Looking for help re: creating new weapons using Blender/Nifscope/Gimp/

[andrlrent]

Hello all, after seeing some of the amazing work people have done at skyrim.nexus with mods, I thought, I could do that. So I jumped right in. Boy was I wrong. I have never before in my life done any modding, 3d modeling, or texturing but I have made it my mission to get my own custom weapon in game. I have read dozens of tutorials on the subjects of using blender and gimp. Watched youtube videos on importing to Nifscope and exporting working models into Skyrim, but I have run into many problems on the way. I think in the last two days or so, with few hours of sleep, pots and pots of tea, and smoking more ciggarettes than I have in the past 20 years combined, I have reached the end of my rope. This post is a last effort to get some help from the people who seem to know the most about creating Skyrim mods. So thanks in advance for anyone who can take time to help a budding modder in need.

 

The first thing I would like to ask, is if there is anywhere on the internet a single comprehensive tutorial to go from zero experience to importing a simple custom weapon into the game, without replacing current ingame weapons. I don't want to change how the Iron Sword looks, but infact create an entirely new item. Many of the videos I've watched on youtube describe how to replace something, but not add something new. Also, many of the tutorials I watch/read do not describe how to properly install the tools needed to accomplish this. They usually begin with "Tools Required: Blender/Maya/3dsMax, Nifscope, Gimp/Photoshop, FO3Archive/BSAopt, Skyrim Creation kit. (I had a problem with the creation kit "invalid directory" error, because I was extracting the BSA's with FO3Archive to custom directory, not to the skyrim\data folder. For any who read this, if you use FO3Archive, you must extract your BSA's to steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\data (I believe this to be true, correct me if I'm wrong) or else the creation kit will not load them, this includes custom meshes/textures/models/animations/whathaveyou that make aswell.)

 

Second, many of the tutorials are quite old, surely by now someone has come along and simplified the process? If anyone can direct me to a tutorial that is more recent and applies to blender that would be lovely.

 

From what I understand the Nifscripts for blender 2.5/6 are not done yet, and that means that you cannot export directly to .nif for use in Nifscope. My solution was to export as .obj then import the .obj into Nifscope.

 

Basically I load the 1stpersonironlongsword.nif (not sure if this is the true name, but its close enough, its the first person iron sword .nif) into Nifscope, then in another window I import my simplesword.obj. Then I followed along with this tutorial

(sadly this is using Max, which I cannot obtain legally due to cost.) Ok, at this point I was able to get my simplesword.obj to show up in nifscope (at first it was invisible and i could only see the wire mesh) but after following the previously mentioned tutorial I was able to get it to show up with a simple looking dark gray color. (Also the longsword I imported did not have textures applied to it like the one in the video, it just looked like the 3d model from blender/max with the plain light grey color. Anyway, after "merging" the simplesword.obj with longsowrd.nif and following along with tutorial it seemed to apply the textures, they were wrong but I think thats because I used the original longswords textures (I copied them and renamed them simplesword.dds, simplesword_n.dds, and simplesword_em.dds (this was probably a grievous error on my part but I just wanted to get something into the game so I knew it could be done, and worry about fine-tuning at a later date.) Anyway during this process in attempting to copy the BSLightingShadingProperty I recieved an error. "Nif versions differ! Current File Version: 20.0.0.5 Clipboard Data Version: 20.2.0.7 The results will be unpredictable.." I ignored this error and kept on trucking (basically because I have no idea what it means.) Which led me to recieve this message""array Extra Data List much too large. 16777215 bytes requested"" After going through all the steps in tutorial, and linking my "custom" texture files to simplesword.obj I attempted to save it as simplesword.nif and Nifscope gave me another message ""block 4 Extra Data List array size mismatch"".

 

Now, I thought, I have a .nif that can link to my Simple Sword in SimpleSword.esp that I made, I should be able to load the game and see some kind of new item or something at least to show me that some of my process worked. Anyway, I went into the creation kit duplicated the iron sword changed the name and then selected simplesword.nif for the model. (in the preview window it showed up as a red diamond with an exclimation point inside) saved the whole deal and loaded the esp in skyrim. Well using the console to give myself a simple sword worked so I equiped it, and... It looks like the regular Iron Sword. I am pretty depressed because I've spent the better part of the last week working on this, instead of studying for my upcoming Net+ exam. So please, please help me, you're my only hope!

 

Just in case, I am using the newest versions of Blender, Gimp, FO3Archive, and Nifscope.

 

 

Sorry about the wall of text, I'm sure I left out important information during my explainations to put in my stupid tangents that are probably not useful at all.