Tristan69

I'd be happy to share what I know. Skinned meshes like bows and armour are, for the moment, restricted in their usability unless you have max. Static meshes like swords however, appear to be easy. Collision meshes are still a little sketchy, but I'm going to be experimenting with them later on today, I'm trying to build (and write a tutorial for) custom bows. So far, the best combination of tools seems to be 3DS Max+niftools plugin, Photoshop or Gimp+Nvidia DDS tools for texturing, and finally nifskope for object management. So specifically which bits would you like to know about? Are you using Maya? Do you know of workflows for copying Maya data to Max (including Verts/ Vert Weights/Bones, etc)? I have never tried to move that sort of information between Maya and Max but I think to export as an FBX file would be your best bet.

Thanks d_thumb, just had a quick look over the tutorial. While it doesn't look too difficult to add to my workflow, it ticks me off that Bethesda originally claimed that the CK was the same as what they had used to design the game and yet there is no straight forward way to import skinned meshes. I really had high hopes of creating completely custom alien/fantasy environments - things of real beauty and wonder... Anyway, not much I can do about it so I will get on with it and do the best with what we've got. :D

Woke up today to find the Skyrim Creation kit ready for download. Nice. After about 10 minutes of browsing the features I realised there is no support for importing content from 3D apps like 3DS Max (which I use). If I can't introduce my own original content into the game then the CK is useless to me. Why would Beth do this? Does anyone know of a plugin for the CK that will allow us this functionality?