I want to learn so I can teach; I want to create so I can share.

[Getinthyvan]

Howdy! Been on this site for years but silly and shy old me never bothered posting or interacting with others. Nice to meet you all c:

I've spent the last few weeks building models from scratch; my mind is set on building a large pack of custom content including everything from weapons and armor to hairstyles, beards, scars and eyes, plus spells, enchantments and custom shaders, and might even couple it with a new land and a campaign-sized questline I wrote a long time ago. The plan here is simple: create new content, release the whole thing as a Nexus exclusive and make all of my assets free, for anyone to use for their own work without limitations. I've got a good chunk of pieces finished already, and I just need some help doing things the hacky way with NifSkope and the CK.

On a side note, I'm also interested in (eventually, once I'm experienced enough) making a revamped mod-making guide for Skyrim. Why? Because most of the material on the net is outdated and involve fiddling with older, unstable versions of various programs, which can be very confussing for a lot of people; the software at our disposal [except maybe the Creation Kit (sorry Bethesda, you know I love you)] seems to have come a long way since the old days and methinks a complete, modern-day source of reference for modders needs to be compiled and properly organized, and I'm willing and able to help make it happen. If a proper team was to be assembled, we could collectively figure out bug-proofs ways to get every single thing done with the latest -- and my opinion, more efficient -- versions of every tool, so that people who just want to get into modding and have some fun making spells that shoot out pink fireballs that turn your enemies into dancing chickens don't have to go through insufferable headaches shuffling through thousands of topics on google... just tell me dear, wouldn't that be sweet?

ANYWAY, ON TOPIC

I succesfully exported my models from Blender as .nif files without any problems. I was eager to get a particular sword in-game, so I opened up NifSkope and copied the NiTriShapeData for the blade, scabbard and blood object into a Skyrim .nif (specifically, steelsword.nif) and pasted them over their respective counterparts. I then adjusted the texture paths and saved it as a separate file into my mod folder (data\meshes\GETINTHYVAN\weapons). I closed NifSkope and reopened it, loaded the new .nif and did some adjustments to BSlightingshaderproperty (namely, changing the value of Vertex Colors from no to yes and tweaking colors and glossiness), saved it again, and went into the CK. Duplicated a silver sword, changed the third and first person models for my .nif, adjusted the weapon's stats, removed the SilverSword script and named my sword. After that, I added a simple magic effect, created my own custom shader for it, and put it into a new enchantment. I enchanted the sword, saved, and went ingame.

So far, so good. I added the sword to my inventory via console commands and everything was working fine; I noticed a few positioning errors on the weapon (my character wasn't holding it properly), but it wasn't much of a big deal at that point in time. I saved the game, went back into the CK and created another magic effect for a spell I was planning to use later on; I played around with it for a while, and once I was done testing, I moved on to correct the weapon's position in NifSkope. This is when things started going downhill.

Right off the bat, as soon as I got the weapon in place, the CK begun going nuts on the sword missing an environment map (just the blade itself -- the scabbard had the exact same textures and it all rendered okay), so I checked the texture paths, but everything was looking fine in NifSkope. Just for good measure, I created a texture set for my weapon in the Creation Kit, but even then, it kept telling me I was missing an environment map! I kind of freaked out because it was there, I double, triple and quadra checked it. I thought it could be an error with the .dds, so I opened it up in Photoshop and made sure it was saved in a proper format (tried what google recomended, DXT1 RGB 4 bpp, no alpha, and then another couple formats suggested by Fallout modders) but the Creation Kit kept telling me it was missing. I checked the sword's .nif in NifSkope to see if the mesh had all the proper flags attached to it, and it did. I was pretty tired of trying by that point, but I kept making adjustments to the weapon's color and reflectivity in NifSkope as I did some further testing on my custom shader. Here's where I believe I screwed up; as I ran my tests ingame, I had the Creation Kit and NifSkope open simultaneously to save time; I noticed that whenever I adjusted a value in NifSkope, the CK would catch up to the changes I made to the sword's .nif file.

 

And just like I should have anticipated, that route led to disaster! At one point, the CK freaked out. I didn't touch anything in the .nif outside of BSlightingshaderproperty; I just tried lighter and darker colors as I tweaked my custom shader in the CK, keeping both programs running as I launched Skyrim to see how the weapon looked ingame. After about two hours of testing, the sword started refusing to be unsheathed! whenever I equip it and hit R, my character raises his hands (as if he was unnarmed), and re-equipping only makes him hold an invisible weapon, while the model for the sword stays in the scabbard. That's frustrating enough, but as soon as I tried to fix it, the Creation Kit went nuts on me again and stopped acknowledging the existence of the textures for the scabbard! Just like it did with the environment map! (warning after warning of telling me I'm missing textures that are exactly where they are supposed to be! I PENTA checked those texture paths!) And now I have a really pretty and shiney sword with an awesome custom shader... that cannot be unsheated from it's solid white scabbard! Ugh!

 

Soooo, I have no idea what caused the missing environment maps in the first place (I thought maybe the texture paths for those are hardcoded, so I tried using "cubemaps" in my sword_e.dds' file structure, but that didn't work), so my guess right now is that messing around with shading in NifSkope can cause a file to get corrupted somehow (if that makes any sense). I don't know a way to fix this particular issue, and I mean "fix" in a traditional sense -- after all, at this point it's all a matter of deleting the item in question (the record itself is apparently broken beyond repair, as new instances of the same item yield the exact same results) and recreating it (and just to be sure, recreating the .nif for the sword as well); the real question here is how to avoid the Creation Kit from flipping out like this. I could really use a hand right now: is it possible to safely edit an object multiple times without my testing leading to broken records? Is there a, let's say, more hacky way of doing things that I am not taking into account?

