GECK first timer needing help with basic project

[jcs441639]

I wanna play as Frank friggin Horrigan.

The guy who is so powerful that he's hideously and hilariously out of place with the rest of the mythos. The guy who with a normal boxing straight blew the upper torso off an alpha deathclaw. You know, the 1.5 ton animals with hides stronger than advanced metal combat armor?

And I have what I need to go about it. I have the GECK properly working (though even on my custom $1600 build it will take about a minute to load). And I have the Creatures and Weapons modding resources by CIB (Nexus URL is really unwieldly). Props to CIB for possibly the greatest set of resources I've ever seen.

I just have absolutely no idea of how to go about it.

Well that's not entirely true.

I'm a 23 year old general petroleum engineer, and have bits of extraneous knowledge on programming.

I understand for example that creatures use different skeletons (animations, and junk) than PCs and normal human NPCs. Luckily that Resources kit had everything needed to make this as smooth as possible. All of the model body parts are rigged to a human "skeleton", So basically I would just slap together a good Frank Horrigan model from all the bits and pieces.

Where do I go in GECK for actually making a PC?

Where do I start though?

I understand that there are tons of tutorials available, but my current situation is a little interesting. I somehow just had the best workout of my life after 36 hours of sleep deprivation. I did 8 sets on bench. 5 were just 1 rep with a new max around 5 lbs greater than anything I've done before. And I'm exhausted, and expecting to pass out within the hour. So my idea was that I could knock out 2 birds with one stone, and get probably around 14 hours of sleep deeper than hell, and hopefully get some direction on this when I wake up.

Many thanks to any who can give me help or direction with this project.

Sorry for this being word heavy. I'm just hype at the way my week has gone so far.

Edited January 28, 2015 by jcs441639

[jcs441639]

Rats.

It looks like the best pieces for an authentic Horrigan are using inhuman skeletons.

I have an idea though.

Is there a way to basically make the model, and associated animations into an armor, with coding to allow the created armor to use the skeleton the original "creature" model is based on. Despite the player still using the human skeleton. I dont need Frank to use pussy ass stim paks, or even be able to use weapons.

[KimberJ]

Who is "Frank Horrigan" I live in Tennessee on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Idk I spent 6 years learning GECK an didn't really get good at everything yet. Production an Packaging is the hardest, you know for sharing it later, the whole point, lol. The SDK is always a pain to use, so most of us use the editor as well. Meaning most of the stuff is created in a stooped spreadsheet. Another reason is the SDK doesn't allow somethings to be changed, probably where the editor came from.

 

Anyway where I would start with is building a melee character, cause it's the closest analog. Just build it an test. Either cheating or not. The whole boxer power generation is in their form an training which would mean changing animations, but it's possible to change all those an maybe even use a custom one for the PC, which would be the hard part. Wouldn't want a raider punching with form an all that. Also it's probably not good to do a one hit kill thing. Knock out/down got rid of that as a game mechanic. Besides the fact that there's a large amount of melee built into New Vegas, hence test it out, an look on the net for information on how the game's mechanics work on melee cause it's all hidden mostly an players just want guns most of the time.

 

Testing an making mods can kind of ruin the game, as in you know all the magic, so it's not magic anymore, though I can tell you it's all in your head. You just gota go into different modes. You know separating content creation mode, testing mode, an playing mode. Gota make the effort to switch it in your head depending on what you wana do, an prolly why developers end up going to other fields, just running out of that gamer juice. Just saying, cause the workload it's a risk to lose everything you ever loved about games, only to look everywhere to find it again. Also it takes a massive amount of never ending work, which prolly has a hand in it.

 

There's plenty of BOS troops with workout animations. U know from FO3 an the citadel, those dubes doing endless push ups an jumping jacks. You could make it something like that or like skyrim's training dummies, only with a havoked bag to work. Goes with the gloves an stuff. A problem is the dang balance of it all, making melee more powerful might ruin the game. Though hopefully most of that would be fixed just by making vanilla melee or testing it extensively taking notes on how to possibly improve it. You could look for other mods too, but prolly better to start with the vanilla version of that. It could even be a matter of making melee match guns as far as mods you use, damage wise, for balance.

