Modding using Maya/3ds Max.

[Ogma]

Greetings everyone.

 

First of all, I apologise if my questions have been asked about 4730 times, but I made a quick search on the forum and found nothing similar, and the documentation isnt that helpful too.

Just delete that message and hire a killer if that's the case.

 

I am a 3D artist, and I work with Maya.

So I have no problem with modeling/texturing/rigging/animating/etc.

I made a bunch of changes for the game Mount&Blade, t'was quite easy to do.

 

I thought it would be the same for a TES, but it seems not. I've played/tweaked mods since Morrowind, but this time I want to create a mod on my own !

I made a skeleton with a coowl setup (fk/ik/expressions/dynamics), and some fancy animations under Maya.

Problem is, people use Blender to mod, and I don't know that soft very well.

 

I would just basically do something like adding a creature (new skeleton/anims/mesh) but I'm confused how to do it, or if I can do it.

Does creatures share the same skeleton as npcs ?

Can I import a new skeleton in the game ? How ?

 

PS : if that helps, I can transfer my files to 3ds Max, if it works better. Or Blender, if it is possible.

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Ogma

[Ogma]

I see.

[Ogma]

Nevermind, I did like everyone else, getting my hards dirty while playing with Skyrim files. Now I can import/export files, no more problem with that, until more problems.

 

I am focusing for now on adding a custom race to the game.

 

Thing is, I don't only want a red Breton, I want to make a asian realistic race, and I don't think I can achieve that by just tweaking the existing races.

 

I saw a malehead.nif, which I guess I can't touch because its seems it influences the other races too.

From what I learned, race morphs are stored in .tri files. But they aren't mesh, they are sort of software-generated blendshapes.

 

My question is, can I use a malehead2.nif and use it for my custom race ? How I do it ?

Or maybe I can add a new race morph in a mysterious .tri file, but for now my researchs about that are unsuccessful.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Ogma

[PopReference]

I'd say just check out this Custom Races mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8720

But, as far as I know, it doesn't matter what you name your file or it's location as long as your Plugin tells the game to use it. The easiest way is duplicating a race with in the Creation Kit and just change what you want there, I don't really know though, just a guess.