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Introduction: Welcome to Graphic Artistry! I'm sure when you've been looking at Skyrim's assets or browsing the likes of TESA and see people talking about textures, I bet you were wondering "What the hell they were talking about?", I was wondering the exact same thing when I started. I'm also betting you have many ideas about things you'd like to change or new stuff you'd like to make for your game, but you're unsure how to do that right?, Well don't worry, the Graphic Artistry are here to help you do just that...... yes you can get up and dance now. The Graphic Artistry classes will explain what textures are and what they do, but we'll also go a few steps further and explain how we go about editing existing textures and then finally move onto creating new textures for our own models. Exciting times ahead for all, better make sure you have enough tea/coffee and cookies, you're going to need them Smarty Says: <-- This is my buddy Smarty, he knows a ton of modding information for the Elder scrolls and he'll be following us through the Classes and lending a hand when needed. Smarty loves to pop up in some of the strangest places, but he always has useful tips and reminders that'll keep us doing the right thing. Keep an eye out and if you see him, share your cookies, I think he's earned it. What you need: Nifskope: The magical NIF tool we all use to view and even sometimes edit Skyrim's NIFs (Game's Meshes/Models) Graphics Application: We'll be needing an application of some type to edit our textures. We'll need something quite powerful that supports the texture format used by game and also things like Layers. Anything like these will do perfectly: Photoshop GIMP (Free) Paint.Net (Free) Direct Draw Surface Plugin (DDS) Skyrim's textures make use of the DDS format, so we'll need a plugin that supports though since some of the applications mentioned above do not have native support. Photoshop Nvidia Plugin GIMP DDS Plugin, GIMP Normal Map Plugin BSA Archive Utility For us to be able to edit any of the games textures we'll need to extract the textures from the Archives (BSA files). To do this we'll make use of FO3 Archive by ScripterRon. What does this mean?: DDS - Direct Draw Surface, it's the file format all of Skyrim's textures use. NIF - Net Immerse File, it's the file format all Skyrim's models use. Texture/Normal Map/Glow Map - These are all different texture files Skyrim uses, more information can be found in the Reference Sheet. Getting Started: The first few steps we need to take are to make sure we have a 2D application like one of the ones mentioned above and we have all our tools downloaded. Be sure to follow the install instructions included with the plugin downloads and extract FO3 Archive to some place you'll find easily, I place mine inside a modding folder. After that we can take a look at extracting some textures. Extracting Textures: Let's run through a trial texture extraction to get ourselves used to working with FO3 Archive. 1) First things first, run FO3 Archive, when it loads up you'll be greeted with a screen like this: 2) Take a look at the top of the screen, you'll see things like File and Action. These are where all our options are hidden. So what we need to do is open an archive file, so click File>Open A new screen will pop up asking you to locate a BSA file to open, Navigate to your Skyrim Installation folder, go into the Data folder and select the Skyrim - Textures.bsa. This will take a little time to open. 3) Now you'll see something like this: Use the little + signs you see next to the folder names to expand the tree, navigate down to Weapons and then to the Glass weapons. Click the folder name to select it like so: 4) Now to extract them, with our folder selected with need to use the top menu again, select Action>Extract Selected Files and then navigate to the place you want them. I usually put them on my desktop. And that's it, we've extracted our first set of textures. We can repeat this for other textures and any other BSA Archive files we need stuff from. What's Next?: If you have any questions about what has been explained so far, please post them here in the General Questions thread. Read through all that?, Well then what are you waiting for, get yourself over to Class #1, I'll see you there

Yep, this The Imperials agreeing to disown Talos was stupid, such an obvious clause in the Concordat to cause just this sort of civil tearing in the Empire.

I don't want to nitpick about syntax or word choice, I just meant that he deliberately and with intent killed the king. Whether or not said premeditated killing was allowed by Nord law isn't really the point, the point was that imo he picked a really dumb time to be a political diva and cause all that chaos. "Can" and "should" being not the same, and all that.

Badass barbarian two handed weapon wielding hearty mead drinking vikings + most badass swordsmen in all of Tamriel=Thalmor on their knees begging for mercy!

Exactly. He's not very inspiring unless you're a nord, I'll admit. Luckily I almost always am. I find it easy to join him as a redguard though. Or a dunmer for the irony, and to show that Dunmer can be valuable members of an independent Skyrim. And to Nord law, what Ulfric did was not murder.

Hello, my name is Dagon. I'm a... person, I suppose. I don't have any special skills with modding or suchlike, I just like playing Oblivion and Skyrim. I was drawn here by Darkrider's Reclaiming Sancre Tor (or, more specifically, a bug with said mod), and I've decided I like the look of it. It's fabulouuuuus! So..... hi.

Hello all. This is my first post in this forum. I'm a stormcloak soldier all the way. Why? I believe Ulfric's cause is right, that the claims of his corruption and greed are false, and that the Empire is dying, and has no chance of defeating the Thalmor the way it is now. I can tell from Ulfric's dialogue with Galmar that he truly believes in his cause and cares for his people. I believe that an independent Skyrim can still work with the Empire in the face of incoming danger, and Skyrim does not have to be under the Empire's boot to work with eachother. Other groups in TES have done this with much more blood and grudges much more deep between them and have worked together before, so there's no reason to believe the stormcloaks and imperials can't in the event of an independent Skyrim. I believe that those who would sacrifice freedoms for safety don't deserve to be free, and the Empire does not care about its provinces. History has shown this with Hammerfell, and Morrowind during the Oblivion Crisis. They did nothing to help Valenwood from the Thalmor, and they if they have to will sacrifice every province for their own selfish needs. I don't blame them for this, as this is the nature of Empires, but this is exactly why Skyrim must be free of it. It is no longer of any use to Skyrim besides the convenient shield it provides between Skyrim and the Aldmeri Dominion. The Empire just doesn't seem like it is up to fight. They seem broken, but the stormcloaks are not. For that reason, and the fact that the Empire allows the injustice of the Thalmor to happen out of fear, I side with the Stormcloaks. I gave the Imperials a chance before. I ended up deleting my first character because they left me with a bad taste in my mouth after I finished the quest and learned more about the situation. Never again.

I just can't trust Ulfric, I think he has HIS interests in mind not Skyrim's.