DixiePig

I've played Enderal through to the end, and it is fantastic. It feels grander than Skyrim because they spent time on a core cast of characters. Each has their own personal stakes in the overarching story, which makes it actually mean something to the player.

Hi, haven't done it for a few years now but I'd like to help. No matter how you do it you will need to use nifskope. I have used three different methods to get my models in-game. In ascending order of difficulty: 1). .obj: Only works for items like swords that do not have bone weights. Export your mesh from blender in .obj form and import it in nifskope. Take a vanilla sword in nifskope, save it as your own and cut and paste the data branches of your exported sword into it, deleting the vanilla data branches where necessary. 2). Outfit studio Works for outfits, armor; things with bone weights. Might work with swords but I've never tried. Export your mesh from blender in .obj format, import into outfit studio (OS). Weight paint in OS. Export to .nif and make final adjustments in nifskope. 3). Blender .nif scripts I don't know if they work for the current versions of blender. I had to install the ancient blender v2.49b and install the working nif scripts for that, and use blender's "append" feature to get my model into the older version for export. DON'T DO IT THIS WAY unless all else has failed. It's really annoying. I'd be happy to provide any more specific details you may want. Feel free to pm me for instruction if you prefer.

Wish I could be more helpful, but I wanted to say that this armor looks fantastic. When I made outfits using outfit studio I just copied bone weights from the body. It may be possible to import, say, the leather body armor piece and copy the weights from that.

I think there was a female Necromancer follower in "Interesting NPCs"

My favorite recommendation is Death Alternative. Basically, it lets the game continue when you lose fights. Getting beaten is costly, but leads to new and interesting situations. It means that fights have real stakes. Instead of just reloading over and over until you beat it, you have to pick fights more carefully, and approach the game more strategically.

Well, welcome to the modding community! I like to hear what you're saying about 3D modelling, I hope to see your work soon!

Yep, that's what I needed to know. Had me confused for a minute: turns out that both the armor item and its component armor addons need to have a matching reference to the slot they are using. Thanks! Any further word on implementing scripts would be appreciated. If nothing comes up then I suppose I'll release it as a cosmetic item/modders' resource.

I'm working on a set of slave items: A bomb collar, wrist manacles, and ankle manacles. http://s19.postimg.org/p7ex7vyov/manacles_006.jpg I would like these to be worn as accessories without taking up any slots used by vanilla clothing items. If anyone could point me in the right direction I would appreciate it very much. Also, this is a bit of a stretch, but I would like to give them some functionality if possible. For example, placing them on a pacified NPC turns them into a follower. This is complex and I would imagine would be a job best left for the GECK, but there have been similarly complex mods created, such as the power armor companion mod. If anyone knows anything about how to do that I would appreciate any info. Thanks!

This looks like good info, I'll look into it at the next opportunity.

Update: Faction rank values show some weird behavior at values over 100. When increased above a value somewhere around 130 (probably 127), the actor is removed from the faction altogether. There's a lot you can do with numbers between 0 and 127, but it falls pretty far short of an int.

The creation kit basics forum at TESA has tutorials that should cover everything you need. They'll take you a few hours to complete and then you'll have all the skills you need: http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/forum/114-creation-kit-basics/

It's important to start small so you can test ideas and get a feel for how much work/time things require. A lot of people come into modding with grand ideas of forming a team and making a huge mod. Do not join their team. A sword is a good 3D modelling project to start with, as they are less work than armor or statics and don't require you to figure out weight painting or collision.

I like this approach. Especially the part about avoiding save game bloat. So attaching ints to actors without conflicts or bloating is doable. That means that we can also assign more complex data, like a custom struct (does papyrus support those?) if we can have queue of structs somewhere, and use the faction rank variable as indices to access the queue. Could I attach an object script to a rock in a test cell , and use that script to hold and manage all the data?

Right. I'll see what I can accomplish with just the Actor variable floats. Thank you both for your help. Any tips in the interest of minimizing conflicts?

Speaking as a porn peddler, I must acknowledge that we - modders, not porn peddlers - Have something of a public perception problem. I think it's also worth discussing how we might mitigate that reputation. However I think that beyond hiding adult content from unregistered viewers (which we already do), redesigning the Nexus will have no effect whatsoever. The part of the wider public who sneer for entertainment are happy to go to lengths to seek out things to be disgusted with. Creators of fan-art and fan-fiction have the same problem. Smut is the first thing many people think of when they're mentioned. I personally think that the best thing for modding is to elevate our best works to public attention and promote them. I remember Nehrim received a lot of press from mainstream gaming journalism, which makes sense because it delivered a product that was like a mainstream game. However I propose that modders here on the Nexus produce experiences that AAA studios cannot, and that these should be how the world sees us. So many gamers are missing out, because they think that all we produce is hentai. But what we have here is phenomenal and experimental in ways that indie game devs could only dream of being.

