather the tools, learn the concepts and get the practical experience to pull it all off. If you do want to go on this journey I'd be happy to anwer further questoins you have but first I'd have to ask you to help us help you by giving us more information about this specific task: What type of character are we talking about, what is the actual content of the obj you aquired and which pieces of it do you want to bring into Skyrim? Just the face? The head? Hair? The whole body? Clothes / armor? Other assets? An obj is just a model, so what about the corresponding textures? Do you have them? Can you aquire them? Do you have any software for 3d model and texture manipulation? Do you have any experience with them?

I don't know the blender side of things, as I come form the 3dsmax world, but I've got a fair bit of experience in creating new amor meshes and getting them into the game, so I can give you some basic directions at least. If you want to create new armor meshes it's important you understand the game's systems for managing and displaying equippable items. The BipedSlot (or BipedObject) system is key here as it explains why there is no complete body model. (Basically, a mesh that gets equipped into one of these slots completely replaces the mesh that's already there and that includes body parts. If you equip a pair of gloves the mesh isn't layerd atound the hands but replaces them completely. And because you don't want the glove mesh to also replace the body and feet, the body is cut into several pieces which can all change independently from each other.) You might also want to take a look at how the body weight slider in Skyrim works (which is the reason why there are "_0" and "_1" versions of most body and armor meshes) if you don't know this already. if you have trouble finding the right information or have further questions, feel free to ask. Now to your specific questions above: How do you get a complete body into blender to model your new meshes around? Simple, you just have to import all the indiviudal meshes of the body (body, head, hands, feet and if you want your base character to look a bit more firendly maybe also a hair mesh) into a single scene. Once they're there I'd also recommend finding a way to quickly hide / show these individual parts depending on you what you need at any given moment. In 3dsmax I use "layers" for this, I don't know what blender provides in this regard. If you want to weight (or "skin" or whatever term you want to use) your meshes in blender as well you'll also want to bring a skeleton into the scene. I'd recommend using the modded XP32 skeleton for this as it provides a lot of extra bones used in many mods. Even if you don't yet plan on making use of these extra bones, it's much easier to spare the hard disk and RAM space it takes to always have them in the scene at your convenience than trying to cram them in later when you run the risk of messing up the weighted meshes already in the scene. Whatever you do, once you have your base scene set up make sure to save it as a separate file so you can always quickly come back to a clean slate when you need it. What files do you need to import? For the male body the files you are looking for are: malebody_X.nif malehands_X.nif malefeet_X.nif malehead.nif skeleton.nif For the female body you want: femalebody_X.nif femalehands_X.nif femalefeet_X.nif femalehead_X.nif skeleton_female.nif The "_X" here stands for the "_0" or "_1" suffixes designating which weight version of the model is inside. Whether you want to use the "heavy" or the "light" body as your base comes down to your personall preference, you'll have to create the "opposite" version anyway. Personally I find it easier to "grow" a mesh outward, so I always used the smaller "_0" body as the base. If you want to save yourself time you can ignore the body weight slider and just use the same mesh for both the "_0" and "_1" version of the model but obviously that might look odd. Or you let Bodyslide do the work (my prefered method nowadays) which I'll discuss below. Whatever approach you choose, make sure all imodels you import are of the same weight. Where do you find those files? This is a bit of a tricky question because it depends on what body mod you want to use and whether you already have it installed (and where). The default folder for all but one of these files is: ...\Skyrim\Data\Meshes\Actor\Character\Character Assets\ The female skeleton is the exception here, you'll find it in ...\Skyrim\Data\Meshes\Actor\Character\Character Assets Female\ You have to keep in mind however, that the unmodded base game doesn't come with loose files and folders but has all of these packed into big *.bsa archives. So any loose files you find in your game's folder are most probably mods you installed yourself (because the game will use the loose files before it goes looking for them in the *.bsa archives). If you want the vanilla bodies provided with the game you'll find them in the archive ...\Skyrim\Data\Skyrim - Meshes.bsa. Or if you want to use a certain modded body the easiest approach might be to just import them right from whatever archive you downloaded them in. What body do you best use as base? This comes down to personal preference and the intended audience, should you plan to release your armor addon to the public. Typical questions you should ask yourself are: Do you want to create armors for males or females or both? There are a lot more body mods for females than for males ( figures :laugh: ) Do you want to create bulky plate armors wrapping the character from head to toe or do you want to create bikinis? For a bikini the choice of base body is much more critical as any changes to the body's shape are that much more noticable (not to mention because of the BipedSlot system you will have to include large parts of the base body mesh in the bikini armor's mesh file). Do you want maximal compatibliity, so many people can use the armor, or are you ok with creating something for a niche audience? Many people use the (U)UNP body, few use the Ladybody (is that ever around anymore? I don't know) And most important of all: What body mods do you already use yourself? Sooner or later you will have to test your armor meshes in the game and that won't be much fun if you have to install body meshes and textures you don't usually use every time you want to test. How does Bodyslide come into play if at all? I'll assume you know what Bodyslide does for the user but it's also useful for us modders. For one it's fairly popular, so using one of the Bodyslide bodies (CBBE or UUNP) will probably provide you with a decent size user base for your armor mod. It also provides tools you can use to weight / skin meshes, but I can't say much about them since I'm more comfortable with doing this in max. The big reason to go the Bodyslide route as an armor creator is imho that you don't have to create the two different weight versions of all your meshes anymore. You simply create a single mesh based on one of the Bodyslide base bodies and then the program will generate both the "_0" and "_1" versions of the model automatically based on the user's chosen body shape. This approach requires an extra step in that you have to tell Bodyslide how to manipulate your new mesh when the shape sliders are used. But since Bodyslide comes with the tools for this (in another program called OutfitStudio) and can automate a big part of the process, I generally find it a lot less hassle than having to create two different weight meshes in my 3d program by myself. It's actually one main reason why I moved with all my female characters and armors to UUNP / Bodyslide a couple of years ago and am building new meshes for the UUNP base body exclusively now. It's an extra step and an extra program to learn (and if the automation doesn't produce good results it's quie a bit of work to fix them) but overall I can only heartily recommend it. In conclusion I hope I was able to anwer your questions and didn't dump too much redundant or confusing information on you. Creating armors from scratch is not a trivial process but a satisfying one. Again, if you have further about anything (non blender specifc) just ask. Good luck and have fun!

Be aware that khajiit and argonians share many items / meshes, so they're listed with the "_arg" suffix in the game files, not "_kha". If that doesn't help you can look at what happens when you equip the specific hood you want to edit on a khajiit character in the game. If only a non-hood replacement mesh (hat, tiara, etc.) or nothing at all shows up, there really is no khajiit specific mesh in the game files. Then you'd have to use blender to edit the human hood mesh to fit the khajiit head and get them into the game via an addon esp. If a fitting hood does show up you can find the coresponding mesh by taking a look at the item's armor data in the CK. There you'll find a list of "armor addons" linked to the item (make sure "show all" is checked) and one of them is for khajiit (and or argonians). A further look at that specific armor addon will then guide you to the mesh file you're looking for.