Your preferred programs for modding Fallout 4(3D modeling & Texturing)?

[fftfan]

Which programs do you prefer for 3D modeling & texturing? I'd also be interested to read what you like about the program and why you chose it over the alternatives.

 

I'm currently deciding on whether I want to go with 3DS Max or Maya, I have been using Blender in the past but am deciding to switch as after I've come back from a several year modding break I find there's not really many resources about using Blender specifically for Fallout 4 although davethfc did find a couple. Somebody in the past suggested I ditch Blender for 3DS Max or Maya, at first I didn't want to but now I do want to switch.

[asXas]

I've used Maya since I started out doing 3D ~7 years ago, for sculpting I use Zbrush. I do however use 3DS Max to export the models to .nif since the official nif plugins only support 3DS Max.

If you're on the fence on which you ~should~ use I would say if your only goal is to do models for Fallout 4/Other Bethesda games pick 3DS Max. If its for general 3D stuff I'd say try both for a week or so and pick whatever you feel the most comfortable in.

 

As for texturing and that stuff I Bake my normal maps and AO in Marmoset Toolbag 3 then do my textures in Substance Painter. Both programs is one of my best purchases in recent memory, worth every cent.

 

As for what i specialize in I guess it's making weapons with hopefully high-quality textures. :happy:

[fftfan]

I've used Maya since I started out doing 3D ~7 years ago, for sculpting I use Zbrush. I do however use 3DS Max to export the models to .nif since the official nif plugins only support 3DS Max.

If you're on the fence on which you ~should~ use I would say if your only goal is to do models for Fallout 4/Other Bethesda games pick 3DS Max. If its for general 3D stuff I'd say try both for a week or so and pick whatever you feel the most comfortable in.

 

As for texturing and that stuff I Bake my normal maps and AO in Marmoset Toolbag 3 then do my textures in Substance Painter. Both programs is one of my best purchases in recent memory, worth every cent.

 

As for what i specialize in I guess it's making weapons with hopefully high-quality textures. :happy:

I can definitely say your textures are high quality! Didn't initially recognize you but I found I'm using a bunch of your mods when I checked your page. Even been using Crude Blowback on Xbox One last year. Will go through and endorse them all. It'd be a dream come true if I could have such versatility in texturing.

 

Modeling I will make stuff for Fallout 4/Skyrim/Oblivion. And I might consider getting Star-field when it's out but space sims aren't my kind of thing. I will spend some more time in 3DS Max. I hope to have high control over the model so I can also make a good UV map. Maybe texturing would be slightly easier that way, it doesn't look quite so bad in tutorial videos when they get a very good unwrap.

 

 

I will look into Substance Painter & Marmoset Toolbag 3. So far I didn't really like Photoshop for texture creation. It's great for modifying an existing one like if you want to do a recolor or something else that's fairly easy. But for trying to make brand new textures from scratch I didn't like it. On my old monitor I had 1368x768 but now I'm playing on 4K so low res/low quality stuff sticks out like a sore thumb. With stuff like guns it might have been fine on my old screen but now if a weapon had poor textures it would look like my character is holding some kind of cheap toy. The level of quality I want would be closer to something like your textures but I'm not much of one for hand-painting/drawing. Part of my difficulty could have been from using Blender 2.49b in the past, UV mapping never worked well so it made the texturing process much harder to understand.

[jkruse05]

I started making models with Blender around 2007 (for Oblivion), did a little bit with an ancient 3ds max version before that, whenever they had that free version, gamemax or something like that. Unfortunately I didn't really keep up with it while I was in college, so with Fallout 4 I had to pretty much reteach myself everything. I'm not involved with any industry that would help me get more advanced software for cheap, (and I prefer not to use student versions since I don't technically qualify), so purchasing all kinds of ridiculously expensive software isn't really worth it for something that's an on again - off again hobby. So, I only use open source stuff. I go through the loop of blender, to outfit studio to get the .nif format right, then refine in nifskope.

 

I'd say, if you intend to refine your skills and attempt to make some sort of career out of it, go for 3ds max and/or Maya and probably Zbrush too, later on. If you just intend to do it as an occasional hobby, stick to Blender and the other freeware.

