How do mod makers make custom weapons and armor? Help please

[FredrickBelmonte]

I've recently started to learn how to use GECK, and i can customize weapon and armor stats. But, how do i make a custom armor with custom meshes? i know it envolves photoshop and other softwares that's similiar, but when i try to search for softtwares like GIMP or FIREWORKS, they're all very outdated and old. How do recent mod makers make their custom weapons and armor?

 

[Oubliette]

New models need to be made in Blender or 3DSMax. As for the age of the programs, GIMP should be up to date and about on par with Photoshop. You would need both Gimp and Blender or Photoshop and Max (or some other combination of free+paid image and model editing programs) to create truly new custom armor or weapons. Neither is an easy program to learn without experience, dedication and patience (get used to googling things, you'll do it a lot and learn to use better keywords if your previous searches really availed you so little).

 

Good luck.

[Tony the Wookie]

Maya and Zbrush are also equally, if not more capable than 3ds Max at doing the same job.

 

Blender is the free way to do it, but no professional company uses it. So basically, 3ds Max, Maya, Zbrush, or Blender to make 3d models... Photoshop, GIMP, or Zbrush to make textures.

 

I personally, as someone who is trained in Max, Maya, and Photoshop argue that using Zbrush to make both the model and texture is the most efficient way to do things. Zbursh however is not free, and I don't know of any free alternative that can match the power of it. Blender and GIMP seem to be the best free way to do things, but I can't say that from experience, as I have bought all my programs.

[madmongo]

I used Blender. There's a pre-packaged set somewhere on the nexus (not sure if it's under FNV or FO3) that has Blender 2.49 and all of the nif import/export tools all together using versions that work with each other. It's an older version of Blender but it works well enough. There have been people trying to get the nif tools to work properly with newer versions of Blender. The last time I looked, which admittedly was quite some time ago, there were still a lot of things not working correctly. I'm used to 2.49 and everything works, so even though it's an older version I'm sticking with it.

 

I have GIMP and also have Paint.Net (which is not the same as MS Paint that comes with Windows). Both are free and both have add-ons available to handle dds files and normal maps. I tend to use Paint.Net most often but that's just a personal preference. My personal opinion on it is that GIMP is more powerful but is also a bit harder to use. Both can do the job quite adequately though.

 

Playing around with textures is fairly easy. 3-D modeling using Blender or any other program takes a bit more time to learn.

Edited August 13, 2015 by madmongo