 

For now, I have come to some logical conclusions from my experimenting that I'll try to use as guidelines in the future:

 

#1 - Creating duplicates of items for testing is a must, IF recklessly messing around with shaders, effects, explosions, magic effects and the like can get the record for an item screwed up then I need duplicates whenever I go on a rampage of trial and error.

 

#2 - Backing up .nifs (and .dds-es, just for good measure), also a must, IF somehow repeatedly changing the colors on the BSlightingshaderproperty block can somehow awaken the dormant unstability issues of NifSkope then I need to mess around with discardable files and take note of the values I need (this could also help discover which settings can lead a .nif to get messed up).

 

#3 - Keeping a log so I can organize my notes more efficiently and reflect on where I went wrong would be helpful (guess this topic could be used for that purpose, IF that doesn't go against some forum rule I am not aware of).

 

Finally, and to conclude this wall of text, any sort of advice is more than welcome. Like I said at the beggining of this post, I'd be more than willing to help compile a comprehensive, clear and detailed series of up-to-date guides on mod-making once I get through my newbie stage. From 3D modelling to UV Mapping and texture painting, from importing .nifs to fiddling in NifSkope and creating quirky stuff in the Creation Kit, and so forth. And mind you, I'm no lazy bum! I'll take this whole task uppon myself if need be. *most likely scenario*

[FrankFamily]

I never ever have had any nif or record within ck corrupted, so can't really tell what's going on, but i'd say don't edit assets while ck is open, make your assets, then load the ck adn do stuff. If you need to do a few iterations on something checking the result nifskope 2.0 (googleit ) delivers a close to ingame render or just use the game itself, not the ck. That's how i do it at least.

 

The _e texture is the cubemap (what appears, the enviroment) and the _m is the enviroment mask (where it appears and with what intensity) they go on the 4th and 5th slots respectively, it's not hardcoded or anything. And you need to have the appopiate shader type and flags for it to work. Copying from a vanilla nif having it and changing the paths works. You'd want to extract the content of textures/cubemaps/ from the skyrim-textures.bsa and test the cubemaps available unless you are going to make your own.

 

Edited because i went crazy and wrote some confusing stuff....

[Getinthyvan]

You seem to have some confusion on the cubemap thing. the _e texture is the cubemap/enviroment mask (where it appears and with what intensity) then on the line below that goes the cubemap path, it's not hardcoded or anything. And you need to have the appopiate shader type and flags for it to work. Copying from a vanilla nif having it and changing the paths works. You'd want to extract textures/cubemaps from the skyrim bsa and test the cubemaps available unless you are going to make your own.

 

Hmm, alright... but the vanilla .nif I used as template says otherwise...

 

http://i322.photobucket.com/albums/nn406/akiraDan/Untitled_zpsb7vf2ben.png

 

Not to mention around 90% of the enviroment maps found in SkyrimTextures.bsa have _e in their filename...

[FrankFamily]

lol, just read what i wrote, not sure what was crossing my mind at the time of posting but i totally did some weird mixing, should stop answering stuff without sleeping well.... Yeah, _e is cubemap, goes on the 4th, _m is enviromask and goes on 5th.

I'm going to edit that before anyone else reads it and gets confused.

 

so I tried using "cubemaps" in my sword_e.dds' file structure

 

 

Are you still having odd behaviour with a vanilla cubemap on the forth slot?

-check shader type is enviroment mapping

- there should be a enviroment map flag too on the first group

- enviroment scale should be higher than 0, it's basically the strength of the effect.

 

Those 3 things and everything i can think that could affect enviroment mapping (the _m being non-black of course too)

[Getinthyvan]

Writting without sleeping... I feel you there... I was on a coffee-drinking binge myself when I started this thread! Broke my own record by the way, fifty-four hours before I finally fell into my bed.

 

I didn't even touch the shader type and flags; used 1stpersonsteelsword.nif as template and that file already has those. Side-by-side comparisons between my .nif and the original don't reveal any errors on my part, so this is most probably an issue with the Creation Kit. I've already redone the .nif for my weapon and encountered no more problems, but just to be sure something like this doesn't happen again I'll see if there's any patch or minor fix for the CK around the web that I've missed.

 

Just noticed the armor on your siggy, so quick question: compatibility-wise, is it safe to rig my armors using the vanilla skeleton? I really don't want to use those half-a-million node custom ones, painting the weights for that would be way too time consuming.

[FrankFamily]

Ingame looks fine?

 

Regarding the armor thing, yes, totally safe afaik, your armor will simply use the nodes is rigged too and ignore all the new ones. Same as you don't rig a helmet to every single bone of the vanilla skeleton, just the head for most.

[Getinthyvan]

It looks good enough for the first weapon I've ever made for a TES game... I'd upload a few screenshots but I'm the middle of reinstalling everything to fix a few issues with my game, and also to switch from NMM to Mod Organizer. No hate for the Nexus Manager but it made my data folder a complete mess... and having to keep the downloaded files for every mod I use is simply too much for my 200GB hard drive. But as soon as I'm done restoring my Skyrim to it's former glory I'll come back to post a few images... and with some luck I'll also have my first outfit ready by then c: