Skyrim modding part1 : Info

One of the things that made the past Elder scrolls games so good, was the mods that made the user experience live longer.  Bethesda has seen the potential in mods, and has included something called creation kit, an editor from where your possibilities are almost endless.

Creation Kit lets you build your own level from scratch, placing enemies, change stats, import custom meshes etc. The most troublesome part is getting your own custom meshes for weapons and armor in the game, but once you get the hang of that, it is an easy thing getting your own, personal weapon in the game.

 The thing is when I play Skyrim, I stop after a couple of minutes because I want more than there is. I want a staff, a puppet staff, that can control a little powerful puppet. A puppet that still has character and protects you from harm. Using the creation kit, I want to create that weapon, and apply a balanced stat so it is possible to play as you normally would do, but with your favourite weapon.

So how do I get it in the game? I followed some of the tutorials from SoMuchMonsters.com , a really neat site with lots of tutorials for sculpting and modding. With that said, this is what you need for getting your custom weapon in Skyrim, copy pasted from one of the tutorials there.


Prereq:
Nifskope 1.1 or later (http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2683 )
Nif.xml up to date ( https://github.com/throttlekitty/nifxml )
Niftools 3.7 or later ( http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3196#p21708 )
Fallout Archive Manager (http://www.fileplanet.com/196180/download/Fallout-3---Archive-Utility- )
Nvidia DDS plugin for Photoshop ( http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop )


When you are creating textures, know that Skyrim is using the alphachannel for various stuff.

the _d is the diffuse texture, this can have a transparencymap in the alpha.
the _n is the normalmap, can have a specularmask in the alpha.
the _ en is the rgb mask for the enviornment map, used for fake reflections.
the _g is for glow?