Help with importing new weapon meshes into Skyrim

[RitchieTheMerc]

Hey guys, so I'm trying to import a new mesh into Skyrim which I made from scratch in Blender. I'm still quite new to modeling so I had to follow a lot of tutorials to be able to import the model into Skyrim. These are the steps I took -

 

1) Make my model

2) Convert it to a .nif file using NifSkope

3) Extract a vanilla sword from meshes.bsa to work from

4) Followed the steps on this tutorial -

5) Put my model.nif into the meshes/weapons/one-handed folder in my Skyrim directory

6) Tried to put the model in-game using the Creation Kit

 

This is where my progress came to a standstill. When I clicked on my file in the Creation Kit (I was replacing the mesh of a duplicated sword, to test if the model actually worked), it came up with the big red 'missing texture' icon. What am I doing wrong?

 

Oh, and I haven't actually put any textures on the sword, I'll do that later. Right now I just want to make sure the sword works, and set it up right. I've followed loads of tutorials and videos and it just doesn't seem to work for me. Please help :psyduck:

[ResolveThatChord]

Right. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say you've got the "missing textures" error because you are missing textures.

 

You can just use placeholder textures to test it in-game. You'll need a diffuse texture and a normal map in order for it to appear at all.

 

Place your textures in a filepath in the "textures" folder that is the same as the "meshes" foler filepath your mesh is in.

 

Then open your mesh in nifskope. Select the BSShaderTextureSet data block (which is a branch of BSLightingShaderProperty, which is a branch of the mesh itself, the NiTriShape/NiTriStrips). In the block details pane, there should be a little triangle next to "Textures". click on it to expand it; this is the list of textures that are applied to the mesh. Double click on an entry's "value" to point it to your textures.

 

Should look a little somethin' like this:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/images/b/be/SkyrimArmourTut_20.jpg

 

 

Of course, you did UV unwrap your mesh, right? Because you need to do that.