How to make a body mod?

[FantaFree]

Now that i think about it, I never could figure out how people make body mods or meshes or retextures. Do they actually pain the textrues? Do they make their own wire frames? Can any of this be done in the Creation kit?

[haidaboy]

Now that i think about it, I never could figure out how people make body mods or meshes or retextures. Do they actually pain the textrues? Do they make their own wire frames? Can any of this be done in the Creation kit?

 

A retexture is probably the easiest.  You simply load the original .dds file into an image editor (Photoshop, Gimp, etc.) and touch it up the way you want it to look.

 

For completely new bodies, armours, etc, you will need to make meshes (wireframes) in a 3D modelling programme such as 3DS Max or Blender.  And then you will need to create new textures (in the image editor) to go with them.  Most people start with an existing mesh/texture combo and use it as a template.

 

And none of this can be done in the Creation Kit.

[FantaFree]

Thanks!

[Ashra XIII]

Or open up Bodyslide and move some sliders around. So easy!

[FantaFree]

Not quite what I was talking about. You're referring to the UMP body sliders?

[Akzyra]

I think he means the CBBE/ Bodyslide 2 one. You can let the body look like UNP, if you want to.

[Guest Ragna_Rok]

oookay, we start with a retexture of... some random weapon.

 

software needed (if you go my way, all freeware)

 

fo3archive,

ddsconverter,

gimp,

nifskope

 

what you do: you use "fo3archive" to extract the files from what you need. open the skyrimmeshes.bsa with it and look around, extract yourself lets say... the iron sword. meshes = the triangles

next, use fo3archive to extract the similar structured textures, found under your skyrim directory, "skyrimtextures.bsa". those is the graphic for the meshes.

 

you should have now a couple of "nif files" (the shape) and "dds" file, textures.

 

you use ddsconverter to make a jpg from the iron-sword-dds file, so that you can work on it.

 

use gimp to recolor the whole jpg in... pink.

 

use ddsconverter again to make a dds out of your modified jpg, call it... "mysword.dds" ... or whatever.

 

now, use windows explorer (or whatever), to set up 2 folders, on under skyrim/data/meshes ... now i call it "mysword".

do the same under data/textures.

 

move the nif-files for the iron sword (should be one 1stperson and one regular, so 2 files, nearly the same) that you only extracted to your meshes folder.

move your modified dds to your texture folder.

 

now you go to your iron-sword-niffiles. open them with nifskope, look for a block calles "bslightningshaderproperties" ... in it, theres another block, "bsshadertextureset"... for the beginning we make it easy.

 

you will see usually 4 different textures set up there, double-blick on the four ones, and delete them, NOT THE TOP ONE. this one we need. (cuts away normals, fuck that for now)

double click on the top entry, change it to target your file...

 

now you should see the sword in pink. do the same to both nif-files (1stperson and the regular one) ... save both files (one after another).

 

now you should have to new folders, a texture folder with your dds, and a meshes folder with your changed iron-sword-nifs.

 

the rest is setting up this thingy in the ck, there are tons of tutorials...

 

and to put some flavor to this post and hopefully to receive another like, click this one here:

 

http://www.creationkit.com/Retexture_Tutorial

 

 

have fun