How to start creating Skyrim custom armor mods for CBBE 3BA?

[Mia_D096]

I usually just make sound resources for skyrim sexlab and for other mod uses, I've recently been interested in creating CBBE 3BA armor mods or at least interested in creating them. Can someone give me a basic idea on how it's made? how to put it into creation kit from something like blender and how to make it work with 3BA? how the normal maps and cubemaps be generated etc? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[VersuchDrei]

2 hours ago, M-BEHz said:

how to put it into creation kit from something like blender

Afaik Blender has a nif plugin to export your project to a mesh, but I never really got it to work. I've just personally always exported the .blend file to .obj files and imported those into Outfit Studio. You will loose bone weights this way, but OS can easily generate those, so you don't have to bother weighting it in Blender in the first place. Also the size scaling is a bit off, you usually have to scale it down by a factor of 100, but that's not that big of a deal. The textures you can export to .png files in Blender and convert those to .dds with GIMP.
There's probably smarter ways to do it, but that's how it's working for me.

2 hours ago, M-BEHz said:

how to make it work with 3BA?

There's plenty of tutorials out there, the first I could find is this:

 

2 hours ago, M-BEHz said:

how the normal maps and cubemaps be generated etc?

Uhh, do you mean how to create those in Blender or do you already have those in Blender and just need to get them out? Because the former I can't help you with, I don't actually know a lot about modelling. For the latter export them to .png like I said above.

[Andy14]

Open Outfit Studio and load your reference body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference).

Export the mesh as a reference obj.

 

Open Blender and import the reference obj.
Import settings:
Keep vertex order
Y+ axis forward

 

Now you have your body in blender (in the correct scaling and direction) and can use it to create your armor.

Blender offers the option of texturing directly and also baking normal maps.

(for normal maps you can also sculpt the armor in Blender - like in ZBrush)

You can use cubemaps from Skyrim, there are actually enough of them. For use in Blender, save the dds as png beforehand.

 

Is your armor ready in Blender, export it as an obj. Export settings are the same as when importing the reference obj.

And export/save your textures.

 

Open Outfit Studio, load your reference Body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference) and then your Armor obj.
The armor should fit 100% if the import and export of blender was set correctly.

 

In the outfit studio now the usual steps:
Copy bone weights and optionally edit them manually.
Then transfer all sliders and edit them optionally

Then save as a project.
You can now find your armor in Bodyslide/ShapeData/"your project folder"/

 

You can open this nif with nifskope and set the shader flags, enter your textures, etc.

Then, view and create your armor in Bodyslide.
The armor is now available for weight 1 and weight 0 and you can start with CK ... CK will be another post.

 

 

[nilead]

3 hours ago, Andy14 said:

...

You can open this nif with nifskope and set the shader flags, enter your textures, etc.

Then, view and create your armor in Bodyslide.
The armor is now available for weight 1 and weight 0 and you can start with CK ... CK will be another post.

 

 

 Slow clap ?. My attempts involved outdated  semi-working .nif plugin, and backporting meshes to LE (since it cant import SE .nif's), wich was painfull to a point of just giving up the idea alltogether. Ive spent quite a bit of time googling for exactly what you commented here - a concise step-by-step pipeline for freeware.

 Apparently, i should've just asked on LL.

[Mia_D096]

13 hours ago, VersuchDrei said:

Afaik Blender has a nif plugin to export your project to a mesh, but I never really got it to work. I've just personally always exported the .blend file to .obj files and imported those into Outfit Studio. You will loose bone weights this way, but OS can easily generate those, so you don't have to bother weighting it in Blender in the first place. Also the size scaling is a bit off, you usually have to scale it down by a factor of 100, but that's not that big of a deal. The textures you can export to .png files in Blender and convert those to .dds with GIMP.
There's probably smarter ways to do it, but that's how it's working for me.

 

 

 

Ok, thanks man, I'll try the plugin, also need to learn more about Outfit Studio, will try my best.

[Mia_D096]

13 hours ago, VersuchDrei said:

Uhh, do you mean how to create those in Blender or do you already have those in Blender and just need to get them out? Because the former I can't help you with, I don't actually know a lot about modelling. For the latter export them to .png like I said above.

I mean how to make already created cubemaps usable in game.

[Mia_D096]

12 hours ago, Andy14 said:

Open Outfit Studio and load your reference body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference).

Export the mesh as a reference obj.

 

Open Blender and import the reference obj.
Import settings:
Keep vertex order
Y+ axis forward

 

Now you have your body in blender (in the correct scaling and direction) and can use it to create your armor.

Blender offers the option of texturing directly and also baking normal maps.

(for normal maps you can also sculpt the armor in Blender - like in ZBrush)

You can use cubemaps from Skyrim, there are actually enough of them. For use in Blender, save the dds as png beforehand.

 

Is your armor ready in Blender, export it as an obj. Export settings are the same as when importing the reference obj.

And export/save your textures.

 

Open Outfit Studio, load your reference Body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference) and then your Armor obj.
The armor should fit 100% if the import and export of blender was set correctly.

