New Race Woes

[Hannan100]

I'm taking my first dive into modding recently by trying to create a custom player race and things could be worse, but I am having some issues.

 

1) How do I make it so that the eye colours available for my new race are those from the High Elves? I started out by duplicating my race from the dark elves, because they were the closest to what I wanted, but the eyes are wrong.

 

2) How do I create a custom skin texture? I know this will be the hardest part, but I wanted to give it a bash.

 

3) Why, when I delete something from the objects window, does it not actually get deleted? I have a duplicate of my new race that won't go away and I have 3 other objects (including a global I made by accident) that I no longer want, yet every time I click delete and say Yes, I do want to delete it; nothing. It stays there as if nothing ever happened. Why.

Edited July 8, 2012 by Hannan100

[steve40]

 

3) Why, when I delete something from the objects window, does it not actually get deleted? I have a duplicate of my new race that won't go away and I have 3 other objects (including a global I made by accident) that I no longer want, yet every time I click delete and say Yes, I do want to delete it; nothing. It stays there as if nothing ever happened. Why.

 

It was marked for delete. It will actually get deleted next time you reload your mod. Then you need to save once more.

[angelmeats]

1) How do I make it so that the eye colours available for my new race are those from the High Elves? I started out by duplicating my race from the dark elves, because they were the closest to what I wanted, but the eyes are wrong.

2) How do I create a custom skin texture? I know this will be the hardest part, but I wanted to give it a bash.

1) In the category Form Lists, find the High Elf Head Parts. Add your race to that. Alternately, create copies of the high elf eye Head Parts and rename them to your race. Then create a Form List for your race and in the new head parts, select your form list as the one that they can be used on. The first method is easier. The second method is probably better for compatibility.

 

2) Open up a skin texture in Photoshop or GIMP. Alter away. Save them to a new folder, a la /textures/actors/character/yourrace/. Skins are generally made up of 4 files. The regular graphic, the normal map (_msn), the specular map (_s), and a sort of under layer (_sk). For the most part, you should be able to use the msn, s, and sk from an existing mod or from the vanilla files, depending on what you're doing.

To save a dds, you'll need the proper plugin. GIMP: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/ Photoshop: http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

Save with DXT5 compression. If there's funky artifacts, save with no compression. Remember to check "save mipmaps".

 

That's a general overview but once you get in there and start playing, it'll make more sense.

[Hannan100]

2) Open up a skin texture in Photoshop or GIMP. Alter away. Save them to a new folder, a la /textures/actors/character/yourrace/. Skins are generally made up of 4 files. The regular graphic, the normal map (_msn), the specular map (_s), and a sort of under layer (_sk). For the most part, you should be able to use the msn, s, and sk from an existing mod or from the vanilla files, depending on what you're doing.

 

Where exactly can I find the existing skin textures? I'm looking in textures\actors\character\[race] and with the exception of Argonian, Khajiit and Werewolf, they only have on file in them; [fe]malehead_msn.dds.

[angelmeats]

You'll need to extract them from the /Data/Skyrim-textures.bsa. To do that, there are a couple of programs out there. I've found the most reliable to be the built-in tool included in the FOMM (Fallout mod manager). That lets you browse and sort by folder name and extract one or multiple files at a time.

That's for vanilla files.

The other option is to make a retex of an existing skin texture mod.

[Ryaki]

since your in the thread of asking questions on new races.. I'd like to throw in a question of my own if thats alright ^ ^;

 

I noticed while playing a few custom races from the beginning of the game that when a dialog from a character comes up that would have been racially dependent, it either says something generic or skips it entirely.

 

Best example I've seen is that while playing one of the few Ohme-Raht (sp) race mods my character would look very cat like and if I was understanding lore right they would also be refered to as a kahjiit. (not completely sure) however when first speaking of hadvar as a Kahjiit, he would usually say something like "are you apart of one of the trade caravan's Kahjiit?", and in combat you'd be called a cat a lot, but naturally as an Ohme that doesn't happen.

 

So how hard would it be for a modder to make it so that a custom race is included into... I duno "in-game racial triggers"? best generic gameing jargon I can think of to pitch this question.

 

if there is a better place to pitch this question, lemme know and i'll be glad to delete and move it ~thanks

Edited July 11, 2012 by Ryaki

[steve40]

@Ryaki: start a new topic.