[fftfan]

I started making models with Blender around 2007 (for Oblivion), did a little bit with an ancient 3ds max version before that, whenever they had that free version, gamemax or something like that. Unfortunately I didn't really keep up with it while I was in college, so with Fallout 4 I had to pretty much reteach myself everything. I'm not involved with any industry that would help me get more advanced software for cheap, (and I prefer not to use student versions since I don't technically qualify), so purchasing all kinds of ridiculously expensive software isn't really worth it for something that's an on again - off again hobby. So, I only use open source stuff. I go through the loop of blender, to outfit studio to get the .nif format right, then refine in nifskope. I'd say, if you intend to refine your skills and attempt to make some sort of career out of it, go for 3ds max and/or Maya and probably Zbrush too, later on. If you just intend to do it as an occasional hobby, stick to Blender and the other freeware.

Same as me. I used Blender 2.49b originally and have been away for a good number of years. I've been away so long since my old system with GT330M/2.67Ghz dual core barely ran Skyrim(like 20fps average with everything on minimum plus further ini hacks to make the game more lightweight and I even tried DOSkyrim but it didn't help for some reason) and I've only just upgraded. It basically looked and performed worse than on Xbox 360. Although I'm deciding to switch to a new 3D modeling program mainly because these reasons:

• Still no proper Nif support for Skyrim/Fallout 4. There's the workarounds but it seems like some of the data like materials get lost in the process, I found that if you copy over material data from a vanilla outfit the end result looks off.
• The devs have stopped working on it at least as far as supporting TES/Fallout goes.
• UV system just wouldn't work well for me, I tried both the automatic methods and hand-placing seams for unwrapping. Tried recreating the UV maps on vanilla stuff in-case it was something to do with my models but same results.

I could have tried Blender 2.6 but I'm thinking it may be just as well to switch to 3DS or Maya and/or Zbrush instead.

 

I'd say, if you intend to refine your skills and attempt to make some sort of career out of it, go for 3ds max and/or Maya and probably Zbrush too, later on. If you just intend to do it as an occasional hobby, stick to Blender and the other freeware.

I'd really love to though I wonder if this would mean I have to maybe try getting tied into that Creation Club stuff. One of the authors said you get to learn from Bethesda people so it sounds like probably the main way to go for potential career. I'd obviously love to learn skills from Bethesda but CC means putting a price on your stuff and that will lock people out of it. I think it'd be a little bit better if content went free after a timeline like say 6 months.

 

Not sure how I feel since the whole thing seems like it might go against the spirit of free modding. There's a ton of cool content on the Nexus which shows what is possible and I have to wonder how much of it wouldn't exist today had the game launched with a paid mods system or a Creation Club from the beginning. I think a lot of it happened because the authors tried really cool stuff they liked at some point and this inspired them to look into the game more in-depth and start developing skills to make their own mods. Whereas if the mods they wanted to try were paid content they may have just said no and never gotten more into Fallout 4 modding.

 

I mean putting a CC style price on every mod I have installed I'm sure the total would be $500 USD or more. Sim Settlements would be like $20-30 and each addon pack would be $5 or $10.

 

But I might try the old fashioned way and go to uni for Computer Science or something so who knows.

[kitcat81]

Many of these programs are not interchangeable on my view. I would not use Adobe Illustrator to edit textures. I`d go with Photoshop or Gimp.

Tried both Max and Blender - I`m a newbie at this. Only made a few custom models and never uploaded them. Max has a bit better UI and also has an official plugin to convert objects with collisions, wich is an important thing in the context of creating mods for Fallout 4.

I really like zbrush , it feels much more natural. Not sure if zbrush is suitable for creating something like a car. It seems to me that it`s perfect to create or edit characters. Unfortunately, many of good tools are quite expensive for people who just model for fun, not always possible to get them all.

Have not tried Maya.

I`d like to make different things. But some of them seem easier to learn and some are harder. I find scripting much easier than creating something in render window. I can`t for my life get used to this tool. Wish I could go into the first person view and walk around my model instead of trying to rotate and adjust the view. Building in game from the first person view is 100 times easier. But I do have some ideas that I would like to implement. Hope I will get over this at some point. Other things seem not so hard and mostly intuitive ..maybe apart from quest scenes with the weird looking structure. So for now I`m just experimenting with all sorts of things. When I like the result of my experiments, I upload it on nexus.

