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The state of modding in Skyrim

Zolt

By Zolt,
in Skyrim General Discussion

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Zolt

Zolt

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Hi All. This is my first post here: for the last 2 months I've been lurking around these boards, trying to teach myself modding and taking apart the existing lovers/sexout mods, with a mind to apply that to Skyrim

 

Now the game is out, most people are still busy playing it - but more and more people are going to turn to modding after they complete their first play-through.

 

Modding in Skyrim is pretty much virgin territory right now - everyone's hacking around trying to see what can or can't be done. So I thought I'd start a thread to keep abreast of where we're at, and maybe provide a starting point for would-be modders.

 

****Construction Set****

No ETA yet on that. Todd Howards says "soon" but we don't know anything more. That's not to say we can't do anything - a lot of files are exposed to our tinkering.

 

****BSAS****

The BSA archives can be pried open with the latest FOMM, this means we have access to meshes, textures, anims, voices, shaders... pretty much every kind of file that goes in the game.

 

****Textures****

Not much new here: Good old dds textures are wide open for us to edit with the usual tools: Gimp, paint.net, anything with a DDS plugin. In fact the vast majority of mods right now are texture mods, including the must-have "no blocky faces" (seriously...) a couple texture-only nude mods (weird looking boobs) and already a few city retex packs.

 

****Meshes****

Yet another iteration of the Gamebryo NIF files we all love to hate. Efforts are going on to update niftools for the new format, spearheaded by Throttlekitty and amorilia - with partial success: they can already open most nifs from the game, although with errors. But it's just 5 of them working on it so far. Help and encouragement needed at

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3164

 

Another problem: it's no longer just nif files: Every single body part mesh, and some others too, come with a companion .tri file. These existed in Oblivion for face meshes only - basically they're the file that tells the game how the different chargen sliders should morph your mesh. Problem is they're a royal pain in the ass to deal with, they include the whole vertex info from the original mesh so if you want to mod body meshes, you'll probably have to deal with these too. It could mean a long wait for decent looking body mods.

 

****Animations****

Not much is known yet but it looks good. The .kf files have been replaced by .hkx files, which are a Havok anim format and can be manipulated with the free Havok tool kit. Plugin for Max exists for sure, not sure about Blender. Main difference with kf files is that they include the skeleton too, not just the raw anim data. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

 

****UI****

I don't know much about that, but apparently the UI files are exposed, and although in a new format, UI modders are already hacking through them and preparing whole UI overhauls.

 

****Scripting / OBSE*****

The Bad: It's unlikely that OBSE can be adapted to skyrim, at least the Steam version, because of DRM issues.

The Good: We might not need to. It looks like the scripting system in Skyrim includes some functionality similar to OBSE.

 

I guess that if the new scripting system is powerful enough to have big-thewed, hairy Nord men perform wild monkey sex on each other, I'll be a happy camper.

 

That's all for now. I'll try to update this with modding news and good resources as they start to pop up.

 

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ronttu

ronttu

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I guess that if the new scripting system is powerful enough to have big-thewed' date=' hairy Nord men perform wild monkey sex on each other, I'll be a happy camper.

[/quote']

 

Whether or not the construction set will have the functionality straight up I can't say, but it seems there are plenty of customized animations in the game. It'd be nice if it worked roughly similar to what Dragon Age had with their cutscene stuff. Also, NPCs can be made to do lots of things natively, without having to override bunch of basic stuff.

 

The .nif+.tri might be hard to crack, but from the point of view of someone who has only superficial understanding of the underlying system, this might mean customizable bodies (not ten thousand body mods with different cup sizes and all the mods using the ones you dislike, meh), and the clothing and armor meshes will conform. Maybe.

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Zolt

Zolt

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Yeah, I'm definitely waiting to see what can be done with the .tri... Boob size slider ftw!

 

And correction to the above, it seems the nude mods posted on nexus are actually texture + mesh mods - although the mesh modifications consists just of removing the underwear. Boob shape is still mighty weird. Still, that's impressive considering the female body is one of the files I still can't open in nifskope.

