Creating Skyrim Armor in Blender Tutorial Series

[Hanaisse]

Index:

Part 1: Understanding Skin Partitions - NifSkope

Part 2: Understanding Skin Partitions - Blender

Part 3: Preparing an Existing Nif for Blender

Part 4: Modifying an Existing Nif in Blender

Part 5: Clean up the Nif in NifSkope

Part 6: Adding Armor to the Creation Kit

Part 7: Creating NEW Armor in Blender

Addendum: Skin Partitions / Body Parts / Biped Objects Reference Sheet

In my bid to understand why none of my modified armors worked in game, I've delved deep into the steaming underbelly of Nifskope to dissect every miniscule part of how the Skyrim body works. I've discovered some very interesting facts that I hope will help any others who decide to try their hand at new armors/clothing for Skyrim.

Thus is born this series of tutorials that describe the process of creating/modifying armor and/or clothing for Skyrim in detail with plenty of pictures. Each tutorial is written in a 'classroom' way for you to follow along in the tools yourself. Don't be afraid, get in there and try it. Make a cup of tea, grab some cookies and take your time, there's a lot of information here.

Each part is also available in a Word document version for those who prefer to have a printed copy. Download here (soon).

Tools required:

* Blender 2.49b (not tested on higher versions, but do not use 2.6x versions - the Nifscripts aren't up to the task yet)

* NifScripts 2.5.9

* PYFFI 2.1.11

* NifSkope 1.1.0

Knowledge required:

These are advanced tutorials that assume the reader knows and understands NifSkope and their way around in Blender. They also assume basic knowledge of the Creation Kit.

Disclaimer: Please be patient. While most of the tutorials are written in rough draft, adding them to this forum and uploading the pictures takes time.

[grond]

So far - brilliant, comprehensive and clear guides through the scary underbelly of Nifskope. Thank you for your work Hana.

[donnato]

Indeed Hana, I`m looking into using this for other things like clutter items too. So far it looks adaptable. Thank you so much. ...

[Hanaisse]

Thanks grondy

@don; For static/clutter items you'll want IS's tutorial From Blender to Skyrim.

[Hanaisse]

The tutorial Parts 1-6 are now complete and can be used to modify existing armor / clothing pieces to your heart's content.

Part 7, totally new armor will take some time to put together.

Have fun.

[vometia]

I'm glad this has been properly documented! Trying to work on the armour in Skyrim made me think that eating my own intestines would be a more enjoyable pastime.

I was going to make a suggestion regarding the nifs, but given some of my esoteric habits I think it's probably best the way it is.

[LJGB]

Hey, Hanaisse. I'm having some trouble with your brilliant tutorial.

I am modifying the mythic dawn robes mesh (to remove the collar) but I'm running into some trouble.

I have made my changes, and moved onto creating skin partitions which I think I'm doing correctly (it seems a bit too simple somehow, if that makes sense?) when I move onto checking the mesh in Nifscope, there is an extra BP_TORSO that has seemingly random faces selected. Also, NiHeader isn't anywhere to be seen.

I just wondered if there is perhaps a different process for modifying robes or something?

Any help or advice would be GREATLY appreciated, I've been toiling over this simple mesh tweak for days now.

[Hanaisse]

Hello LJGB, and thanks for looking at my tutorial. I'm glad you're finding it useful.

First, the extra BP_TORSO with random faces; yes, that's a by-product of the Blender exporter which is currently broken. Don't worry, it will still work. If that extra partition contains faces that actually do belong to the body, just treat it like the real body partition. Rename it to SBP_32_BODY, and in this case, keep the PF_Start_Net_Boneset part flag. Hopefully the exporter will be fixed up soon.

As for the NiHeader, you can usually see it as soon as you open your nif in NifSkope in the Block Details. If you have your NifSkope set to view blocks in trees you'll loose seeing that as soon as you click on something else. You can find it by going to View > Block List > Show blocks in List then you'll have the NiHeader back at the very top. You can always change your view when you're done changing it.

Good luck with your project.

[LJGB]

Ahh, okay. I can see the NiHeader now.

I've renamed it as you advised, and will continue with the next part of your tutorial. Hopefully it'll be plain sailing from here!

Thanks so much!

[LJGB]

Sorry to bother you again, but I've ran into another problem

I'm following this part:

2. Highlight NiTriShapeData. Verify the line Num UV sets = 4097 for armor pieces, 1 for skin pieces. Verify the line Has Normals = yes for armor pieces, no for skin pieces.

