Making posed loadscreen models

[manlethamlet]

How would I go about making one of those posed models seen in some of the loading screens? Like the dark elf assassin, ork berserker, hagravens, etc. I've seen some mods add their own loadscreen models but the only ones I've been able to make myself were just made by combining preexisting object NIFs. I assume it's not as easy as exporting an NPC from the CK in the middle of an animation  

Could I do this in Blender or would I need to get Maya/3DS Max? Also, is it like posing a model and then attaching armor pieces/weapons to its bones or more like exporting a model with the armor already equipped and then posing that? 

[Sphered]

Nifskope is best imo unless you are very comfy with other modeling tools. You can copy a skeleton nif to your desktop, then take skin and armor nifs, and via nifskope, copy/paste the shapes onto the skeleton till you get the appearance you want. From there, you need only create your pose. Simplest way is to play with the skeletal node positions and angles, albeit the custom pose step here is very time consuming. A faster way to skip manual posing is if you have 3DSMax. You can attach a keyframe animation (converted from hkx) into a nif via niskope, then export from nifskope, then import that nif into Max and then export from Max as a still model. This procedure is niche and kinda oldschool and my own method I came up with. I wanted this type of content years ago and played with stuff till I found a way to do it

Edited since I realized 3DSMax is needed for this route regardless. Most of the work is in Nikskope though

[manlethamlet]

Sweet, thanks. I'm not familiar with using Nifskope in that way, with skeletons and such. Most of my experience with using it is with combining a couple of static meshes together. Even trying to mess with nodes for when I used to make Fallout 4 weapons was a time-consuming headache. But I'll try messing with it later tonight and see what I can do. 

I don't have 3DS Max though, so I guess I'll skip that second part. 

[manlethamlet]

Bumping to say thank you again. I was able to create this and it didn't take too much time:

Spoiler

Working with human models so far is a whole nother challenge considering the TRIs for the head. Putting on armor and such and then posing that turned out to be pretty easy, but then I spent a few hours trying to combine morphs from two TRIs in both Outfit Studio and Blender just so that I could get the customization sliders onto a Breton head, but now I can't get the eyelids to close. Not to mention the eyebrows and left/right side masks. Oh well, I'm making progress regardless so I'll keep trying.