 

From what I remember about Vegas though, melee is just kind of secondary, never got around to making one, hence why you should prolly do that first. It would be much more fun than trying to fix it without an extensive understanding of it such as it is in vanilla or even modded. Write stuff down on a notepad, cause there's no other way to keep up with it. Most of the mods you wana get can be done that way too, just play an write it down what you are interested in an then go look for it. It's not a very good idea to change the PC drastically cause so much of the game is designed around that, an other mods change it too.

 

GECK Official Page Covers the rest, though you would have to learn FNVedit the hard way, from using it for thousands of hours. The rest of learning how to mod is like that. Models for example takes 1,700 hours just to start getting good. After that it's pretty much going to the professional level with it all. At least with this idea it all kind of starts with the test of melee in the game an then adjusting the race to be like "frank" which is probably possible with a racemod. If you got the idea of a look of a character an the mechanics to create this guy, that's going to be a lot of work an learning.

 

I'm just saying before you jump in it's important to see what vanilla does or offers along with other potential mods that would allow a RP of it basically rather than a flat out build of it. Which at any rate would take a long time. Then once you make something, you learned enough to make it better, so if you iterate on it, you get a better result, probably another reason developers S***can the career an go work somewhere else. Urgh... The PC is 0000007 as a Form ID, as a reference placed in the world it's 0000014, easy to remember that way. Really it's just race, animations, perks, effects, quests, scripts, an art assets... Just guessing it would fall around there.

[jcs441639]

Ok.....

I was just talking about changing appearance alone. Appearances and models I have at my beck and call.

I did some looking around and found there was an option to change the skeleton the player character uses. So I could use the more inhuman skeletons and models that also came from the resource dump. Like having a normal human head on a 12 foot body with a 5 foot shoulder span and biceps that are close to becoming black holes. But nothing is ever that simple. Right? Again I just want to run through the game, be able to engage in and give dialogue. The killing machine bit comes later. I still want to be able to die if I'm worn down from a previous fight and there's a BOS gunline of like 10-20 guys 100ft in front of me that will pretty quickly tear me apart before I reach it.

You did give a lot of good information though.

This is a lot simpler than you're making it however.

Thanks.

Edited January 28, 2015 by jcs441639

[jcs441639]

I've woken up to a lot of realities messing with the GECK instead of passing out for the last 2 hours.

It would be worlds easier to just isolate, expand and contort the muscle groupings in the .nif included in the ST super mutants mod.

I understand nif editing can be finicky so can someone reccomend an editor? I'm not going to be erasing polygons. Just expanding them, making duplicates (making the number of polygons in the grouping increase, while keeping the same polygon size, thus making the muscle larger without losing texture quality) and adding new ones to change the structure of the muscle if need be. if knowledge serves me most problems arise from erasing polygons.

[KimberJ]

Make a super mutant race, an skin it human? Wouldn't be able to use weapons an armor, but the SM can use some weapons an there are animations to provide use for others. Scaling the PC as human would work, it would also scale the weapons an armor, but the head would scale too. U might find a mod that changes the male body, which it would be better to use that as a base, cause it's already been put into the game. You could look in the race editor, an npc editor in the GECK (hard to use) but it might have settings to allow facegen to make an abnormal body.

With a custom race you gota have a preset NPC for it, or it will crash in the game. FNVedit would do that quickly. Like copy a race as new entry into a new file, name it, then select two npc's that are already vanilla presets, male an female, an then copy those as new entries, then just go to the new entries you got, an change the race to your custom one, either click an wait an click or right click an edit an type in the form id 0200047 or whatever. Copy an paste as well. Once you get the base u would need to make a back up cause the SDK facegen editor is hard to use.

If you doubled the body size it would be 12 feet tall, then just shrink the head 1/2. The shoulder width would just stay whatever proportions of the original sculptor of the body. Even with mods most of that is the same, it's just had things added to it. Which is kind of funny because there are all these bodies that have texture incompatibilities, just cause the models were not set to be compatible. It's mostly the same old vanilla sculpt that came out the studio. I would think a large amount of that is just because .nif is pesky an the naked body itself even more so.

