Retexture mods.

[MF0TY]

Hey, I am soon going to be getting a pc and hopefully doing some modding and mostly in the way of retextures everything from people to animals to weapons and buildings so what are some good programs or books i can look into to help me improve my art skills and what are all the art skills I will need to work on retexturing, making people ect..

[Moraelin]

Well, for retextures you only need to be able to edit a bitmap file, basically. So if you're any good at painting, you're all set.

 

What else you'll need is basically

 

- the GECK ( http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/downloads/geck.php ),

 

- some painting program. You probably have one you use already, if you're a graphics artist, and probably the best is the one you already are used to. But if in doubt, the GIMP is free and works.

 

- some way to convert from .dds (the format used by the game) to whatever you can edit or back. Personally I use NVidia's command-line texture tools, but most the rest of the world just uses the GIMP or Photoshop plugins that let them directly load and save .dds files

 

- some way to extract the existing textures out of the game's .bsa files, if you want to change them. Personally I use the FO3Archive program, but FOMM can also do that for you, and has a few more useful functions too

 

You may or may not also get NifSkope to be able to edit the .nif files that contain the 3d shapes. You can do retextures without changing those, by using texture sets in the GECK, and in fact I would highly recommend that. But sometimes it's useful to be able to at least look in the .nif and see what part uses what texture.

[Vondure]

Would be best to learn your way around your chosen graphic editing program first.

That would often either be Photoshop or Gimp. Watch lots of YouTube video tutorials.

I used to do that. And keep reading guides, they are resourceful. They're on this website.

[MF0TY]

Alright thanks for the input, hopefully I'll have something decent up before christmas..