Armor Over Robes - Tutorial

Intro

This is a basic introduction to a few aspects of modding Oblivion. It is meant to entice those who would not ordinarily attempt this on their own. The concepts and tools introduced in the tutorial should help many gamers gain confidence in just how easy and fun this all can be. Plus your character is going to look pretty cool when we’re through.

Because of this ‘walkthrough’-like approach it is a bit long-winded, but once you have it down you should be able to whip these up in < 5 minutes ^_^

Please let me know if you are having troubles with any of this, my contact info is located at the bottom.

Unpack the BSAs

The .bsa files are the compressed textures, meshes, sounds etc of the vanilla Oblivion installation. They are located in the Oblivion\Data directory and you can uncompress them using ghostwheel's TES4BSA utility.

(Please follow the readme's instruction and copy both the bsa file and the TES4BSA utilty to a directory other than Oblivion/Data - you don't want to write over your texture replacement mods do you?) :embarrased:

The download includes a readme with full instructions for using TES4BSA from the command line.

Still having trouble? There's some more info at the bottom of the page. :0)

Editing Meshes

Don't worry this is simple and very effective. Of course, there are also more advanced techniques that can help to yield better results (less clipping). As some armors are harder to work with you may want to look into them.

NifSkope is a utility used to modify the mesh .nif files.

For this example we will be modifying both a standard game armor (Mithril Cuirass) and a modified robe (Eleven Robe) - (I would highly recommend tegeal's robes and Sin's Light armors)

http://img328.imageshack.us/img328/309/example24ws.gif Elven/Mithril http://img272.imageshack.us/img272/498/example34lq.gif

The standard game armor will be located in the extracted BSA directory under meshes\armor and then broken up into male and female versions. With the standard armors it is always a good idea to copy both the world and ground (_gnd) meshes to the Oblivion\Data directory. Place both of the meshes in a unique folder as you do not want to replace the standard game armors that NPCs are wearing. So we created the Directory Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Armor\PHAEmithiril\ and dropped in the cuirass.nif and the cuirass_gnd.nif files from our BSA archive.

There is one more file you will need when adding the armor/robe to the CS and that is the icon, this is of course what appears in the in-game menu. These can be found under the Menu\Icons folder. If you are editing a vanilla armor or robe I would recommend copying the icon file into your new directory, if you are editing a mod, you can simply point to the mods icon file that is already under the Oblivion\Data directory.

Repeat this process to copy over the robe and robe_gnd files, for my example I would have created a directory Oblivion\Data\meshes\clothes\PHAEelven and dropped in the corresponding files.

These are the meshes that the CS will reference when loading your new armor/robe, you can rename them if you wish - it only matters how you load them into the CS. More on that in a second. ^_^

(You don't have to copy these files over, you can simply modify the BSA extracts directly and save the file to the Oblivion\Data\Meshes directory when done. I just think it's easier to have them all in the same place.) :huh:

http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/6577/example43lm.gif http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/3227/example11va.gif

Now that we have the new armor/robes established we can get into the editing!

After installing NifSkope you can simply double click on the .nif files, lets start with the armor. (It is okay if the meshes appear white; this is because the path to the texture is wrong and is most likely because you are editing the mesh directly in the extracted BSA folders. They will appear correctly in-game and after you move the mesh to the Oblivion\Data\Meshes directory.)

You should now see your armor displayed in NifSkope. The next steps are a bit of trial and error depending on the robe/armor combination you are going for. You may want to rename the original cuirass.nif incase you edit out to much, you can always remove more .. but you can never add back.

A single click on a Block of the cuirass (there or normally 5-6 Blocks including; pauldrons, breast plate, sleeves, skirt, sash) will highlight both the block and the corresponding entry in the Block list on the left hand side. Normally the skirt and sleeves will have to be removed in order to be worn with a robe without lots of clipping. Because of this if you remove the skirt there may be a gap between the bottom of the cuirass and the robes sash/waistline that will expose your undies! (This can be fixed by wearing greaves or pants, that match .. obviously, underneath your robe - and we will allow for this in the CS later. I have found many cases in which either the sleeves or skirt do not cause clipping and can be left as part of the armor mesh, this is the where the trial and error part begins, all of the armors are different.

To remove a Block, right-click on the selected line in the Block List, select Block \ Remove Branch. For my example, the Mithril cuirass, I will remove both the sleeves and the skirt from the mesh.

When your done save the mesh, be sure to type '.nif' after the filename, or just double-click on the cuirass.nif you copied over earlier.

This is not necessary for the mod at hand but, you may have noticed many options available to you when right-clicking on the Block Branch, this is where the fun stuff starts! If your adventurous you can try copying branches between different armors to see what you can come up with. I've been able to create a few examples that can be worn as one piece instead of the two we are creating! Looking at the details of the Block Branch you can see many useful settings, including the texture path, feel free to change this if you want to create customer armors with your own textures! :lol:

Back on track... Right! Now on to the robe, same as before. The robes tend to only have 3-5 Blocks (torso, sleeves and the skirt are the main ones - sometimes robes include boots and gloves as well.) For our Eleven robe example we will only remove the torso section, again by right-clicking on the Block Branch and selecting Block / Remove Branch. Make sure to save when your done!

Please experiment with the removal of different Blocks and multiple robe/armor combinations to suit your own tastes.

