assistance Making FO4 armor models in 3ds

[JesterDoobie]

There's a wonderful tutorial on tesnexus for this (http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Fallout_4._Part_1#Add_a_material), but it uses Blender. I'ma total noob with 3d models and I'm trying to stick to learning 1 proggy at a time (3DS for models, it's what Beth apparently used to MAKE the game, so imo should be the most useful tool to mod it. Plus in/out of a dozen proggys just to make a mesh functional in-game is kinda harsh workflow, drives me nutso. I KNOW 3DS does just about everything I need, and love Nifskope, it's an awesome tool.

I do know some stuff, can make a functional static object ingame, now I wanna try my hand at making armor pieces from scratch. Specifcally having a hard time with adding the correct bone info for whatever I make. If I wanna make a Hat/helmet IE, how do I go from the "NiTriShape/basic editable mesh" with bsLightingFX (shaders/textures r easy to apply) to tipping my hat at the ladies ingame? Research tells me I need to add the "helmet/headwear clothing node/bone?" info so it can sit on my head and move correctly, but I can't find how to do this anywhere in a form I can digest and use. Lots of stuff says to "import bones from another object" but how to do this in 3DS?

When I import an fbx from the CK, I have no bone info or BSShaderEffects mats or Havok/collision/animation data or anything, just a basic vertex model/editable mesh. So I can't just take apart a DCGuardHat and see how it works to learn to make my own.

 

I AM willing to use Blender if I gotta, but it's gonna take me a lot longer to figure this out if I do, learning 8-9 proggys at once is a trifle confusing and overwhelming. (3ds, Nifskope, Gimp, FO4/xEdit, BAE, Material editor, Blender, LOOT, NMM, The CK, cpl others, I always forget something, it's kinda crazy. And that's just for MESHES, don't count all the stuff I gotta do to create an esp that eventually uses my nif. Not really bitching about that, just trying to optimize my workflow and my time, right? Waste days messing around with something I don't quite understand when it's 3 button clicks in the right proggy (making static objects collideable was REALLY confusing because the most popular google results to "create collision for 3d model in Fallout 4" involve considerable back-and-forth from/to Blender/3DS/nifskope. But it's literally just 3-5 clicks in the correct 3DS menu (rigid body, select shape "mesh" add some force controls, set the material type and hit apply. That took me almost a week to figure out)

[Brigand231]

Your easiest (and likely best) bet is to import your model into Outfit Studio and copy the bone weights from a reference object and then hand paint from there.

 

We used to just use the copy bone weight scripts in Blender for F3/NV, but that's not an option for F4.

[xgamer468]

Or you could import a vanilla hat/helmet that has a similar shape to your scene in 3ds max and apply a skin wrap modifier to your new mesh. Add the vanilla mesh as a reference, convert it to skin, add a BSsubindexmodifier and export it as a nif. Done.