Looking for some item creation tips

[dorkbot]

Hi all,

 

So i'm giving the Creation Kit a try. My goal is to make some items that are currently considered clutter into usable weapons. I've gotten as far as duplicating the entry for an existing weapon, but need some guidance on replacing the art assets, and general approach.

 

First off, how do I replace the meshes on my duplicate item (I duplicated an iron mace) with one of the other items assets? E.g., make my new item look like a shovel. When I click 'edit' on the Model File Name, it takes me to a file open dialogue. Do I have to extract the default meshes and open one of those?

 

Second, if the goal is to make shovels wieldable as weapons, what's the best approach to making all shovels in the gameworld wieldable? Should I just create my new weapon and have it appear in vendors / smithable, etc? Is there a way to replace all existing instances of clutter shovels with weapon shovels?

 

Thanks very much for any help.

[cecil101]

I too would like to know how to add custom meshes/textures to copied items so new items can be made....

 

P.S. sorry for putting my need in here too, I didnt want to clutter up the already overworked nexus :) hope you dont mind :)

[dorkbot]

No worries.

 

What I've done for now is used this BSA unpacker: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4804

 

Use it to open the "Skyrim - Meshes.bsa" in skyrim\Data\, and find the object you want. Unpack that mesh, and save the .nif file in skyrim\Data\Meshes\. You'll probably have to create that last directory, but the CK won't let you use a file stored outside of the Data folder. Then you can import it back to your new item.

 

I'd love a way to keep it all inside the CK since I'm just using default meshes, but not sure how to do that.

[Scripts18]

I vote for replacing every shovel with wieldable shovel!

 

Seriously I think it would be better, since you find shovel and clutter every where, would suck that only those in store could be used like weapons

[dorkbot]

Yeah, that's my intention, just not sure how it's done.

[cecil101]

So, all i need to do is save my custom mesh in a Cecil made directory inside the skyrim folder?

 

If I do skyrim/data/meshes/Cecil101

Import my .nif files to there

 

I can load them in the CK for custom standalone armors, weapons, misc.?

And this wont mess up anything?

[dorkbot]

Yep, that's what I did, works fine.

[dorkbot]

So any thoughts on how to replace the default items with my custom ones? Should I just do a search & replace on the regular shovels, replacing with my custom weapon versions? Would that be enough? Likely to break anything?

[dorkbot]

Well, I tried a search & replace, which seems to have done it. Nothing seems broken so far.

[KraGeRzR]

Watching this thread... I plan to do something similar with Lanterns - make usable lanterns that you can fill with Dwarven Oil or Soul Gems or Horker Fat.