 

I'm wondering about the hkf format for anims too, but a standard format with free tools that come with it can't be a bad thing. Having the skeleton included in the anim file might make skeleton compatibility problems go away too.

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Mordyn

Mordyn

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****UI****

I don't know much about that' date=' but apparently the UI files are exposed, and although in a new format, UI modders are already hacking through them and preparing whole UI overhauls.

[/quote']

This time flash is used: there will be a learning curve for most of the modders (that's more complex than xml), but after that customization possibilities are way more advanced.

 

The .nif+.tri might be hard to crack' date=' but from the point of view of someone who has only superficial understanding of the underlying system, this might mean customizable bodies (not ten thousand body mods with different cup sizes and all the mods using the ones you dislike, meh), and the clothing and armor meshes will conform. Maybe.

[/quote']

I don't understand well that part neither, but I don't think it has to do with clothes sizing... if someone could explain that, because that would be indeed great to not care anymore about the size of the clothes!

 

I'm wondering about the hkf format for anims too' date=' but a standard format with free tools that come with it can't be a bad thing. Having the skeleton included in the anim file might make skeleton compatibility problems go away too.

[/quote']

If a port from old oblivion animation files is possible, then we already could have some really sexy/other animations possibilities, not telling about lovers...

 

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Symon

Symon

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I'd agree with you, a kit would be far more useful than the current monolithic CS.

If I'm amending a script, I hardly either zip off and drop new boulders in a landscape.

 

Sadly, I expect that to be just a change in salesman terminology and there will just be a monolithic CS as usual. The GECK was monolith, and it was a 'kit' too.

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Mordyn

Mordyn

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Todd Howard's calling the mod set the "Creation kit"' date=' and to me, the word kit translates as more than one tool. Maybe a 3D animation setup for custom animations or somesuch is in the works?

[/quote']

Good news : it seems some of the proprietary tools they used in Oblivion (and removed before releasing tesc) are not used anymore in Skyrim. They indeed developed their own tools, so maybe this time we could have a more complete tesc...?

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Mashi

Mashi

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This time flash is used: there will be a learning curve for most of the modders (that's more complex than xml)' date=' but after that customization possibilities are way more advanced.

 

[/quote']Indeed. Though the upside with most flash creation tools is that it's WYSIWYG. The big problem at least on my end is getting the game to accept new files without some form of invalidation, as I see conflicts between what I'm testing and the base UI. Maybe someone has figured it out, but I haven't looked today.

 

 

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Tam

Tam

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The idea that it might be able to adjust the body morphing sounds particularly exciting to me in regards to pregnancy mods. It would be great if it could be possible to slowly adjust the body over time with a slider as opposed to swapping in bodies at the various trimesters.

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ronttu

ronttu

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The .nif+.tri might be hard to crack' date=' but from the point of view of someone who has only superficial understanding of the underlying system, this might mean customizable bodies (not ten thousand body mods with different cup sizes and all the mods using the ones you dislike, meh), and the clothing and armor meshes will conform. Maybe.

[/quote']

I don't understand well that part neither, but I don't think it has to do with clothes sizing... if someone could explain that, because that would be indeed great to not care anymore about the size of the clothes!

 

At the moment, the armor and clothes scale to the (small) body weight change, so the apparel meshes themselves probably contain the same information as the base body does, and if the body slider is set to "fat", then all clothing on that character would also appear as being worn by a "fat" character. Once someone figures out the .tri stuff, it's not unimaginable that you could actually get more sliders in the char creator. Which would own.

 

 

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Zolt

Zolt

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cant wait till the niftools team gets blender and nifskope working so i can convert DMRA

 

Nifskope is partially working already, but until we figure out these .tri files, modding bodies might not be possible.

 

Armor, clothes files are just regular nifs, yet they do seem to morph with the body, so that's good, we might be able to start converting armors fairly soon.

 

One thing I don't understand yet: most meshes seem to be doubled:

cuirass_0.nif

cuirass_1.nif

As far as I can see the _0 and _1 are mostly, but not completely identical. Opening them in nifskope they use the same texture, have the same overall look, so I don't know what the difference is.

