Greetings. I'm hoping that this marks the start of a very long and productive modding career, and this thread I hope to use to get up and running ASAP with any queries I may have.
As a beginner I want to start with something small but very important, which is a new banner I have planned for all my future mods. It's the banner that'll represent my character within TES world, so I hope it'll eventually be seen everywhere my character goes. But before I can start I need to know how to set everything up. I play via Mod Organiser, so do I need everything routed through that? I already have the Creation Kit working through MO, but what else? I've also got GIMP, 3D Max and Paint.NET installed, so do I need to route those through MO as well?
Another really important question is how to make something like my banner standalone? Everything I hope to make in the future will NOT replace ANY vanilla items.
Lastly, there are some replacer mods out there which I'd really like to make into standalones. At the moment they're simply languishing on my hard drive. In order to make them into standalones do I need to install them onto MO first, or can I simply use the CK to pluck them off my hard drive without having to install them onto MO?