[jkruse05]

 

• Still no proper Nif support for Skyrim/Fallout 4. There's the workarounds but it seems like some of the data like materials get lost in the process, I found that if you copy over material data from a vanilla outfit the end result looks off.
• The devs have stopped working on it at least as far as supporting TES/Fallout goes.
• UV system just wouldn't work well for me, I tried both the automatic methods and hand-placing seams for unwrapping. Tried recreating the UV maps on vanilla stuff in-case it was something to do with my models but same results.

Interesting. Materials seem to work just fine for me. I export the vanilla model from Nifskope first, as an .obj, then import the .obj to Blender, that seems to keep the UV and materials working fine. What gets broken are any 'modifiers', like a mesh being mirrored, and that can slightly mess with the textures, like leaving visible seams where it's supposed to blend together.

 

I definitely agree that UV unwrapping is huge pain in the ass. That, and making the textures themselves are what slow me down the most. In blender you have to rely on a combination of different methods. Unwrapping bits and pieces individually and sewing them together is usually the route I have to take.

 

Hard to beat direct .nif support from 3ds max though.

[fftfan]

Sorry about late reply. I had typed up a reply already but don't know what happened.

Interesting. Materials seem to work just fine for me. I export the vanilla model from Nifskope first, as an .obj, then import the .obj to Blender, that seems to keep the UV and materials working fine. What gets broken are any 'modifiers', like a mesh being mirrored, and that can slightly mess with the textures, like leaving visible seams where it's supposed to blend together. I definitely agree that UV unwrapping is huge pain in the ass. That, and making the textures themselves are what slow me down the most. In blender you have to rely on a combination of different methods. Unwrapping bits and pieces individually and sewing them together is usually the route I have to take.

Hard to beat direct .nif support from 3ds max though.

UV mapping was the biggest obstacle since it made it really difficult to try to gain an understand the texturing process which I had already been disinterested in on my old PC. My specs were really bad so I wouldn't be able to even use anything with decent textures. All I wanted to do at that point is pretty much make discount textures that run on the weakest hardware possible so trying to get UVs working in Blender was an unwelcome obstacle.

 

Now I have better hardware so that isn't any limitation anymore but there's so much stuff to learn about I'm not sure where to start!

 

I see about the modifiers, I'd seen the seams thought it must have wrecked either the UV map or materials.

[fftfan]

Strange forum code bug, it keeps adding end quote tags to the bottom of the post automatically.

 

Tried both Max and Blender - I`m a newbie at this. Only made a few custom models and never uploaded them. Max has a bit better UI and also has an official plugin to convert objects with collisions, wich is an important thing in the context of creating mods for Fallout 4.

I really like zbrush , it feels much more natural. Not sure if zbrush is suitable for creating something like a car. It seems to me that it`s perfect to create or edit characters. Unfortunately, many of good tools are quite expensive for people who just model for fun, not always possible to get them all.

Have not tried Maya.

Tell me more. In max main thing I didn't like although I only try briefly were the 4 screen split. On a 4K monitor each region still looks quite small so it makes things difficult. They are cool to have but I wish I could toggle to a single viewpoint at a time.

 

They are incredibly expensive but it might be possible to get a Student license.

 

I`d like to make different things. But some of them seem easier to learn and some are harder. I find scripting much easier than creating something in render window. I can`t for my life get used to this tool. Wish I could go into the first person view and walk around my model instead of trying to rotate and adjust the view. Building in game from the first person view is 100 times easier. But I do have some ideas that I would like to implement. Hope I will get over this at some point. Other things seem not so hard and mostly intuitive ..maybe apart from quest scenes with the weird looking structure. So for now I`m just experimenting with all sorts of things. When I like the result of my experiments, I upload it on nexus.

Same here. Learning to do things in the beginning seems like the hardest part.

 

Many of these programs are not interchangeable on my view. I would not use Adobe Illustrator to edit textures. I`d go with Photoshop or Gimp.

Editing textures yes but what about creating textures? Best thing is probably to try doing that so there aren't any issues due to permissions and such. Or maybe author whose file you used as a resource goes AWOL and takes all his stuff down, it would likely not be allowed to use his file as a resource anymore. Edited October 9, 2017 by fftfan

[jkruse05]

Creating textures isn't too hard once you get the UV map done, it just depends what quality level you're going for. GIMP will work just fine for it, for brand new ones or editing existing ones. You just have to get the .dds and normal map plugins for it. Alternatively Photoshop CS2 is supposedly free now, which might have support for those built in, but I'm much more familiar with GIMP at this point so I stick to it.