3D mod tool help

[jefthereaper]

Hi, coures i cant find a section for mod tool help i will place it here

 

for anybody that has created mods with new meshes in it

i need a little help

 

i wish to make my own meshes too (practice is no problem, i have a lot of patience. i will pull it off eventualy)

 

however programs like 3D max are too expencive for me, especialy if you consider you will only buy tools that will earn themselfs back,

while making a free mod wont earn anything back

 

so, i have been looking around if you can use Blender to make new skyrim meshes, however i keep hearing on different forums that this should not be possible as blender does not support skyrim files

 

does anybody know if this is true? if not, how do i use blender to make/alter meshes? any help would be much apreaciated.

[bcofer]

Warning - long reply

 

There are a bunch of tutorials pinned near the top of the "Mod Talk" section here, although a few of them give a little conflicting advice. One in depth one is http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Creating_an_armour_for_Skyrim._Part_1

 

The above one uses an older version of Blender (free modeling program, use the old 2.49b version), the Niftool plugin for nif files (which is why you need to use the way-old 2.49b version of Blender, plugin was never updated for Skyrim). Gimp (textures, also free) and the .dds converter, and Nifskope (free, modify textures and meshes for the game). Links are in the tutorials.

 

And the Construction Kit (CK, free download from your Steam screen, its a bit hidden away).

 

Since I'm pretty bad at this, I can give some generic advice on some things it took me a while to figure out.

 

First duplicate an armor and Armor Addon in the CK, place it in game, and pick it up. I called mine "tryon", and thus it is quick in nifskope to try on any armor and see what you changed, simply by replacing the tryon armor. But save with the armor off, because if you screw up with nifskope, you'll crash when trying to load the armor.

 

Since your mod may depend on other mods, edit your SkyrimEditor.ini to read bAllowMultipleMasterLoads=1. (It's in /Skyrim, not /Skyrim/Data)

 

The tutorials generally say it is optional to add a texture to your armor while in Blender. Its not, the suggested later workarounds don't work for me. Once I have a texture, though, I can change it a lot of ways, and move it around on the armor, in nifskope.

 

If you save your armor in Nifskope but it stays the same in game, right click the armor piece and "transform" it before saving in Nifskope.

 

Search this site for "CB Plus Plus" - with a bit of practice you can change CBBE body shape and armor size on the fly. A gentleman named "Stuffed_Bunny" also has his UNP version at a different site (Goolgle is my friend).

 

Blender can't unwrap .dds textures onto the model, and in Gimp I find it nearly impossible to alter the textures on the armor/body accurately - my changes are always in the wrong place in game.

 

So, in the same tutorials above, people report if you have a school email (.edu), you can download 3DSMax for free.

[jefthereaper]

thanks i will be sure to try that :)