How do i do this?

[svenskarav]

So i thought about this for a while i want to make a custom weapon mod using assets that are in the game like the older gun mods on the site is there any good guides? as i never done this before and i don't know where to start.

[d4em]

It kind of depends on what you want to do exactly, but this is a place to start. I'd recommend opening up the ck / xedit and just looking at some vanilla weapon records.

The recipes for weapon mods are under items > constructible object and the mods themselves are under items > object mods.

[svenskarav]

 

3 hours ago, d4em said:

It kind of depends on what you want to do exactly, but this is a place to start. I'd recommend opening up the ck / xedit and just looking at some vanilla weapon records.

The recipes for weapon mods are under items > constructible object and the mods themselves are under items > object mods.

I want to use the vanilla weapon parts I believe people call it nifbashing? Oh also i used ck once and I couldn’t even get it to open without crashing. But I’ll check it out later today. Edit: to clarify better i want to use vanilla weapon parts to create a new gun

Edited April 30 by svenskarav

[d4em]

Okay, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve. One disclaimer: I haven't modelled weapons for fo4 before, I've done statics, clothing, and props. The process should be the same (just make sure to watch those BSConnectPoints because that's how the weapon is assembled ingame). I recommend this (read it all before you click links):

1) download blender and try to make some models just for fun, to learn how editing works (they will be ugly and that's ok, you just need to know where the buttons are.) There's a lot of good tutorials for this. All you need to know about right now is the edit mode, importing/exporting and maybe UV mapping, but I don't think you'll need that yet

Note: blender is not the "official" tool to handle .nifs, that would be 3dsmax, but blender is free and 3dsmax is painfully expensive. The main difference right now is that blender can't do collision (which is a pain)

2) install Nifskope, this lets you edit stuff like material paths and preview the model. It's a very powerful tool.

3) install PyNifly so blender can import/export the game meshes

4) import your mesh(es) in blender and make your changes

5) export meshes to nif in a temporary file

6) open your exported nif and the vanilla mesh you were editing in nifskope. One reason for this is we're using the vanilla collision mesh, another reason is for the BSConnectPoint nodes

6.a) In the vanilla mesh in, delete all BSTriShapes and BSMeshLODTriShapes (right click > block > remove branch)

6.b) In your exported mesh, convert all BSMeshLODTriShapes (if any) to BSTriShapes (right click > block > convert > Bethesda > BSTriShape)

6.c) Copy all BSTriShapes from your exported mesh into the vanilla mesh with the collision and nodes you want to use, and save (as a new file)

 

There is an alternative, sub-par, but maybe easier method, that involves enabling alpha (transparency) on the model (can be done with Material Editor, which you will also very likely need at one point, or in nifskope.) You just make the parts of the texture that you don't want to see invisible in an image editor like GIMP or paint.net (what possessed them to name a computer program *.net elludes me). Then you copy the BSTriShapes over in nifskope into a combined mesh. But this is needlessly GPU-heavy and it might have visual artifacts.

Edited April 30 by d4em

[svenskarav]

 

12 minutes ago, d4em said:

Okay, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve. One disclaimer: I haven't modelled weapons for fo4 before, I've done statics, clothing, and props. The process should be the same (just make sure to watch those BSConnectPoints because that's how the weapon is assembled ingame). I recommend this:

1) download blender and try to make some models just for fun, to learn how editing works (they will be ugly and that's ok, you just need to know where the buttons are.) There's a lot of good tutorials for this. All you need to know about right now is the edit mode and maybe UV mapping, but I don't think you'll need that yet

Note: blender is not the "official" tool to handle .nifs, that would be 3dsmax, but blender is free and 3dsmax is painfully expensive. The main difference right now is that blender can't do collision (which is a pain)

2) install Nifskope, this lets you edit stuff like material paths and preview the model. It's a very powerful tool.

3) install PyNifly so blender can import/export the game meshes

4) import your mesh(es) in blender and make your changes

5) export meshes to nif in a temporary file

6) open your exported nif and the vanilla mesh you were editing in nifskope. One reason for this is we're using the vanilla collision mesh, another reason is for the BSConnectPoint nodes

6.a) In the vanilla mesh in, delete all BSTriShapes and BSMeshLODTriShapes (right click > block > remove branch)

6.b) In your exported mesh, convert all BSMeshLODTriShapes (if any) to BSTriShapes (right click > block > convert > Bethesda > BSTriShape)

6.c) Copy all BSTriShapes from your exported mesh into the vanilla mesh with the collision and nodes you want to use, and save (as a new file)

 

There is an alternative, sub-par, but maybe easier method, that involves enabling alpha (transparency) on the model (can be done with Material Editor, which you will also very likely need at one point, or in nifskope.) You just make the parts of the texture that you don't want to see invisible in an image editor like GIMP or paint.net (what possessed them to name a computer program *.net elludes me). Then you copy the BSTriShapes over in nifskope into a combined mesh. But this is needlessly GPU-heavy and it might have visual artifacts.

and i presume after i would need to add it as its own thing in the ck? or would i use material editor before that? i get the steps but where do i go after that?

