About modeling guns... :/

[Valkstyrm]

Hi everyone and greetings.

 

I just took an interest in modding the game with the GECK and I had some fun with it. I first tried out with making levels like the ones showed by Bethesda Studios and got the gist of it.

 

What I want to learn at the moment is making my own gun.

 

When I said "making my own gun" I meant by it has its own mesh, texutures, sounds, etc.

 

I already have some 3d moddeling programs like 3Dmax and Mudbox for the texture stuff.

So...... where do I start?

 

P.S. This question has been bugging me for sometime but do different gun parts need different meshes? For example: the mesh for the magazine clip needs to be a different mesh to acommodate reloading animations. stuff like that.

 

Any answer or links to tutorial videos will do.

[Moraelin]

Heya. I'm not the biggest expert by a wide margin, but I've made a few weapons, so I think I can help there.

 

First things first, yes, you'll need separate mesh pieces for all parts that move relative to each other. The clip will be a mesh, the slide another mesh, the trigger yet another, etc. Well, they'll be in the same .nif file, but they will be separate mesh pieces.

 

You can use MORE pieces if you want to. E.g., even Bethesda made the silencer on the 10mm gun be a separate mesh piece, although it doesn't move, so it could have been the same piece as the gun. There are legitimate reasons to want to do that, too, for example if different pieces use different shaders. Like, if you want to use the chrome_e effect (does exactly what it sounds like) on the barrel and cylinder, and shinydull_e on some polymer pieces. Or whatever, really. The point is you can have MORE pieces if it makes your life easier (I use lots and lots of pieces myself), but you can't use less than parts moving relative to each other, if you want your gun to animate correctly.

 

Why that is, is that weapons are just statics. They're not rigged or anything, but are just statics and have some fixed animations applied to certain named parts. Which is good because it's simple to make, but can be bad if you want a seriously funky animated weapon.

 

(Disclaimer: some people managed to do their own animations all right, e.g., for the bullpup guns, but I never used that myself, so no idea. I stick to the existing animations.)

 

So what you start with is NifSkope and some tool that can unpack BSA files, like FO3Archive or NVMM.

 

First unpack the meshes and texture BSAs SOMEWHERE. It's easier to start with an existing gun that already works kinda like what you want. E.g., if you're making a SMG, you can start from a SMG or pistol or something that animates kinda like what you want. Or if you want to make a revolver, you can start from a revolver that animates like what you want. E.g., from the .44 if it swings open, from the .32 snub-nose if it breaks open, or the .357 if it reloads through a gate. And so on.

 

Then make your own directories in the meshes and texture directories in your game's data directory, and personally I'd start by copying that starting gun and its textures there, and renaming them for now. The textures are less critical, since you'll replace them with yours anyway. But the gun mesh gives you a working .nif to modify.

 

Now open it in NifSkope and look what parts it has. You'll need a mesh that replaces each of those. You'll also need to end up with a tree that looks exactly like that after the changes, or the game will crash horribly. E.g., if you see all NiTriShapeData nodes under a NiTriShape node, that's what your weapon needs to end up like too. If you mangle it and end up, say, with a textures node directly in the root, you'll crash the game. So, well, you'll just need to pay attention, and if something goes wrong, just open the original again and compare your structure to that of the original gun.

 

But basically it's a tree structure, not unlike a directory structure.

 

BTW, each unit of length is about 0.55 inches or so. Give or take. Nobody will start a riot if your 9mm is actually 10mm, so you don't have to get it exactly right. Even Bethesda and Obsidian's guns are off quite a lot.

 

Now there are plugins for both 3dmax and Blender to export directly .nif (I use Blender myself), but I kinda got used to exporting via .obj files in ye olde days, so that's what I'm going to describe. It's not just to be roundabout, though. It's one way to be sure the tree structure will stay identical to the original one that works.

 

So what I do export the piece as a .obj file, then import it into the root of the .nif. Right-click on the NiTriShape you just imported, select select Mesh -> Update Tangent Space. Expand the branch further. Update the center and radius on the NiTriShapeData too.

 

Now the next step depends basically on whether or not the original gun piece was a NiTriShape or a NiTriStrips. The strips apparently are more performant, and most Bethesda weapons use strips. Most Obsidian ones use shapes, i.e., separate triangles. Since what follows is overwriting a node with one of the same type, both the original node you're replacing and the one you're replacing it with, will need to be of the same type. So if the original piece was a NiTriShape, you're in luck, they already match, so you can skip this step. If not you'll have to right-click on your imported NiTriShape and select Mesh -> Stripify. This will convert it to a NiTriStrips, so now they match.

