i wanna try my hand at modding-advice needed

[beastlykill]

like title says.i wanna learn to mod and would definitely like to contribute to this awesome community at some point. i know modding takes some time and would just like to just start off with simple things to get comfortable and eventually work my way up.i just want to know what programs i need and what i should start out with first. im mostly interested in weapons,armor/gear, and textures. any word of advice would be appreciated to help get me going on this awesome and fun journey.

 

 

 

 

PS: advice on things to look out for and avoid would also greatly be appreciated :thumbsup:

[Ladez]

Always good to see someone wanting to take up modding. :)

 

Modding on Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are carried out with the GECK - the Garden of Eden Creation Kit - so that is what you want. For New Vegas, you can download the GECK through Steam (look in the tools section of your library.) There's also links to direct downloads on the GECK Wiki. For information on how to use the GECK, also look on the GECK Wiki. The information is mostly reliable but much of it is geared towards Fallout 3. If you have questions about something (preferably specific) feel free to ask them on this forum.

 

Another great toolset to have handy is FNVEdit, which you may or may not have used before. It is mostly used by mod users to build merged patches or merge small mods together, but it is very useful for creating mods as well since it gives you a degree of control that the GECK is not capable of.

 

At some point you are probably going to want to extract some files from the .bsa archives that contains the vanilla assets. There is a BSA unpacker packed with FOMM. Otherwise do a search for something like BSAOpt.

 

If you're planning to do some scripting, you're probably going to want to launch the GECK through NVSE to take advantage of the added scripting functions. There are instructions for this on the NVSE website.

 

If you want to create custom weapons, then you need a 3D modelling suite such as Blender (free) or 3DS Max (licensed). Honestly, this is completely outside of my area of expertise, so I can't offer any help in that regard.

 

NifSkope will also be useful when working with either custom or vanilla models. I typically use it for previewing models outside the GECK and for changing texture paths. It is not a modelling program, but rather a tool to work with the .nif format.

 

For texturing you can use Photoshop (licensed), but you need a plugin to work with .dds files. Alternatively you can use Paint.NET (free) which has built-in support for .dds files but doesn't have the advanced functionality that Photoshop offers.

 

That should give you a general overview of what tools are commonly used. :)

[beastlykill]

thanks for this information. cant wait to get started on all this,funny thing is i have used all these programs before(mostly messing around and didn't really put effort into it haha)but now im actually gonna be serious and get into making my own things and once i feel good about my work,im gonna share it with the community. its fun to challenge ones self and see what you come up with. again thanks for the reply.

[d4em]

Ladez covered the programs you'll need pretty thoroughly, the only one he didn't mention is http://www.gimp.org/ which I personally use for texturing. It's free and versatile. If you chose gimp, you'll need the dds plugin for it, from http://registry.gimp.org/node/70

 

Texturing is far easier than modelling, and you'll learn a lot about models in general if you start with texturing. Start with some remakes of vanilla models (or those of other modders). Don't get too ambitious at first, keep your projects small and focus on making them good.

 

If you want to get a head-start, youtube for some texturing tutorials. I know there are some out there, just not which are the good ones. Use stock images, brushes, ect. You can hand-paint stuff but if you have no experience with that using stock is better. Google is your bestest friend forever.

 

It sounds like all you really want to do is items so you won't need to do a lot of stuff in the geck. You'll have to know your way around objects - how to edit their stats, ect - some basic word stuff, like editing merchants and placing items in the world, all easy.

This page is about items: http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php?title=Category:Items

 

Bethesda's tutorial is really all you'll need: http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php?title=Category:Getting_Started

 

Modelling is hard to learn, and you might want to wait 2~3 months untill you're comfortable with the format. Regardless of when you start modelling, I personally recommend blender (you'll need version 2.49b, with PYFFI and nifscripts, see bottom of this post). There's a very steep learning curve but it's powerful. There's tons of excellent tutorials online, just google for them.

 

Good luck learning to mod, it's awesome.

 

Blender 2.49b: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.49b/

PYFFI: http://pyffi.sourceforge.net/

nifscripts: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender

[Polyfemus]

I wish you the very best if your modding endeavors! Let me share with you my take on the mod-making experience.

 

For me it was incredibly stressful. Because I'm not a creative person, rather a derivative person. It took me literally months to come up with ideas for projects to actually persue. And this is after having spent 200+ hours on the GECK prototyping. And I think the reason for this is clear. I had no mod-making support structure. Like, I know there is the Nexus for technical issues but I had nobody with the same interest in mod-making and spare time to share the mod-making endeavor. And so I had only myself to look to for inspiration and criticism. It works for some people but it didn't work for me.

 

But deciding on a mod project concept is actually the easy part. Ideas are easy to create and imagine. Pulling it off is a whole other thing. And all the potential mod projects that I worked towards fell apart because I felt like the project was too much relied on me. When you make mods (depending on what kind) you'll be doing a lot of everything. 3d modeling, 2d texturing, scripting, etc. And I was only ever really good at scripting. My 3d modeling skills and 2d skills were developing too slowly. And it just became too much to try to do everything at once on my own.

 

So I've been hands-off from modding from now on until - I don't know - 5 years from now. By then I imagine I'll graduate and get a job and won't have to balance modding with studying. So the take away to all this is that modding - like everything - is all about many many hours of dedicated work. Sometimes it's rewarding. Sometimes, honestly it's gut-wrenchingly disappointing.

[bben46]

You may want to check out the Tes Alliance website. It is more geared toward making mods and learning how to make mods than The Nexus - They have tutorials on a lot of stuff. Mostly TES but some for Fallout as well. :thumbsup:

 

http://www.tesalliance.org/index.php/

[beastlykill]

to all who post here,i am monitoring this post and i am reading and taking in all you say.I thank all of you who post/posted on here, im going to get started pretty soon thanks to all the info you have given me.I hope to be a contributing member one day.