Skyrim Workshop: Using Modder's Resources

[InsanitySorrow]

TESA is not only home to the First and Only Elder Scrolls modding school, but it's also home to a wealth of resources with new additions being added on a near daily basis. This is great news for modders, but it can also be a little daunting for newcomers who are unsure how to go about using them in their projects.

This short lesson will cover the basics of adding resources to your project

For this lesson we'll be using a resource for the TESA Resource Kit, which funnily enough you'll find here on TESA - TESA Resource Kit

From the files available, download my fishing resources, they contain loose assets that'll be good for the lesson.

1. External Assets
   
2. Texture Sets
   

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After downloading the resource the first thing you'll need to do is place them inside your Skyrim Data folder. Open up the Fishing Resource you grabbed from the TESA Resource Kit, you'll notice there are three folders, Meshes, Textures and Screenshots. You can ignore the last folder as it's not something we need.

Now select the Meshes and Textures folders, click the Extract To button (using 7zip), in the tree list to the right navigate to your Skyrim Data folder, then click OK and the Meshes and Textures will be extracted into that directory.

Now that we have our resources in our Data folder we can move onto the more interesting bit, adding them into our project. So get the Creation Kit opened up with your project active.

Something to keep in mind here is that difference resources go in different sections of the CK's Object list, Clutter items (those that move) go in the Misc Object List and Static items (Like buildings) go in the Static section of the World Objects part of the Object List. Since we're using my fishing resources, we'll be working with the Static items list as they're non-movable items.

With the CK smiling in front of you, click the small plus icon next to the World Objects text in the Object List window, this will expand it's list showing us what we have to work with. Click the Statics sub section here, our resource will be calling this home.

Over on the right, Right-Click the list and select New, this will open a new window that will allow us to add a new resource to the list.

The only two options here we need to take interest in are the ID and Model fields. The first as I'm sure you know is a unique ID for our asset, the Model field points to our assets NIF file. Give the asset a unique ID, for this I gave mine aaISFishingNet01.

The next part is our Model slot, click the Edit button, this opens up the model edit screen, click the Edit button at the top of this screen and we'll be asked to locate our NIF file. Navigate to the Meshes/TESA/Clutter/Fishing folder, click on the FishingNet01 NIF to select it.

Now click open, you'll see it displayed in the Model edit screen, this is a preview of how it'll look in-game.

With that done you can now click the OK button to close that screen and go back to the first one we opened. Here you'll notice our fields have been filled, we can click OK again and it'll then put our asset in the list.

To use it we first open up our cell in the render window, then find our asset in the list and drag/drop onto the render window, just like any other asset you want to use.

And that's it, we've added our first asset

[InsanitySorrow]