I could use some tips from an experience modder

[bwaresunlight]

Before I get too far let me state that I have a basic understanding of the toolkit, I have created a couple custom races by blending together two different races that are currently playable, such as Khajit with a human head, etc. That is honestly pretty easy once you understand how it works. The problem I am having is using a werewolf's base for a body and adding Khajit body parts and skins.

 

What I want to do is create a more beast-like Khajit race. I was thinking that it would be great to have a Khajit that ran on all fours like a werewolf. I started thinking about how the races look and I noticed that a real human couldn't run on all fours due to the structure of our bodies, with short arms and long legs, which is how the Khajits are designed. The characters butt would stick up in the air and they would look ridiculous. Werewolves have a different shape and long arms, so I thought I could start from there and make a "Werecat" type playable race. This is way more complicated than I thought it would be.

 

The method I am trying to use, which is obviously wrong, is to start with a base race of werewolf, then apply Khajit body parts and skin textures. This actually almost works, however the werewolf's head disappears and the left arm while maintaing the textures from the khajit fur, is bent in half a few times and the head disappears. Now I assume that the reason for this is that all of the other playable races have separate body parts, such as, hands, torso, feet, tail, and head. So you associate them with an armor part, yada yada and you can easily make a breton with argonian body and khajit hands, etc. The Werewolves do not have the separate parts, all I see in the "armoraddon" section is the torso. I assume that this is because it's a beast that you transform into.

 

So to rectify this I started digging around on the internet and I found that you can use the falloutmodmanager to extract the various .nif parts from the skyrimmesh.bda file. I did this, but it looks like I am basically going to have to use the extracted parts to create my own heads and individual body parts. It is not working for me, I am quite inexperienced at this. I mean I'm able to edit and change stuff that already exists, but creating custom skeletons and such, nifskope, photoshop, that's all beyond me at this point in time.

 

Could anyone give me some pointers?