 

In the outfit studio now the usual steps:
Copy bone weights and optionally edit them manually.
Then transfer all sliders and edit them optionally

Then save as a project.
You can now find your armor in Bodyslide/ShapeData/"your project folder"/

 

You can open this nif with nifskope and set the shader flags, enter your textures, etc.

Then, view and create your armor in Bodyslide.
The armor is now available for weight 1 and weight 0 and you can start with CK ... CK will be another post.

 

 

 

Thank you so much, this is all I really needed to know, I was actually using NIF Plugins for blender and it was just a horrible experience because blender was not accepting SSE NIF files and everything, also didn't know you could do so much with Outfit Studio, will surely research more on that. As for creation kit, there are just a lot of info on it thanks to the many wonderful people. I really appreciate your help. I will start with this right after I complete my "Fully Voiced Werewolf Follower Mod"

[Anunya]

On 12/1/2021 at 12:48 AM, Andy14 said:

Open Outfit Studio and load your reference body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference).

Export the mesh as a reference obj.

 

Open Blender and import the reference obj.
Import settings:
Keep vertex order
Y+ axis forward

 

Now you have your body in blender (in the correct scaling and direction) and can use it to create your armor.

Blender offers the option of texturing directly and also baking normal maps.

(for normal maps you can also sculpt the armor in Blender - like in ZBrush)

You can use cubemaps from Skyrim, there are actually enough of them. For use in Blender, save the dds as png beforehand.

 

Is your armor ready in Blender, export it as an obj. Export settings are the same as when importing the reference obj.

And export/save your textures.

 

Open Outfit Studio, load your reference Body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference) and then your Armor obj.
The armor should fit 100% if the import and export of blender was set correctly.

 

In the outfit studio now the usual steps:
Copy bone weights and optionally edit them manually.
Then transfer all sliders and edit them optionally

Then save as a project.
You can now find your armor in Bodyslide/ShapeData/"your project folder"/

 

You can open this nif with nifskope and set the shader flags, enter your textures, etc.

Then, view and create your armor in Bodyslide.
The armor is now available for weight 1 and weight 0 and you can start with CK ... CK will be another post.

 

 

 

Great explanation! Kudos!

 

You know... as someone interested in getting into a bit of mod creation, it strikes me it would be a good idea for someone to make a post somewhere with links to all the good step-by-step guides for how to create content. That way it could be pinned/ book-marked for other seekers of knowledge.

[Darkwing241]

47 minutes ago, Anunya said:

 

Great explanation! Kudos!

 

You know... as someone interested in getting into a bit of mod creation, it strikes me it would be a good idea for someone to make a post somewhere with links to all the good step-by-step guides for how to create content. That way it could be pinned/ book-marked for other seekers of knowledge.

 

My high heels mod was made after watching Nightasy's tutorials.  It's enough to get you started making models and basic textures.  His methods for creating new textures did not produce fantastic results, but they aren't bad either.  I mostly reuse the textures from items already in Skyrim because I strongly prefer custom gear that looks "in world"

 

The tutorials will hand hold you from a literal know nothing to a finished useable product.

 

 

Skyrim's texture system is pretty outdated at this point and I've been struggling to put together nicer looking textures with newer software.  There are plenty of programs that let you put together stuff that looks nice really easily but translating that into the types of files that Skyrim supports is difficult.  As far as I have found tutorials for using modern software like substance painter 3d don't exist.  I've made some really nice stuff in substance painter but getting it into skyrim after is beyond me.  If anyone finds a tutorial for substance painter or similar I would be interested

[itzblaze]

On 12/1/2021 at 12:48 AM, Andy14 said:

Open Outfit Studio and load your reference body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference).

Export the mesh as a reference obj.

 

Open Blender and import the reference obj.
Import settings:
Keep vertex order
Y+ axis forward

 

Now you have your body in blender (in the correct scaling and direction) and can use it to create your armor.

Blender offers the option of texturing directly and also baking normal maps.

(for normal maps you can also sculpt the armor in Blender - like in ZBrush)

You can use cubemaps from Skyrim, there are actually enough of them. For use in Blender, save the dds as png beforehand.

 

Is your armor ready in Blender, export it as an obj. Export settings are the same as when importing the reference obj.

And export/save your textures.

 

Open Outfit Studio, load your reference Body CBBE 3BA (Load Reference) and then your Armor obj.
The armor should fit 100% if the import and export of blender was set correctly.

 

In the outfit studio now the usual steps:
Copy bone weights and optionally edit them manually.
Then transfer all sliders and edit them optionally

Then save as a project.
You can now find your armor in Bodyslide/ShapeData/"your project folder"/

 

You can open this nif with nifskope and set the shader flags, enter your textures, etc.

Then, view and create your armor in Bodyslide.
The armor is now available for weight 1 and weight 0 and you can start with CK ... CK will be another post.

 

 

For years, I looked high and low for ANY information on how to mod this blasted game to give back to the community that has given me THOUSANDS of hours of playtime. Here on these forums I stumbled unto your post and have made a quick test into the game. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!