You couldn't just switch out the vanilla skeleton, it would break all animations in the game. We can use custom versions of that sure. Pretty much everything is converted to rely on that in a way or based off it. The skeleton doesn't even matter really unless you need to add nodes to do custom things, like flip night vision goggles down, bouncing boobs, change the places weapons are put. It's just a stick figure animation rig. Bones are nodes an in locations of 3D that the body or armor fit to, as a way to generically copy bone weights from one to the other, for production. Think of the naked body, there's a layer that is just weight paint, that tells the geometric shape how to bend an conform in regards to what the animation tells it to do. You look at the left arm weight paint an the whole body is painted to zero except for the arm, which is lit up like Christmas. Because it's a simulation, the bones an geometry doesn't exactly function like a human body, instead it stretches an bends an conforms to what it's being told to do, this is just edited with weight paint. Like a brush you paint onto the geometry, but a triangle at a time. *burp* I mean for example, copy the bone weight that is already there, use the vanilla skeleton as well. After that change the geometry however you like, as in make it 12 feet tall. At that point you could just copy the bone weight to armors if needed, cause you would have to make clothing too. Which would be fun, patched together an ripped stuff.

 

Pretty much we're limited to Blender, Gimp, paint.net, *blows thru lips, bluablahbuah* or crazybump. Then pro tools like a draw pad on your desk (get a $$$ one). Autodesk software, like 3D studio max, maya, an whatever new sculpting program is popular. Photoshop an NVidia plug in's for it. Something like that. The deciding factor is $$$... If you wana make a long term hobby use the free stuff, or buy the pro stuff. It doesn't really matter. Autodesk is more easy to learn, cause it's $$$, an Blender, Gimp, Paint.net are all free shareware produced by the communities on the net. I love blender, but it's hard to learn, most of that is due to the large scale of it's abilities, an the very few of that which applies to beth games, there was a new version of blender being made, just no plug in's for beth games, this was a couple of years back. Basiclly blender more like autodesk. Anyway what I was saying is you could use the free stuff for a while an if you liked it (an didn't injure your nerves in your wrist making your whole arm hurt, *ahem* which can happen even with just data entry) Then buy the pro tools, cause it's a significant cost, u'd really have to commit to it to either use it like a train set hobby, or for 5-10 years work that would open doors to the careers in design, games, or movies. At any rate, the first 1,700 hours using the programs would be a painful experience. After that it's like eating raw butter an smearing it all over your face while you are doing it. Basically setting up a studio in your house, but it's dangerous. One it can take up massive amounts of time, an two the hardware/software side $$$ investment or building content creation rigs, which isn't exactly a problem, but still at some point it all goes toward studio or industry level. i.e. doing motion capture in your house, technically you're a nerd/hermit at that point. Jus sayin it's a rabbit hole. After all that in anything of this nature is the whole developer side of it, production as in you need a producer's simulation in your head of it all, understanding of development, staying on track, iteration, testing, an release. It's not that I'm trying to make it sound complex, it's just a rabbit hole that is a complex amount of "never ending work" as others put it.

[jcs441639]

Ok so I here's what I have to work with:

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/39419/? The file with the enclave armor over a mutant body is the Behemoths file.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/44617/? for the supermutant race.

I'm going to ask a simple question and I want a (hopefully) simple answer: What would it take to convert one particular race (The super mutant one) to use a different creature skeleton (the supermutant behemoth ones included in the first file), and then have that particular skeleton altered so I can engage in dialogue. There's no sprite work to be done, or animation work to be done.

A second question. The more I look into this the more I realize I'm in over my head. This would take me 5 hours to rig up, and for a more experienced modder like you maybe 20 minutes. I hate asking for help but I work 40 hours a week, with 10 hour days.

[KimberJ]

*I made a super mutant wear a business suit one time, took a picture an deleted it, so awesome :D I reckon it would take you 4 months to a year to get good enough to do anything on FNV an FO3 meshes, some texture work would fit in there too, just working 2-16 hours per week end. That's worse case, some people learn blender fast. I still do it 6 years later, just not currently, I mean I'll still play an work with FO3 an FNV 6 years later, just not working now, an playing Skyrim, it's a good (train set) hobby *

 

Go to eat3d.com I think, or search eat 3D cause that forum has people making prototypes an learning the profession of design, you could prolly get a prototype an then convert it to game, or just you know get into the 3D world. Don't have too though, cause I just started modding FO3 an FNV an did it long enough to learn most of it, or learn that it's only a matter of learning, to create something.