Num UV Sets is grayed out for me, and Has Normals reads no. Is this because I'm editing clothing and not armor?

I keep getting stuck on something trivial for hours!

[Hanaisse]

No, clothing and armor are the same thing.

Something else has gone wrong for you if that line is greyed out. You applied a material and texture while in Blender?

[LJGB]

Yes. Thinking back I may have done that wrong, I followed a YouTube video tutorial on how to add a material. For the texture I just used a retexture of the mythic dawn robe that I had created (essentially just made it blacker)

I'm a complete beginner. I just wanted a black version of the Mythic Dawn robes with the collar removed so it resembled the Black Hand Robes from Oblivion. I'd actually pay someone to do this for me! Haha.

[Hanaisse]

In that case it might be easier to just apply transparent alpha on the collar, so all you'd need to do is play with the texture, not the mesh itself.

[LJGB]

It seems the only way I can get my black mythic dawn robes with no collar, is by altering the mesh, because the chest and shoulders poke through the robes, and it looks like Bethesda covered over it with the collar. So just making it transparent doesn't work.

So in blender, I removed the collar and had to slightly expand parts of the robes mesh to cover over the shoulders and chest that were poking through. Honestly this is way beyond my skill range!

Is this something that you could do in five minutes, or is it actually a difficult change I'm undertaking?

I'm so stuck.

[LJGB]

Okay, okay, okay. Sorry to bother you Hana I really am -- it seems the chest and shoulders don't actually poke through at all, I checked in-game. So the whole 'make the collar transparent' idea will still work!

The only small question I have now, is that the collar isn't actually transparent in-game. How do I save it as a .dds and keep the transparency?

(Also, sometimes when I save a .dds with certain compressions, the quality drops dramatically and there are purple squares dotted about it, strange.)

This'll be my last question as I realise your tutorial was for advanced users, and I clearly don't fall into that category. So thanks, and sorry!

[Hanaisse]

It's not a problem. This site is full of tutorials to help people learn.

Here's a good tutorial on transparency. It'll answer all your questions. Or if it doesn't, let me know.

[LJGB]

I beat you to it!

The result:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/images/204286

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/Images/204287

Can't believe I finally got it in the bloody game! Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction!

[Hanaisse]

Yay! Great job.

[ManyStrongWords]

I cant get any textures to show but I can get the models. I unpacked everything but the textures wont show.

[Hanaisse]

You'll have to be more specific. What step are you on? What program are they not showing in?

[Number_8]

Hi,
thank you for this detailed instruction; as a complete beginner it helped me a lot to get started.
Unfortunately after exporting the armor (to get used to the whole process I simply use an unmodified Thieves Guild armor torso_0.nif mesh) when opening it in NifSkope I get two BP_TORSO skin partitions (one has PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE, the other PF_EDITOR_VISIBLE | PF_START_NET_BONESET as "Part Flag“ value) although I followed exactly the instructions given here and assigned exactly the same parts of the mesh to the different Vertex Groups as seen in the original torso_0.nif.
The one TORSO part covers the upper body normally, the other one covers the region between the calves and the thighs – both together form what I assigned in Blender to the BP_TORSO Vertex Group.
If I do the whole process with a simple body mesh (e.g. femalebody_0.nif) I also get split TORSO but here the second part covers part of the upper arms.

What am I doing wrong?

Btw, some meshes of mods I use show the same splitting of BP_TORSO (or SPB_32_BODY)  and I never experienced any problems ingame but I guess its not wanted nevertheless.

Cheers,

Number 8

[Hanaisse]

You're not doing anything wrong, the nifscripts when exporting from Blender is. As I've mentioned it doesn't always get it right and the Niftools people need to fix it.

Nothing you can do right now but accept it. It does work. Leave the flags as is too.

[Number_8]

Ah, okay. Thank you for your quick reply!
I just saw that someone else already asked exactly the same question; I don't know how I could miss that - perhaps asking the question at 12:50 AM local time wasn't a good idea (shame on me...).

[DMGT]

Love and appreciate the guide.

 

I'm a new user to Blender, though, so I'm kind of stuck at the part where you add materials and textures.... How exactly do I go about that?

 

I've tried googling / searching youtube for an hour and nothing seems to be working out for me.

[Hanaisse]

Thank you.   But I did say this is an advanced tutorial.

 

For basics, look here for the two links to the Blender2Oblivion tutorials on Blender basics. Excellent starting tutorials. The basics are the same whether for Oblivion or Skyrim, just the exporting is different. There are other tutorials here for Blender to Skyrim exporting.