how to create your armor or clothing mods file/folder structure?

[cosmat]

So i completed my first hack job of a mod a week or so ago. But i wanted to know what all i could do to make it a bit more organized. See i did all the mesh work, and exported it out of Maya as a finished product. But once in nifscope and getting ready to put it in game i ended up just overwriting the default vault 111 suit .nif with my own and when i was UV mapping i used textures from 2 other mods that already were installed. I did not make my own materials/meshes/textures folder i just overwrote and borrowed from pre-existing ones. I havent looked at any tutorials yet but i was guessing that maybe it worked something like this:

 

1) create materials, meshes and textures folder. Location doesnt matter for the initial setup since these 3 folders once complete will goes into the data folder and the nif and fo4edit knows to look in the data folder it just has to look for my 3 folder to find the right reference file for the mat/texture.

 

2) copy the materials and textures into my folders and rename them

 

3) do all my mesh modifications in Maya/3dsm and export the completed .nifs into my meshes folder.

 

4) replace shader stuff in nifscope...merge my trishapes with the shaders from a donor .nif. I forget what this process is called but i've done it several times already with no issues

 

5) create an .ESP for my mod in FO4EDIT.

 

Number 5 i know little about since i skipped that part when i was doing my own mod. Steps 1-4 i've already figured out and i've gotten my mods in game. But if i'm going to make my mod something that can be distributed on Nexus or easily turned on and off by me i need to know how to do that. For this can anyone recommend a good youtube tutorial? I want to be able to know how to assign mod slots to the gear i create, how to designate it as a piece of clothing or if its armor, or how to assign it as a glove slot, or headware, or a suit or if it can have ballistic weave installed on it.

Edited April 23, 2016 by cosmat

[cosmat]

ohh and i forgot to ask too, are there any good youtube tutorials on how to make a piece of armor/clothing bodyslide compatible? so that i dont have to ship it out with vanilla shapes or with my own CBBE body?

 

thanks

Edited April 23, 2016 by cosmat

[RustyXXL]

For bodyslide/outfit studio there are some tutorials linked on the bodyslide & Outfit Studio modpage.

I also wrote 2 very basic step-by-step tutorials. You can find these in the articles of my BodySlide Conversions.

For the file/folder structure I would recommend sticking to one structure from start to finish, wherever possible.

I would recommend a general structure following this basic example:

 

textures\<username or abbrevation>\<modname>\<outfitname>.dds

materials\<username or abbrevation>\<modname>\<outfitname>.dds

meshes\<username or abbrevation>\<modname>\<outfitname>.dds

 

This way you will never have conflicting names, and will always know where to find things.

Vut try to keep the paths relatively short. Paths that are to long can cause problems with nmm.

A similar structure can be made for BodySlide/OS. fro example all my bodyslide files are in a RXL folder inside their respective bodyslide folders.

Take a look at my files to get a sense for how I structured it.

 

For the esp I also recommend looking at other peoples esps inside fo4edit. It should be relatively quick to pick up, if you choose a smaller mod as example, as that is less confusing, because you don't have to look through to many entries.

 

I don't know about youtube tutorials. I plan to make a tutorial series about fo4edit, but this will take some time, I'm currently making a rough plan, but generally I prefer learning by doing or written tutorials for myself.

 

I hope this helped a bit. For more specific questions, you can try to pm me, but please understand that it sometimes takes me a couple of days to respond.

Edited April 23, 2016 by RustyXXL