Modding terminology.

[robertward203]

I'm working on an armour mod, following ahiras' tutorial and some others. But i don't know what any of the words mean, like:

 

rigging

skeleton

Maps (glow, normal etc)

bake

 

These are all the ones i've come across so can someone give me a definition of each of these and some other frequent ones?

 

Thanks guys, you're all giving really in-depth definitions and especially Ghogiel, you've answered so many of my questions on both this website and that other one. I hope this doesn't sound wierd, but i'm beginning to love you, not in a gay way though and if i ever see you in real life, i'm going to run up and give you a hug

 

So what are the steps to making a mod? like, 1. make mesh 2. rig it 3. uv it

I know this is a lot to ask and all i can give back is kudos, but i'd really appreciate it

[Ghogiel]

google them. you will get a better definition.

[niccolo]

Yeah, googling works - or we could be helpful for what we know. I know this might encourage laziness, but I can't help but be helpful. Especially to possibly-good modders. If he's asking these questions, he's at least past (Or, better, skipped entirely!) the "LoL I maed teddi-bar shaipt nades instantly explode like nukes!!1!" stage.

 

The only ones I can help with are the Maps and the Skeleton, so here goes:

 

Maps:

Have you ever noticed that, when you look at a weapon or a piece of armour that it appears to have texture and shininess? This is what a normal map does. It's essentially an image (.dds image for FO3 and Oblivion) that's a modifed version of the main texture image. In GIMP (Check Nexus) the Normal Maps are blue and purple, the colours detailing the simulated texture of the place - brighter for shinier places, darker for duller or rougher places. You have to render it in a special way (Experiment!) and you can change details on it with a little skill to get the effect you want. I recommend looking at normal maps of some mods you use so you can see what I mean.

 

Glow maps are kinda like that, but they tell a model where to glow as opposed to where to reflect light. You make a greyscale replica of your texture image and then you make any non-glowing regions very dark (Like, nearly black) and any glowing regions get lighter based on how much they glow. I've heard mentionthat you can make them glow in colours - or use a coloured glow map - but again, you should experiment for yourself.

 

When you're editing a model in nifskope (Again, Nexus is your friend!) you can set an object's emissivity - zero means it doesn't glow at all and one means a hundred percent glow. You do this for red, green and blue spectrums - the three main colours of light. These values tell the model how strong the glow is (So you can use the same glow map for three different swords, for instance, and they can all glow differently) and also which colour (red, green or blue) is dominant.

 

The last map is a UV map. This is generated by a program called... shoot, I forget... and it takes your carefully-made model, unwraps it and saves it as a flat image. From this you can paint on it to create your texture image.

 

 

A good example of what thse look like are in my mod, The Grey Cowl Redux. I know it has a texture, glow and normal map in it; go find it on TESnexus and pull it apart. Tinker with it in Nifskope and see how I attached the glowmaps to it. This'll give you a feel for how to name them, too.

 

 

Skeletons:

In FO3 and Oblivion, the models aren't all individually built and made to move. Instead, a mannequin is made (called a skeleton) that does all the movements; all of the objects you see - like the arms, the head and the torso - are all attached to this skeleton and so it is the body that appears to move.

 

Tinkering with a skeleton is reasonably advanced stuff - and, if I'm not mistaken, "rigging" is the term used for attaching things to a skeleton.

[Ghogiel]

I still think googling would get you a much better definition than what you provided. I think you might want to do a bit of googling and reading up yourself before giving advice. dude, your description of a normal map is scary. did you say "brighter for shinier places, darker for duller or rougher places.". That is not a normal map.

 

normal maps are rather complicated in both creation and function. My best advice is to google.

 

Basically, tangent space normal maps, are 'baked' from a high poly model onto a low poly model, the lowpoly's vertices tangent basis is an axis vector, this axis is used to determine the output pixel in the created map. Or you can make a normal map using a heightmap to normal conversion tool. These do not take into account meshes vertex or face normals, and thus will not be able to correct for shading errors in the low poly mesh. Most game objects will use a baked normal map, unless it is a flat surface, then most are derived from a bit map. However several architectural or landscape normal maps are created using baking. This is where every single hirez texture replacer for F3 fails. They can never create a better texture to replace the vanilla ones that are baked, without actually baking.

 

glow maps, are a type of mask map. other names, are self-illumination, or emissive map. These mask off areas from the mesh that you do no want to self-illuminate. Basically, Black=no glow, white=full glow. they will also color the effect, simply by adding color to the map.

 

skeletons are made of bones. search google to learn about skeletal animation.

rigging is either, creating a rig for the skeleton. or the act of binding a mesh to a skeleton. usually using a 'skin' modifier< this is also called skinning.

 

skinning is not texturing. A skin is not a mesh or a texture. Regardless of what noobs on some modding website seem to use those terms for.

[Nadin]

The skeleton is the base stick-figure creature. It's invisible in the GECK or game, but if you open it in nifskope you can see all the joints and etcetera. The visible portion/body/mesh wraps around the skeleton, much like armor does. The skeleton also handles animation and bodypart data. "Rigging" something generally means that you are binding a mesh to a skeleton or animation, or binding a skeleton to an animation. Or a texture to a mesh.

.Nif is the file used for meshes. Edited with nifskope.

.Kf is used for animations. I don't know how to edit these.

.Dds is for textures. Use photoshop or paint.net or something like that.

_g.dds is for glow.

_n.dds is for shine, I believe.

I've also seen _d and _m, but I don't know these.

If you are REALLY going to get modeling, I suggest you get blender with the nifskope options (Requires python 2.6!) or blender(Requires a spare $ 3K).

You should also have the GECK, FOMM, and F03edit, all fully patched. But those are for later.

Let me know if there's anything else.

 

Oh, and when binding the texture to your model, be sure to edit the bsstextureset node and alter the filepath to remove everything prior to /Textures/. You'll know what I mean.