[d4em]

Either the ck or xedit. It's a shame that the ck seems to crash for a lot of people, I think I saw NeinGaming say modding with only xedit is like trying to read a book through a keyhole.

The best thing to do is to look at the vanilla mesh you started with and how it's used in vanilla. For the most part, you should just be able to copy into a new record and change the name + model path.

Starting with the 10mm for example, it loads an empty nif and then attaches all visible parts as an object mod. So you need to copy the gun and the object mods into new records and link them up, this is done through the target OMOD keyword. Other keywords decide what slot on the gun a mod takes up. Then you need to edit the default object template for your gun, this is how the game decides what mods to load it with initally.

[svenskarav]

ok if i need any more help i'll ask as for now thanks

[NeinGaming]

6 hours ago, d4em said:

Either the ck or xedit. It's a shame that the ck seems to crash for a lot of people, I think I saw NeinGaming say modding with only xedit is like trying to read a book through a keyhole.

Yes and no

Yes, because we flat out don't have anything like this in xEdit for example

But also no, because there is so much stuff that isn't visible / editable in xEdit *at all*. Most of that I don't even know about And there's a few things (some fields in forms) that I couldn't create in xEdit (might be a skill issue), so I had to copy and paste and edit something. But that's so easy to do, I don't mind. For example, I don't know how to create a mod collection from scratch, I always have to use an existing one as a stub.

Butalso no, because if I just pretend that the CK-only parts are the parts of the game that I can't mod, and focus on what I *can* do, I am just constantly amazed and thrilled at xEdit! If anything, it makes everything I saw of the CK like a snail trying to grab something with pincers through a keyhole, while xEdit is some kind of worker factory. Being able to select many records, even across plugins, and compare them, to see what overwrites what in such a nice way -- I learned so much from just that. The filtering and scripting, or not knowing what a value really does, selecting hundreds of things, sorting by that field, and then seeing a pattern... I love it so much!

For example, I'm slowly working on integrating alllll the clothing and armor and weapons and whatnot, across all mods, into patch plugins, so I have, say, just all the hats and helmets in one plugin, and can make sure they all have the keywords and access points I want them to have

e.g. I'm integrating them all with that mod that allows things to spawn with up to 3 legendary effects, which still takes a few moments, but would drive anyone insane in the CK I'm sure, since I'm talking easily over a thousand items here. Or hey, there's a mod that randomizes weapons stats, which is so cool out of the box I just *had* to make it work for all modded weapons, too. Again, would not even dream of trying that in the CK.

Or something that didn't take long at all, I took the Basement living mod, made the construction recipe depend on a perk for each basement, copied a mag to give that perk, put all of that in the original plugin, then copied it 5 times, then added the magazines of the 5 plugins to the form list for Random Valuables Redux via script. So now I randomly find magazines that allow me to build (and plunder) a basement. Not world changing or even useful, but it was quicker to do in xEdit than to decide whether to do it.

I can get the CK to run though, technically. I can load up vanilla or a plugin and it's masters. But it just dies on my full load order, which is 100 GB and spans 700+ mods and and 900+ plugins by now. If it didn't, it would be unbearably slow I'm sure. And the interface is just... total ass. xEdit is at least a decent and dependable database-like view into the things it has (usable) access to.

I know there's legal and other reasons, no game company does that -- but in my mind it's still insane that Bethesda didn't just fund xEdit and started using and contributing to it. Just for the sake of Starfield and Elder Scrolls, as a force multiplier. It's like they don't even know what they have (or maybe had) on their hands.

Sorry for rambling, but I'm really grateful for xEdit. I wouldn't be modding if I hadn't learned so much just by looking at mods, that's for sure.

[RolazLaguna]

I mostly use CK for modding, and xEdit for cleaning and patching, not much more. I would really like to learn more about xEdit, the description you -NeinGaming- just made of it is really appealing. Unfortunately for me I did not grasp yet some of the basic concepts of the interface.

Regarding CK, it is way more stable and usable with the CK Platform Extended (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/51165). I was close to give up modding even before starting when I discovered it and suddenly all was working smoothly. Yes, sometimes it still crashes. Well, even my FO4 sometimes still crashes despite all the measures I took to avoid that. But in both cases, specially with CK, the crashes are reproducible. For example: if you track things using Use Info way too many levels, and then try to Edit more than one of the forms from the Use Info windows, it crashes. If you are previewing forms too fast, it crashes. Editing quests is delicate and specially dialogues... It all depends also on whether the render window is active or not. Still, it is also a lot of fun.

[NeinGaming]

14 minutes ago, RolazLaguna said:

Unfortunately for me I did not grasp yet some of the basic concepts of the interface.

I'm not a pro by any means, but feel free to ask! It took me a long time to stumble across many things myself.