I haven't made jewellery before but I'm confident that it works the same way as clothing/armor: You have the 3rd person model which is weighted to the skeleton like any armor, and you have a ground version of the unworn necklace. "Static" I think refers to objects in the game world like rocks, walls and trees; but not equipped clothing or havoked objects (e.g unequipped clothing). If you're asking whether the chain needs to have physics simulation applied to it, the answer is no. If you having trouble modelling the chain I recommend checking out "array modifier" and "curve modifier" combined.

Do scripts have public variables / functions? Say the newFireBolt spell script had a public "int getTimesHit()" function. Upon the spell hitting an actor, could the script scan through the active magic effects on that actor for any instances of itself, call getTimesHit(), copy the result + 1 to its own timesHit value, and then dispel that previous instance? I've just been looking through the papyrus APl and there are only 17 obsolete actor value floats I can use. I would prefer not to have a 1/17 chance of breaking someone's game per float per scripted mod they have installed. Edit: Also, thanks for the input.

Here, like this one. This covers modelling, part 2 has UV mapping. Great place to start.

It does help. Thank you for the reply. This works for my example, which uses an int. Floats, bools, or strings might be found in actor values (don't know what's available) but if I want to do something more complex (like something that requires more than a few variables) then this won't work. Want I specifically want to understand is how scripts can interact, like accessing the variable values of other script instances. Your solution addresses the example but not the question, unless of course the answer to the question is "you can't.", in which case that's the exact answer I need. Thanks again for the info, I appreciate it very much. Any further info would also be very welcome.

How can I attach a variable to an NPC and then have a spell script get or modify it? My main goal here is to understand how scripts interact with each other and the game. Here's a simple example of how I might use it: A firebolt spell that, every time it hits an actor, increments an int timesHit. It then checks if timesHit >= 3, and if true it creates an explosion, and sets timesHit = 0. Questions: Does timesHit have to be declared somewhere independently from the magic effect script? How it is accessed by the magic effect script?How to make it go away when no longer needed (timesHit = 0, actor dies, combat ends)? What to be aware of to prevent savegame bloat?Any help, advice, or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Try starting by searching for tutorials outside the context of modding: just pure "how to model in blender". There are a host of tutorials out there with titles like "how to model a lightbulb" or "how to model dragon". Usually they involve modelling something, and explaining what they are doing step by step as they go. Get one of these tutorials, open blender, and copy them as they go. The principles apply very broadly, and after one tutorial you'll be able to model just about anything. Then make your sword. THEN worry about exporting it into Skyrim.

Is this a render with ambient occlusion? Or an ambient occlusion bake as a texture? or viewport ambient occlusion? The only thing that occurs to me is that you've UV mapped the symmetrical halves of the rifle differently. If you post the .blend file I can take a look at it.

Hi. The weird deformations in-game look to me like the result of problems with your vertex weights. I can't see any glaring problems with your methodology, but there is an awful lot to remember. If you're hitting a wall with this, there's a different, easier way using Outfit Studio, a utility that comes with Bodyslide. If you have a mesh that looks good in blender 2.7x, export it as an .obj. Load up outfit studio by first loading bodyslide, there should be a button somewhere for Outfit Studio. If you click "file>load reference" you can load up the the default CBBE body which you'll use to copy the bone weights from. Next, click "file>load outfit" and browse to select your .obj file. That should bring iin your mesh; check to see if it has the correct scale and orientation. Next, to get the bone weights, right click on your mesh's entry in the top right window and select the option "copy bone weights". This will transfer the weights from the reference body to yours. Next click "file>export>nif" and you should get a working, weighted .nif out of it. You'll need to mess around with the .nif file to do things like create the correct material settings and texture paths. I hope this is helpful, If you need answers in more detail then please ask.

I don't know what to do about importing each of them, but if you've succeeded in getting both of them into blender and you need to fit a costume to a differently-proportioned body, I know of a couple of tools that may help: namely the lattice and mesh deform modifiers. http://www.blendernation.com/2015/04/11/quick-tip-lattice/ Basically, the way it works is you have one model inside of a lattice (or mesh) object. You add a lattice (or mesh deform) modifier to your model and link it to the lattice(/mesh). Then, when you edit the lattice, the model is also proportionally deformed. The strength of this trick lies in that editing an object with fewer vertices is much easier, and any complex geometry details in your model will be proportionally deformed without having to worry about moving it vertex-by-vertex. Hope that's helpful, if you want a more detailed response don't hesitate to ask.