 

Ok, now everything is in place, you just need to overwrite the old piece with the new one. Right click on the data node of the imported branch, select Block -> Copy. Right-click on the data node of the piece you're replacing, select Block -> Paste Over. Be sure you paste over, not just paste. Also that you nail the data node, not the NiTriShape or NiTriStrips parent.

 

Delete the now superfluous imported branch.

 

At this point, probably the textures will look seriously fuxxed up, so you'll want to hit the changed nodes BSShaderPPLightingProperty -> BSTextureSet, expand the textures array in the lower panel, and basically just type in the path to your own textures.

 

Save.

 

Repeat for all pieces.

 

So far this gave you a mesh, but it's not yet in the game.

 

So now you'll want to start the GECK, open just the FalloutNV.esm file.

 

Now find the weapon you used as a base under Items -> Weapons. Double click it. Change the ID (first input field) and save. It'll ask whether to make a copy. Say "yes".

 

Double-click the copy you just made. Go to the second tab in the lower half of the pop-up window, namely Art and Sound. Clear the 1st Person drop-down box by selecting the "NONE" entry at the top of the list. This means it'll use the same .nif when the player character equips the weapon. Hit the "Edit" button next to the model input box, and then again in the pop-up, and just select the file you just created. You can do the same for the "world" model, i.e., how the gun will look when lying around, or just clear it.

 

Now you can go back to the first tab and set the damage, crit damage, clip size, ammo, etc. Save. Be sure to use the ammo lists, not individual ammo types, btw, unless you have some special reason to. But usually you'll want your gun to use the whole list of, say, 9mm ammo, including hollow points, and self-loaded, and so on, not just one type of 9mm ammo.

 

Well, now you have a weapon, but no way to get it in the game, which is a bit anti-climactic. But we'll fix that too.

 

There are several ways to do that, but I'll just put it in a crate for now. Find some container you like and make a duplicate, just like for the gun. (Double click, change ID, save, say yes.) Delete all contents in the inventory list of the copy, and then just drag and drop your gun from the weapons list into that inventory list. Literally, it's just drag and drop with the mouse. If it ends up selecting a few rows instead, well, that's just the kind of crap that the GECK does. Just try again. It'll work in a couple of tries. Save the new crate.

 

Btw, you can use the same kind of drag and drop into the inventory list to give it to some NPC. Like, if you want Cass to sport your pimp new gun, drag and drop into her inventory. (It also helps if you make it use companion ammo.)

 

Now you'll want to place the crate somewhere. Just find some interior space you like in the list lower-right in the GECK, double-click it. Zoom, pan, etc, in the upper-right window until you find a good spot. Drag and drop the crate into that render window. Literally. Hit F so it drops to the floor, or nearest surface below it. Then drag it around some more until it sits just right,

 

If it's in a shop, and you set the ownership to the shopkeeper, you can buy the gun from him.

 

Save, and that was it.

 

Well, there are several tutorials around if something is unclear.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Moraelin

[Valkstyrm]

Thanks for the info mate!! As of the moment of this post I am several kilometers away from my desktop (say about a hundred :psyduck: ) because I had to visit my grandparents on a special occasion. I'll post back here if I ran into some trouble or need advice. Anyway. This really helped me a lot! Thanks again!

[bombshell66]

Thanks Moraelin i too found this very helpfull ( im not starting on weapon mod making but i have a interest in it )

 

are you by any change the same moraelin that made the revolver rifle for Fo3 i tried that mod but i could never get it ot work shamefully...

 

any change you made a revolver rifle for New Vegas? would certainly fit the setting

 

 

Cheerio

[Moraelin]

Heya.

 

Yep, the login is global for all Nexus sites, so that's me too. And the lightsabers guy, and, well, a few other ways to take the piss out of the setting, lore and realism :P

 

The revolver rifle was actually one of the first things I ported, in the Moraelin's Fictive Revolvers mod, although in the meantime I'm not very proud of that mesh. Well, I should really redo at least the butt one of these days, anyway. It was done back when I was just learning to make even the simplest meshes, and my skills were almost non-existent.

[Moraelin]

BTW, though, I would suggest though that it might be useful to learn to do your own ports, at least between NV and FO3. The world's your oyster when you can plough through the Enclave in FO3 with the some NV only gun like the Jackal, or I'm currently strutting with the HK53. Or viceversa.

 

If you're not afraid of NifSkope, even stuff from Oblivion or Skyrim isn't off the table.

 

But even without that kind of stuff, well, you can try my post here, for a quick primer on how to re-master a mod between NV and FO3, http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/393598-teamwork/page__p__3239140__hl__%2Btes4+%2Bmast__fromsearch__1#entry3239140

Edited June 19, 2012 by Moraelin