 

One page to watch:

- UESP wiki index for Skyrim modding

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Tes5Mod

 

 

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Mordyn

Mordyn

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The .nif+.tri might be hard to crack' date=' but from the point of view of someone who has only superficial understanding of the underlying system, this might mean customizable bodies (not ten thousand body mods with different cup sizes and all the mods using the ones you dislike, meh), and the clothing and armor meshes will conform. Maybe.

[/quote']

I don't understand well that part neither, but I don't think it has to do with clothes sizing... if someone could explain that, because that would be indeed great to not care anymore about the size of the clothes!

 

At the moment, the armor and clothes scale to the (small) body weight change, so the apparel meshes themselves probably contain the same information as the base body does, and if the body slider is set to "fat", then all clothing on that character would also appear as being worn by a "fat" character. Once someone figures out the .tri stuff, it's not unimaginable that you could actually get more sliders in the char creator. Which would own.

 

 

Thanks for the explanation!

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2pac4eva7

2pac4eva7

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cant wait till the niftools team gets blender and nifskope working so i can convert DMRA

 

Nifskope is partially working already' date=' but until we figure out these .tri files, modding bodies might not be possible.

 

Armor, clothes files are just regular nifs, yet they do seem to morph with the body, so that's good, we might be able to start converting armors fairly soon.

 

One thing I don't understand yet: most meshes seem to be doubled:

cuirass_0.nif

cuirass_1.nif

As far as I can see the _0 and _1 are mostly, but not completely identical. Opening them in nifskope they use the same texture, have the same overall look, so I don't know what the difference is.

 

One page to watch:

- UESP wiki index for Skyrim modding

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Tes5Mod

 

 

[/quote']

 

yes, ive already updated my nifkope with thorttlekittys xml. i opened up both versions of vanilla femalebody_1 and femalebody_0 and noticed they the mesh itself is not the same shape, although everything else i could see was the same. Both of these are birds eye views from right when u open nifskope. i havent move the camera at all in either screenshot.

 

 

Here is femalebody_1

femalebody_1.jpg

here is femalebody_0

femalebody_0.jpg

 

so they are slightly different but i have no idea what for. once the cs comes out it may answer this question.

 

for the nude mod that is out the meshes do the same thing. femalebody_1 seems fatter.

 

also, i cant get textures to render on skyrim meshes is that just me?

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Zolt

Zolt

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uhm that looks like the same thing only ones the larger woman the other the skinny woman?

 

yeah, it looks like the 2 meshes are for lithe vs bulky body. For females there isn't much difference, you can probably see it best with male body meshes. I'll try it when I'm back from work this evening.

 

 

 

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2pac4eva7

2pac4eva7

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uhm that looks like the same thing only ones the larger woman the other the skinny woman?

 

yeah' date=' it looks like the 2 meshes are for lithe vs bulky body. For females there isn't much difference, you can probably see it best with male body meshes. I'll try it when I'm back from work this evening.

 

 

 

[/quote']

 

 

 

im working on converting some of oblivions skin textures to skyrim. Do u know how i can convert the tangent space normal maps oblivion used to the object spaced ones in skyrim? And do u know what the filename_s textures are used for? i cant find any info one what those or the _sk ones do.

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Zolt

Zolt

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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13576177/NifTools/nif.xml

 

That's the latest version of throttlekitty's nif.xml , should allow you to open most everything, but doing working edits is quite a ways off, blender import scrips even longer since they're also working on Blender 2.5+ compatibility.

 

I'll try to experiment with textures / normal maps over the weekend. Some discussion of the subject going on here:

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/457148-graphics-modding/page__st__30

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Zolt

Zolt

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But can they convert back to NIF afterwards?

 

The challenge is they need to preserve the same vertices as the base body, or else they'll have to mess with the .tri files too. Not unfeasible, but probably a lot of work. Adding details in the nipple and crotch areas could be difficult.

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2pac4eva7

2pac4eva7

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Update "nif.xml" then can open nif files. After that' date=' you can export nishape to obj. And obj import to blender, make that meshes to DMRA!! Seam work too can be there. And wait nif script is update!! JP modder already worked it!

 

 

 

 

[/quote']

 

i was thinking of trying this. what do u mean jp modder already worked it?

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