Modding magic effects

[Edmond Dantes]

Hey everyone,

 

I've been meaning to ask if anyone might know of a tutorial or better yet help me understand the methods for modding magic. Particle effects, and how they work is still a mystery to me. I don't have any problem understanding most nifs like weapons, armors, items and statics, but when it comes to magic effects, I'm afraid I can't make much sense of their file structure. For example, when opened in nifskope, they would have a branch structure that's considerably different from other nifs. Most of the time, I can't even identify what textures they use.

 

I realize that creating custom particle effects may not be possible right now, so I plan on starting with something simple, like modifying certain magic effect's appearance. But unfortunately, I'm having trouble even doing that, because as I mentioned before I could make little sense of their file structure. I can't even get the magic effects to display properly in Nifskope (even after unpacking every effects/magic related texture I'm aware of). When I open a magic file to see what it looks like, the Nifskope viewer comes up blank. I could see the nodes, but not the effects. This is rather strange cause I remember being able to actually see magic effects from previous games like Oblivion and Fallout. Is this a limitation of the current Nifskope or am I missing something?

 

Basically, in order for me to be able to start doing some magic modding I would need to be able to do two things:

 

1. Make the magic effects viewable in Nifskope

2. Understand how to identify the textures for each effects or how to assign them.

 

Now if anyone can help me with these two things for starters, I might be able to go from there.

 

Please let me know if you have any info that can help. Thanks.