Good modding tool for creating custom Skyrim armour skins?

[philroid]

Okay, long story short, I've been fiddling with the creation kit for a long time, and I've seen some of the awesome jobs that people have done with custom armour/clothing skins, and now I want to make my own.

 

Could anyone suggest to me a modding tool that's easy for beginners to grasp or has a lot of useful tutorials and is also compatible with the Steam workshop? I'd really appreciate it.

[foxia]

Creation Kit is the only way to implement most mods you see. It's how you implement new meshes or alternative textures (via texture sets) into Skyrim. it's also how you merge mods associated with an ESP into a bsa for Steam Workshop.

 

There are tools to make your own meshes being 3dsmax and Blender. There are a lot of tutorials on 3dsmax. Same with Blender, but Blender takes more time to setup over 3dsmax and more hassle, however it's free where as 3dsmax isn't. So if you wanna a free option look into blender, otherwise, spend the money for 3DSmax

 

You also have Nifscope which you can use to merge different meshes and perform edits with image editing software (will get into that next) and do as Hothtrooper and several other modders did with Immersive Armors. Immersive Armors is mostly a combining of several vanilla armors and using image editing software to remove parts of the texture to redesign the mesh how you want it to look. A pain in the ass but can be done. I did it with both of my major mods and one minor mod I stopped working on.

 

Call of the North Revisited

Stormcloak Battle Armor

Stormcloak Ranger Amor

 

The Nifscope Method you got to learn on your own though. It's how I learned with it. But there are plenty of tutorials on how to use Nifscope to figure out how to do it.

 

Lastly you'll need image editing software to edit textures or create them and how you want them to appear.

There is Photoshop, though unless you wanna spend money on a yearly renting license, it's not worth it.

There is Gimp, though you'll need to get a DDS plugin for it.

THere is also Paint.net which has DDS support out of the box.

 

All 3 have decent tutorials to go over all over the internet. and all 3 have a learning curve so don't expect it to be easy.

 

Once you pick one you like, the Nifscope method is easy, just erase parts you don't want, save, look it over in Nifscope (can leave nifscope open doing this) to see the edits your making. Just always save so it will show the edits you made.

 

Lastly like I said, the creation kit is how you implenent all this stuff into the game. Creationkit.com has everything you need to know on how to implement textures, meshes, and such into the game.