What tools do you need these days?

[mileafly]

I know that the last time I modded skyrim there was some tools needed besides Nexus Mod Manager. Like Loot etc. Are these still needed or can you do these stuff with Nexus Mod Manager now?

 

Some other tools that are recommended?

[Moksha8088]

LOOT

TES5Edit

FNIS

Bodyslide

Wrye Bash

 

They can all be run from within NMM.

[gnarly1]

LOOT

TES5Edit

FNIS

Bodyslide

Wrye Bash

 

They can all be run from within NMM.

In addition to those:

BethINI (highly recommended)

Skyrim Performance Monitor is useful

DDSopt for texture optimisation although you can normally find optimised ones

ENBoost

DynDOLOD

[metaforce]

I use GIMP for making easy changes to textures. IMHO is a much cleaner/better way than using some kind of TexBlender for editing difuse or other maps. Remember to get the optional dds plugin for Skyrim.

[mileafly]

All all these also necessary for Skryim SE?

[Deleted3082751User]

Creation kit, being the most necessary (especially for me since i am a mod author and for you since other authors will typically use this tool to provide content to you, and likewise this tool is used for almost every mod, and will increase the mod count greatly, hence this would be the most necessary tool for mod production or anything modding related and since we are talking about this on forum which is part of a website dedicated to modding, this would absolutely be the most necessary tool their is, regardless if you use it yourself or not, it is still very essential and necessary to you as a mod user, regardless if you have it yourself or not)

 

A Mod organizer - the second most essential and necessary (self explanatory) - However manual is far better, but lot more time consuming, and requires the user to be smarter, by doing everything manually backing up stuff being 1 of the smart choices. however if done right their can be no issue with this method. automatic is never full proof, hence mod organizer of any sort are not 100% full proof they can mess up. after all programming is never 100% either, but manually doing stuff can be 100% full proof as long as you know exactly what you are doing.

 

tes5edit, SSEedit and Fo4Edit are only necessary for game stability (but likewise requires user input, else it wont do nothing to the game on its own), and grants the ability to modify a mod far quicker the using the creation kit, however these tools are not an alternative to the creation kit (and again are situational. they are still very powerful tools, and for mod authors and hardcore modders alike, incredibly important, but again it only applies to modding, for a vanilla game or mostly vanilla game, they are redundant and likewise only necessary to those that use them.

 

Every other tool are essential but not necessary, as most are situational based and entirely depends on what mods you are using.

 

however all of these tools are only necessary to modding.

 

for textures i would recommend downloading alternatives rather then "optimizing" them, in most cases you will get much better performance with far superior textures, thus making the game look far superior with far superior performance.

 

"optimizing" textures if done wrong will not only make the game look far worse but could also create a negative effect of lower performance. the very opposite to so called optimizing, and worse case scenario you will get a lot of texture related issues, such as texture corruption, pink/purple textures, etc etc. theirs no such thing as free performance, thus optimizing is a fickle matter, because optimizing usually means sacrificing quality for performance so this eliminates the "free" part of this scenerio.

 

the tools are only necessary to the person using them, if you prefer the vanilla game (unmodded skyrim) , then all of these tools mentioned above would then be redundant

 

in fact the very word "free" is obsolite, "free" is about as real as "perfect", none of which exist.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Guest

[VanKrill]

I use Nifskope extensively.

 

A good note editor, particular Notepad++ with the Papyrus script module is a good idea if you're going to be doing a bit of scripting.

 

TESSnip is good for some esp file edits, but you must be careful, as the tool is not certified for all elements of a modern esp file.

 

Better to use TES5Edit, if it has the ability to access the fields you're after.

 

Milkshake, 3d editor, with the exporter mod for Skyrim NIF files is needed to make new meshes. I don't usually bother with this, as it is very time consuming and error prone. I find it easier to simply modify an existing mesh, or combine elements of several meshes, in Nifskope.

 

 

And with any project, take the time to PLAN out the scope of the project, define milestones and an expected schedule and hours effort per element.

 

I cannot tell you how many projects I've seen others fail to complete, because they took on what seemed like a doable project, only to discover their scope of effort was much too large to complete in a single lifetime!

 

 

For instance, creating 40 new meshes of different realistic, HD Mushrooms, seems like an easy project.

 

But, that is 40X

 

Flora world mesh for shroom as found in the forest floor or cave.

Ingredient Meshes

Cooked food meshes.

Texture files, Diffuse, Normal, and possibly enviroment masks for each of the above 120 NIF files... meaning around 300-ish files

Esp file

BSA file

Readme file

HTML document file for posting on Nexus

Imagines for explaining / describing the mod on the nexus page

 

 

So, around 500 files total. If you spend just 2 minutes on average for each piece of the project, that's a 30 hour project!

 

 

-