Help on a simple Armor mod

[DOGREDRUM43130]

There are already a couple of mods already listed as "More revealing" usually so I know parts of vanilla armors can be removed. My question is how to do it, I want to remove some of the Ancient Nord Armor parts like the shoulder pads and the three pieces on the chest to make it more like the lower level Draugr armor instead of the Draugr Wright armor. Any help is appreciated.

[Uzidian]

I second this I want to rid myself of torso section of ebony mail. hopefully someone can answer this

[Clarian]

The basic process is:

 

1. Edit the alpha channel of the texture image (dds file) for that armor. The parts of the alpha channel that you paint black will be invisible. (I use Photoshop with the dds plugin to edit the images.)

 

2. I'm not sure if this step is always necessary, it might depend on the armor. But if you remove the torso of the armor in step 1 and then in-game there's just an empty void where character's torso underneath the armor should be, then do this:

 

Combine a full-body mesh with the mesh of the armor you want to modify. (Most armor meshes have a partial body mesh along with them, but not a full one - so you'd want to remove the partial and add a full.) This is the tutorial I read to learn how to do this:

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Making_new_armor_from_cut_and_paste

 

(To get nifskope to work with Skyrim, you need an updated nif.xml to put in the Nifskope installation folder. Um...I don't remember a link for it, but it's not too hard to find.)

 

That's kind of a brief summary, but if you have any questions on that maybe I can help.

[Clarian]

I should add that you might run into trouble...as I did yesterday. I was trying to work with the Fur armor and found that some parts of the texture image map to multiple parts of the armor. So that by making one part that you want to invisible, you also make another part that you DON'T want to invisible.

 

I'm not a super-experienced modder, but I've never seen this before - one part of a texture mapping to multiple parts of a model. I think it's...bad. It's certainly inconvenient for modders. As far as I can see the only way around it is to remove the pieces I want from the mesh itself rather than just editing the texture alpha. But...as far as I know there's not a way to do that yet. I think it would require a way to export/import to Blender or something. Nifskope doesn't seem to have a way to do that, anyway.

[DOGREDRUM43130]

Yeah, you're right about needing blender to remove the parts and if we could do that I wouldn't have needed the help, but I thank you for the info and quick response there is fur under the shoulder pads so I hope I don't run into a problem.

[xxxNEOxxx]

it is possible. just edit the uv map in nifskope.. in nifskope right click on the nitrishape -> texture -> edit uv. Then pick up one point of the part you want to edit (which seems to be double used in your case) -> right click -> select connected. Then just move the part you want to a free space - holding left click on that point

[DOGREDRUM43130]

No, it says "could not load texture data" I may need to update the nifskope I haven't done that in a while. Anyway, I try that later kind of busy today.

[Clarian]

it is possible. just edit the uv map in nifskope.. in nifskope right click on the nitrishape -> texture -> edit uv. Then pick up one point of the part you want to edit (which seems to be double used in your case) -> right click -> select connected. Then just move the part you want to a free space - holding left click on that point

 

NICE! Thanks for pointing that out. I tried it and it worked!

 

That's an awesome tip, it should really help with modding armor until mesh editing is possible...

[DOGREDRUM43130]

How far out did you move them Clarian? I got three colors Light gray, Gray, and Black I moved from the Light Gray to the Grey and it almost work some parts were invisible but others just got random sections of texture. However when I tried to move them to the black they all got random textures not just from the armor itself but the environment too.

 

And thank you NEO this seems like it is what I needed the Alpha Channel stuff just wasn't working out for me.

 

Edit:

 

BAH! I got enough of the armor to go invisible to learn that there are body parts missing underneath so it looks like I'll have to wait till we can use Blender or some other tool.

Edited November 28, 2011 by DOGREDRUM43130

[Clarian]

How far out did you move them Clarian?

 

What I did with the UV map was, I moved the parts I wanted to get rid of all into a corner of the image that wasn't mapped to anything. I also blacked out the alpha channel over where I moved them, though if that area wasn't mapped to anything, it might not have mattered. I also may have got lucky that there was a good bit of unused space with that particular texture to move them to.

 

But you only really need to edit the UV map if there's an overlap between parts that you do and don't want to remove.

 

You can fix missing body parts under the armor without blender, I've gotten that to work. You just need to add a full body to the mesh. (There's usually a partial body that you'd be replacing.) That tutorial that I linked above basically shows how to do that.