Now that we have our new Meshes it's time to import them into the CS.

Once the items have been created in the CS you can come back again and again to edit the mesh as long as you keep the same filename, because that's all the CS cares about. ^_^

http://img272.imageshack.us/img272/4381/example52fp.gif http://img272.imageshack.us/img272/8612/example66ap.gif

Creating Objects

Download the TES Construction Set

Choose File / Data and either select an existing mod you would like to add your new items to or select the Oblivion.esm master file if you want to create a new mod. (It will ask you what to Save As when you save your changes.) You can view changes made by the mods by selecting View Details here as well, useful if your looking for specific object IDs!

Also, setting a file as active will save the changes to that mod only, so you can load multiple mods at once but it will only save the objects you've changed in the active one.

Once loaded expand the Items List in the Object Window, and select Armor. After clicking on the item list to the left you can search for the type of armor you are replacing. In our example I am looking to add a modified Mithril cuirass into the game, so hitting 'm' three times will take me to the vanilla Mithril cuirass. Right-click on the line and select Edit, if you enter a new ID it will create a new object automatically. Enter a unique ID, it helps to start with your initials so that all your modified armors are in the same area and easy to find.

For our example I'm going to call my new armor PHAEmithril. Next enter a name to be displayed in the game world, again it helps to be unique here as well, so you can differentiate between your items and vanilla ones. The rest of the information you can figure out, and if you don't want to cheat you can use the defaults. I would recommend un-checking the hide amulet option (and also downloading the amulet texture replacement pack) 'cause I'm proud of my amulets! You can also define the value of the item here, and because this tutorial is going to add the items to a vendor, you may want to make them cheap, for uh .. um testing purposes *cough*...

Now, the most important thing is to set Biped Object as Tail, unless your a beast in which case you can use Amulet, lots of armors don't display the amulet well anyway. You can also experiment here as well, many of the objects work and this may help when trying to wear other custom items (ninja cowl (uses amulet)/ capes (uses tail)).

By unselecting the additonal Biped Objects loaded for the original object (Lower Body, Hands, Feet) you can allow for the character to wear gloves, boots and greaves/pants, to cover up those undies! (Checkout the picture below, my characters staff is in front of the exposed area.)

Now, basically whichever mesh you created earlier (armor/robe) that has the sleeves you want to see in game (that you didn't delete) ^_^, which in our case is the robe, must be selected as UpperBody. So if you want to see the armor's sleeves you would set the robe as tail.

The next section is the male or female object selection, the Biped Model is the model of the mesh that will be worn by your character (in our case this would be Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Armor\PHAEmithril\cuirass.nif), the World Model is the mesh that will be used when the item is placed into the world (for us this would be Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Armor\PHAEmithril\cuirass_gnd.nif) and the Icon Image (file location depends if you copied it from the BSA extract or if you're planning on using the original mod's.)

And, your done!

Back in the Object Window under Items select Clothing and repeat the steps above for your robe. Remember to set the Biped Object to UpperBody if you want to see the sleeves in-game.

You can also use this method to give yourself items, such as that matching pair of greaves for your new cuirass ^_^ If it is a vanilla piece of armor/clothing, you can either edit the real item as we did earlier or use the existing (I would recommend at least renaming the ID). If it is a mod armor either direct the Objects links to the modders files in your Oblivion\Data directory or load their mod with yours as active and use their own objects.

http://img281.imageshack.us/img281/6783/example100id.jpg

Sell those new Wears!

These steps can also be used to place items anywhere in the game world, you'll get the idea.

Open the Cell View window and set the World Space to interiors. We will be placing our item in the IC's Market District at A Fighting Chance. The EditorID is ICMarketDistrictAFightingChance, pretty easy to figure out what the others are as well.. If you look at the Objects of this interior, which load on the right when selected you will see multiple containers. Adding your new items to the Vendor* container will automatically make it for sell from the owner of the chest *ahem* container.

* WARNING * It is more compatible to create a new vendor chest and place it in the game world. (You can just copy the old container by giving it a new ID) This is a little more complicated, but not really. Shoot me a PM if your interested, I’d be happy to help out. Basically you will copy the chest (edit the original and rename the ID, like we did for the armor and robe), drag it to the Vendor's cell and place it outside of the viewable area. (under the floor, outside the wall etc.) This would also be a basic introduction to manipulating the environment :whisper:

If editing the vendor's chest directly has you freaked out now, you can always just drop the items in another crate that is less likely to have been modified by others. (Right click and select view on the container so you know where it is in the cell) ^_^

You can add items by right-clicking on the container and choosing Edit. You will now be viewing the container's references but more importantly you can choose Edit Base, to edit the base object.

Simply drag your items from the Object Window into the Container window and your done, yay! Click OK on everything that is open and Save!

Make sure you select your mod next time you load the game.

Further Reading

Sorry that took so long to explain, please let me know if you have any comments.

Even though this tutorial is pretty basic, you should feel confident now with many common aspects of the CS and mesh manipulation. If you wish to expand on this please visit the Main Page

I would recommend some of the beginning tutorials to get you started with other aspects of modding they start slow but there’s some good stuff in there!

TES4BSA Help

The Wiki's BSA Unpacker Tutorial

I can be reached through the Elder Scrolls forums. You can PM me at, phaedrusQ

--Phaedrus 23:14, 12 July 2006 (EDT)