Some things I want mods for: how do I do it?

[ElricOfGrans]

It is starting to bug me. I tried most of the body mods and found TGND was the one I liked best, but it has so little support. Being HGEC compliant is great for races and high-res textures, but support for armour/clothing is extremely thin on the ground. It bugs me, but at the end of the day there is only one thing I can do about it: convert things myself. I have a copy of the CS installed (I have used it to look over scripts before), but no idea what to do next. I have not made mods since Duke Nukem 3D, and I have never made graphical ones. I am a professional developer, but am more oriented towards architecture; graphics and interfaces and bling make my head hurt. As such I am comfortable with development concepts, but treat me as a bigger moron than the average person when it comes to graphics. How do I go about converting an item of armour/clothing to any said body mod? Would certain things be easier to convert than others (for learning purposes), or is it all pretty well the same?

 

Another thing I want to do, which seems easier, is make a tweak to Chocolate Elves. I just installed the race to take a quick look and I think the visuals are great, but the mechanics are not balanced with the other races (I use Cobl Races, which has some dramatic changes from vanilla). I would like to tweak this to something more in line with the others (probably very similar to Dunmer to start with), and make the greater power(s) compatible with Cobl Power Exhaustion, but have no idea where to start.