 

-won't work probably-

 

Well the only real problem is the super mutant is made of more than one part, heck the human is too, but not as much. Really it would be like combining a super mutant mesh set, cause it's composite, that way they look a little different. Then basically importing a body into blender, then the super mutant, attempting to change the scale of either the human or super mutant so the two bodies are similar an then copy the bone weight from the human. This way it's a super mutant converted to human, not exactly touching the rest of the game an locked in a custom race. The other way would be make the PC a mutant which is just setting up the super mutant in a race rather than a creature. It gets foggy there. Cause it's two different forms. That also might default to human animations, making it no better than the other method above. Cause there's a separation between creature an race. But it wouldn't need all the character creation jazz of a race anyway. I don't think it would be possible to change an actor to creature either, an the player's an actor.

 

-works-

 

I tried to make chickens in Fallout 3 one time. So don't feel bad about it. I think a better method would be to just import a human an super mutant into blender in separate layers, to use the super mutant as a reference. Then it's just a question of editing it. I don't believe the skeleton (armature) would have to be changed. Bone weight would stay the same an only be edited. This could be done using a more muscular or larger male actor body as in a race replacer for the male, but using the mod's assets as a base which happens often, even still most of those are based on the vanilla body. There's always permissions to deal with other modders ip, but I don't think it would be a problem. In that it's just editing a body mesh, though texture sizes would have to increase to massive sizes, like above 4096, but not all of it is used. Also it couldn't match the super mutants because we still wana use the vanilla human animations. With the raw edit like that it sounds like it would more match the Frank guy. To start that you need a good picture of the guy, as the concept to use for a prototype. At that point it's only a question of using blender enough to get a good version, then refine perspective, or iterate. (it doesn't even have to work at that point) Then it would start to be moved into the game, which would require the understanding of tricks on how to import/export, but also editing a mesh. So the process would be like 8 hours a day for a month just to get a good grasp of it, then iterations an a good working prototype.

 

The stuff learned though is the same stuff to make armors though, an it wouldn't be as hard as the body. So really if you wanted, you could just start editing armors or female breasts, cause it's a compound curve. That or how shirts fit on the body, cause it's all editing an perspective stuff, an if you wanted to test these also you would learn the whole settings process so that it actually works. With that in mind, the first few hundred hours going up to 1,700 or 2,400 hours just using blender, an it would be different from person to person depending. None of that stuff has to work, you can throw it all away, an then just make the perfect replica of Frank. Then it's just testing. Most of that time is just learning tricks an getting perspective on it. Like you said way before you could just get a good human male body that is complete, get rid of the genitals to make it a ken doll, or use one with underware, cause they are all probably the same mesh, just different stuff added to it an edited, you know, plus the textures thing. Anyway, like you said, just scale up the sizes of things. Like proportional edit which kind of uses a brush, not really though, it's more like a method or pattern of vert editing. That an faces, or the lines of connected verts. Like a cylinder an you want to increase the middle, just grab the line going around the center. You can also scale things relative to what is selected. Then you know moving verts one at a time. You gota use that stuff an any tricks you can find to make edits to stuff. Not as much work as creating things from scratch, most of the nif format is already there.

 

If you wanted to start working on it then start with trying to figure out how to install blender, cause that's hard enough. You could also go the autodesk way, which would give you access to 3D sculpting, which is how everything is made now. Drawing with a pen basically. In that you would just increase the poly count of the body you picked an sit there listing to music drawing on a input device. Something like that would be more of creating from scratch though, instead of just flat out editing the stuff. Blender works great for that, it's just it's not a automated learning process , just get in there an use it. Some folks get it after a 100 hours or so, but I mean it depends on how hard the job is. I'll tell you this going from a concept to a working prototype is hard, an once that is done, it's like ahhhhh, but heh don't really care about it after that, the fun is over, an editing it just goes never ending. For you to do it, it would just mean time management. Pretty much play games an have fun an work an all that, but find time to work on the concept when you've been having too much fun. You could also just request it or find a character artist that's been working with this stuff. There was 6 years of modding before Skyrim just on the Fallout stuff, maybe longer. I reckon everyone went to Skyrim, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't go back to Fallout. At least one of the appeals for me is the high production value of stuff made in the Skyrim era, it would be cool to bring some of that back to the older games. Most of the time it's the other way around though, converting old stuff to new. But the practices an going from being modders towards indie development was unexpected.