Modders Resources & Tutorials (links and descriptions only)

[Magelord648]

I thought this would be appreciated by the many members who wish to mod for Morrowind. I will try to fill this thread to the brim with Tutorials and Resources to get absolutely anyone making mods for Morrowind. Experience or no experience. the resources in this thread will all be free but still as good as the expensive variants. They will cover 3D modelling and texturing as well as packing utilities to get your mod released as quick as possible. I will also place links to get your mod to the widest audience possible. I will also give occasional mention of projects aspiring modders may be keen to join.

I'll start with tutorials

Tamriel Rebuilt offers many great tutorials and I find it the best site seeing as the CS wiki only looks at Oblivion modding now. I will list a few to get you started.

[url="http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tuts/dsong/first_room"]Building your first room by Dragonsong[/url]

[url="http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tuts/dsong/second_room"]Building your second room by Dragonsong[/url]

These are just two basic beginner tutorials. I will post more advanced tutorials in the future. eg; Scripting and dialogue.

Now onto resources

If you plan on uploading a mod to the internet you will need an archiver. I use [url="http://www.powerarchiver.com/"]Power Archiver[/url] but I will keep to my freeware promise and offer you all [url="http://www.zipgenius.it/eng/index.php"]Zipgenius[/url]. It does the same thing but unfortunately by the time I found it I had spent my money on PA and I was not going to put that to waste. Popular archiving methods are a plain old ZIP file for your small mod, RAR for your slightly bigger project and finally the most powerful 7Z for replacers and huge mods. Zipgenius supports all of these and can also make executables/installers for lightening fast installation. (Not recommended for small mods though.)

[url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=149157&package_id=170735"]Nifskope[/url] is extremely useful for quickly viewing models and editing them. Just open the file and you have the models in front of you. I use this when looking for resources to use in mods due to it's speed and ease of use.

[url="http://www.blender.org/"]Blender[/url] is a free and powerful 3D modelling program. To make models for Morrowind you will need the [url="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=149157&package_id=166219"]NIF scripts[/url] and to run the program you need [url="http://www.python.org/"]python[/url]. It can be quite tricky to begin with but it starts to gradually make sense. Try reading [url="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro"]Blender noob to pro[/url]. Blender cannot read DDS textures but will still accept them. They won't be rendered in the display window though.

Last night I also discovered [url="http://sketchup.google.com/"]Google Sketchup[/url]. It is much easier to use but to get your mesh into Morrowind you'll have to export it as a Google earth file, import into Blender then export as a NIF file. This can be awkward but Google supply a lot of [url="http://sketchup.google.com/tutorials.html"]video tutorials[/url] which will get you using the program very easily and it's easy to get the NIF out in the end. You can also select the scale depending on the system you've been brought up with.

[url="http://www.gimp.org/"]GIMP[/url], (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a great program. It supports transparency and can export both TGA and Bitmaps and with the [url="http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/download.php?filename=gimp-dds-win32"]DDS plugin[/url] you can export DDS as well.

Another nice little utility is a thumbnail viewer for DDS and TGA files. These allow you to quickly see a texture without having to load up GIMP.
[url="http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_thumbnail_viewer.html"]DDS[/url]
[url="http://greggman.com/pages/thumbplug_tga.htm"]TGA[/url]

If you want to change original Bethesda models, textures or icons and you don't want to use the CS disc you can use a [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=28"]BSA unpacker[/url]. This utility allows you to browse and extract from Bethesda Softworks archives.

That's all the utilities I can come up with right now. I'll have another look when I get home.

I will finish with a project.

[url="http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/"]Tamriel Rebuilt[/url] is a project to build the whole province of Morrowind for Morrowind and the whole of Tamriel for Oblivion. The devotion that goes into it is amazing and it is perfect for a first time modder. You will have to make a showcase to be let in but once that's out of the way you can claim any available work and put it up for review. I'm a member but I've only completed one claim. It's very satisfying to be part of a team and easier for those who aren't good with coming up with ideas and just want to build things.

That's all for now. I hope it helps otherwise that's a wasted hour. :laugh:

I'll post more when I get home.

[Magelord648]

[url="http://chalice.planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/files/Morrowind_Scripting_for_Dummies_5_pdf.pdf"]Morrowind Scripting for Dummies[/url] is a great guide to scripting. Although it's good I wouldn't recommend trying to learn scripting from it. It is more of a reference for various functions and contains explanations of various scripts like Mad Max's riding script from Pegas horse ranch.

A good scripting tutorial would be [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tuts/dsong/scripting"]Dragonsong's scripting guide.[/url]
And to go with scripting there is [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/tuts/dialoguetut.zip"]dialogue by Srikandi[/url]. (Dialogue and scripting become very similar at some points)

[url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/utils/tesame.zip"]TESAME[/url] is an extremely important utility for cleaning mods of GMSTs. With Tribunal and Bloodmoon installed, creating a mod without the ESMs loaded will generate 72 GMSTs. If an esp isn't cleaned it has some bad side effects. In Tribunal you will not be able to summon Fabricants with the spell you acquire. In Bloodmoon it gets worse. You will not be able to use any of the summon spells added to the game and the werewolf stats become crippled making the game much harder when facing them and too easy when you are one. Every mod you make should be checked over with [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/utils/tesame.zip"]TESAME[/url]. Lots of Dirty references are created and need to be corrected to avoid problems with your own and other peoples' games.

TR's [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/ngen"]name generator[/url] is handy for giving your NPCs authentic names. It also saves time trying to think up names when making a mod with lots of NPCs.

[url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/files/utils/Overunity18.rar"]Overunity[/url] will tell you files needed for a mod to run. It's a bit complicated but can generate lists and move/copy files. It can take away hours of tracking down files.

That's all for now.

[Magelord648]

I think it's time for an update and this time I'm going to look at races.

Here's a [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tuts/fusi/race_creation"]basic race creation tutorial.[/url] It provides information of making the layout of your new race. The end result will be a new race with no body which to be frank is rather useless. The [url="http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tuts/fusi/race_models"]next tutorial[/url]explains how to add body parts using an existing race's. This is handy for those who want to edit a race without changing everyone of that race in the game. I would only recommend using this personally because in my opinion releasing a race using Bethesda's meshes is lazy and easily made in few seconds. Don't let that stop you from editing the original race though. There are a few necessary changes that have been addressed but there's always room for improvement and new ideas. The first tutorial teaches you how to make these changes so it's handy for anyone who wants to do that as well.

I'll end with another project.
The [url="http://lgnpc.sabregirl.com/"]Lesser Generic NPC Project[/url] aims to change the dialogue of nearly every NPC in Morrowind. Releasing their work one town at a time, they give every NPC a unique personality. Although writing dialogue is tricky at first this is good work for those with a large amount of imagination. If you keep it simple all you have to worry about is bad grammar and keeping it interesting. I'm not a member of this project and I do not use it myself so you'll need to [url="http://lgnpc.sabregirl.com/contact.php"]contact its creators[/url] if you have any questions regarding it.

I think LGNP was actually started at these forums so that might be worth a mention if you choose to join.

Happy Modding

[Magelord648]

A new [url="http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6083"]Morrowind Scripting for dummies[/url] has been released. Pretty Dandy.