I need help with modding

[MMac77]

I am new here and I want to get into modding. I am trying to edit a hair style, something simple like a ponytail for starters. So I took a ponytail hair style and I just enlarged it so if my edit worked, I would notice right away to see if I did it correctly. I followed this tutorial: http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Skyrim._Part_1 considering it was the only detailed one I can find. In the end, even though I had enlarged the ponytail and did all the steps correctly, the ponytail did not change in size, and the texture was not affected as if there was no change to the overall nif file. If I were to open my modded hair style in Nifskope, the size of the ponytail is larger, as I intended to make it. I would appreciate it if anyone can give me any advice on this matter.

[KettleWitch]

I'm the last person in the world who should be saying this as I always bite off more then I can chew but messing with havok/armors/player meshes is probably not the best place to start modding.

 

It's pretty hairy in there (no pun intended!). Armor weights, Havok, skinned meshes, dismemberment tables, you have to make a size_0 and size _1 for everything, male and female. It's a lot to take on from scratch.

 

I'm not trying to put you off but do consider starting with modding weapons if your interested in mesh making. There's a lot less going on then armor and you still learn the basics of what you need for armor modding.

 

Take an iron sword and completely redo the mesh, play with textures and normal maps. Nothing you learn will be wasted and it'll give you a great base to start modding hair, etc later.

 

As for your problem I don't think hair is an armor piece, its dismemberment data. Increasing the scale of hair may not do anything because the game engine sees it as dismemberment data not armor and will just match it's size to the hair dismemberment 'size'/data.

 

That last bit's a total guess and is probably sooooo wrong you wouldn't believe., just saying i'd start with something less tricky.

 

Anyway, welcome to nexus and best of luck with your modding.

 

Edit: i'm wrong there, just checked and hair is biped object in CK, i'd give a more or less same reason for no change in your edit mind, pretty sure it's not 'armor'.

Edited July 2, 2013 by KettleWitch

[MMac77]

I looked at the hairstyle I modded to get the hair body part number and all that, but even then, I probably skipped a lot because I followed this specific tutorial. Also considering my game did not crash while selecting my edit, I must have done something right, that's a start. XD

 

I would not mind getting into the difficult stuff first though, I prefer it. I am sure I can better understand the process if I can find a detailed tutorial on it. Bringing it into blender and editing the mesh simple enough, it's all the technical stuff afterward that I need to master.

 

Do you know of any detailed tutorials or perhaps someone that is willing help me with this?

[KettleWitch]

Heh, start with the hard stuff. Good man, you sound like myself :)

 

So, for what it's worth.....

 

You simply can't do better for a starting point in modding then the tutorials/workshops over at TESA.

 

http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/forum/113-esv-skyrim-school/

 

also start looking through the modders resources/tutorial section of Nexus. There are loads of good tutorials in there.

 

Small thing, it's best to get a vanilla mesh, no matter what it is, and change/import new mesh to the nif rather then build a nif from scratch. Just change the actual trishape data to start, nifs are crazy!

 

Use nifscope to copy/export a vanilla mesh as an .obj

 

import to blender and do your stuff, don't forget to re UV map and all the rest if you change the mesh. Because Skyrim uses mipmaps, you can change the scale of a mesh (change the scale in nifskope, not blender it's really easy) and the textures should still be ok, it's only when you start pulling verts and stuff you need a new UV map.

 

Anyway, when your done export from blender as a 3ds (.3ds) object so the UV map and stuff don't get messed up. Open up nifskope and import .3ds while you have the vanilla mesh selected (don't mesh with the root node) it should replace it.

 

You'll probably have to re translate the mesh in nifskope.

 

Check the uv map got imported to nifskope. (the current version of nifskope has busted .obj inport/export. I use a fairly old version 1.1.-rc7 because it works with blender 2.63. if you use blender 2.49 or under (i think) there are nif tools over at

 

http://www.niftools.org/

 

but i pefere the newer versions of blender even if importing/exporting into nifskope takes a bit extra work.

 

I'll PM you some other tutorial stuff I have but don't know the original links. They are for weapons but the import into nifskope stuff is well worth knowing.

[MMac77]

Sweet, I'll be sure to put this to good use. Thanks a lot. :happy: