How do i reskin an item?

[Zazoomah]

I can't find a tutorial anywhere for this... I just want to simply retexture the merc grunt outfit to have black pants and a white shirt and NOT replace the original item, and i don't know how to do this, can someone help me?

[GrindedStone]

meshes/Zazoomah/GruntReskin/Mesh.nif

textures/Zazoomah/GruntReskin/Texture.dds

 

 

First you need a folder structure, like above. Zazoomah is your folder an you can put whatever you want in there. You created a GruntReskin folder inside that folder so that each of your projects are seperated an easy to navigate later on when you have 6,000 of them. Further, you could create a large sub folder for the group types. Weapons for example you don't want to look in the Zazoomah folder an see 6,000 weapon folders, so group those together in a weapons folder. Zazoomah/Weapons/6,000 weapon folders. You can do the same for armor and any other type of content you know ahead of time you'll be making 6,000 of.

 

Create a folder on your harddrive, name it Data. Right click an create a shortcut an place this in the start menu or on the desktop whichever you prefer. Inside the data folder you have your textures. This is a fake data folder to keep you from making a mess inside your own game folder. Often projects don't turn out, an if it's in the fake data folder it doesn't matter, you can just go work on something else. You point Nifscope an Blender to look for textures inside this folder. But you can also use it for general purpose for example unpacking a butt load of content from the game in order to use or preview it. It's also good for backup copies of content durring the creation process.

 

Your current work moves to the desktop. Drop the textures in the fake data folder. The mesh stays on the desktop because it doesn't matter yet. Set nifscope as the default program to open .nif files. In the render tab, there is settings, in there is how you point nifscope to look for textures in the fake data folder. You can also change the background screen a color besides black so you can see. In the view tab check block list an block details. Click one of the shapes in the render window this will highlight that part of the tree. Look in that branch for a BSShaderPPLightingProperty, open the +, open the + in block details, click the flower, point it to your textures.

 

Okay so now you save that. Then go into your fake data folder. Open the texture an do a wicked insane edit on it, save it, but don't close your editor. Go to the desktop an open the mesh. This way you can preview your changes. Also if you make it look ugly just undo Ctrl Z in your texture editor an save it again, then try again. When you have done a lot of work here it's pretty easy to guess what it's going to look like based off the preview. The in-game test is the final preview, not nifscope or GECK. So move the mesh off the desktop into the game's data folder, same for the textures. Then you would find the item in the GECK you want to base this item off of (the grunt outfit) Open it, change the form name an game name. Place it in the world, save that, then load that as your mod.

[Tubal]

In Fo3 and New Vegas you can use texture sets instead of editing the model. Especially helpful when you're making more than one reskin on the same model.

http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/TextureSet

 

There are many tutorials for reskinning models, here are some video ones: http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/13788

Click the video tab to see them directly on the site, or download them. I haven't seen them myself (since I started modding before youtube) but he's got some endorsements and no bad comments so I assume they're helpful.

[Zazoomah]

Thanks for helping guys, i'll check these out then give Kudos.