Modding Skyrim An Insiders View

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1

Hi all,

This thread has been created as a means of giving any aspiring artists, whom are interested in modding Skyrim an inside view into the Skyrim Modding Community, the reception one might receive and a few hints and tips to improve their mods to have them fully appreciated within the community. If this post is in the wrong category then I fully consent to the forum admin moving it to the appropriate channel within the forum.

Please note: I will be name dropping several modders usernames but this is purely on a contextual basis. Each of these modders have their own niches’ and approaches which I will outline.

So, let me firstly explain some technical jargon so whomever this is aimed at can download and familiarise themselves with the process.

There are 3 different Skyrim games which the community mods, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (SSE), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition (SLE) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR (SVR). Each runs the same game engine called NetImmerse Engine which was created by Bethesda, the designers of the game. Unfortunately, when you become familiar with modding and the ins and outs; you’ll discover just how lazy Bethesda actually were when creating the meshes, textures and game mechanics. The game engine is incredibly buggy and a bit broken and several modders have made it there life’s work to fixing the bugs through a series of patches, which is still ongoing. Skyrim is over 10 years old and during that period of gaming the bugs and errors may have let slide but by today’s standards, it simply isn’t good enough which is who why modders like myself exist to bring the game to 2022 standards. A huge task if you ask me. The game engine uses .nif format for its meshes, .dds for it’s textures and Papyrus for it’s scripting, which is a combination of C++ and Python. The scripts are very limited and basic and many modders use a program called Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) to bring new functions to the game. Havok which controls the collision meshes and materials. Unfortunately, Tessallation isn’t recognised by the game engine but using Parallax is used as a substitute.

Skyrim modders use 5 software programs to help them mod the game…

  • Blender/3DMax - Say no more…
  • Outfit Studio and Bodyslide - These are used to import custom armour and outfits into a format that the game engine can recognise and either use new custom body meshes or have the new armours and outfits retro-fitted to the vanilla body mesh. Outfit Studio is also used to import .obj and .fbx meshes and convert them to nif files. Blender does have a 3rd party plugin to do this but it’s notoriously buggy and broken so, we tend to avoid it go through Outfit Studio.
  • Nif Optimiser - We use this to convert the .nif from SSE to Skyrim: LE for the purpose of adding custom collision meshes to the .nif files. We bounce back and forth between the two despite Skyrim LE meshes being recognised in SSE.
  • NifUtilsSuite - This is an all-in-one program but is mainly used to injecting the custom collision meshes into our main .nif file. It usually work by having 3 .nif meshes. Our main mesh which will be textured, a custom collision mesh file and .nif template mesh which contains nothing but the collision mesh from a vanilla asset. The program then remodels the template collision mesh to match our custom collision mesh. Unfortunately, the game engine doesn’t do this automatically as seen in Unreal Engine, we have to do this manually. SSE nif meshes aren’t recognised in NifUtilsSuite and will cause the program to crash which is why we convert the .nif mesh to Skyrim: LE first, then convert back to SSE once the collision mesh has been added. NifUtilsSuite was designed to only work with Skyrim: LE meshes.
  • Nifskope 2.0 - This is the main software which is use to add the correct paths for the textures for the mesh which we have just imported. We also use this to face normals and clean Tangent Space within the mesh.

Photoshop or Gimp are also used to encode the textures using .dds but in order for the normal map to display correctly, modders must invert the Y/Green channel. You must also use a Specular Map, Roughness Maps do work as essentially they both exactly the same map, you just have to invert it in Photoshop. This Specular Map is pasted into the Alpha Channel of the Normal Map if using Photoshop and applied as a Mask if using Gimp.

Textures are encoded using following parameters…

  • BC1/DXT1 - Used when there is no Alpha Channel and are mainly for Diffuse Maps
  • BC3/DXT3 - These are used for Normal Maps and Diffuse Maps which contain an Interpolated Alpha Channel. All Normal Maps are saved in this format.
  • BC5/DXT7 - Some modders like to encode the Maps with Interpolated Alpha Channels in this format as it helps with game engine decode the textures but the modders Graphics Card MUST have CUDA capabilities. OpenCL will not work.
  • All maps are encoded using Mipmaps.

In the next post update, I will explain the main modders, their niche’s and how to recognise their work.

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Hey guys, back with another insight to the Skyrim Modding Community for aspiring modders out there within the Blender Artist Community.

In the last post I spoke about the tools that modders use to mod the game, now I’d like to take the time to speak briefly about the main modders within the Skyrim Community.

So, there are 5 main modders who are regularly active and deliver content on a consistent basis. They are “respected” within the community for their work but an artist who works with blender and texture nodes can instantly tell their approach.

JohnSkyrim - Firstly, we have JohnSkyrim. This modder is highly thought of in the community. He regularly releases mods which are aimed at hard surface clutter items, and 90% of the time does retextures from vanilla meshes using the same procedural texture nodes and rinses, recycles, repeats and just alters the colour to match the vanilla diffuse. The remaining 10% is spent by adding the occasional rivet to the vanilla mesh.

SkyKing2020 - SkyKing regularly releases Landscape mods and often uses vanilla meshes and Megascan assets to retexture the landscape and landscape assets. He is the go-to modder for all things landscape.

JKSkyrim - JKSkyrim’s niche is architecture and interiors within the game. He is very talented and often uses vanilla assets to remodel the look and feel often the interiors.

Elsopa - Elsopa is a modder who I can appreciate. Elsopa likes to work with a mixture of hard surface clutter items and has branched out into weaponry. He sculpts and creates beautiful model replacers within the game which are AAA quality and wouldn’t look unfamiliar in a studio released game.

Kalilies and Stealthic - These two modders often release hair replacer mods which are amazing and are getting more varied with each update, their mod KS Hairdos currently has 300+ male and female hair styles that are, by the looks of it created using a hair particle system as seen in many of the 3D character sculptures seen on this site.

It’s interesting to see with each release from the modder their character or lack of in some cases and approach. To me, there’s only handful of modders who actually spend time on their work, the rest have a lazy approach, whether that’s down to recycling the same texture nodes over and over again or using 3rd party assets and passing them off as your own.

Regardless… what’s more interesting is the fact that the modders who spend time on their work fully appreciate and will respond to constructive criticism, I’ve often left feedback on a mod with some constructive criticism only to see the comments have been deleted and only the positive comments from other mod users remain, which kinda tells me that the modders are a bit egotistical.

I dunno, maybe I could reading into it too much but to me there are only a few mods from modders which I personal use in my own game and I think you can guess who’s work that is.

Until next time, good luck with work guys and have fun expressing yourselves!