Morrowind Skinning Tutorial Part I

Reskinning Tutorial

Part I: A Weapon

This is a tutorial on reskinning or retexturing objects using Dave Humphrey's utility, NifTexture. There are several good tutorials out there which were written before reskinning utilities were available, but there seems to be a need for a tutorial which covers how the process works with a utility.

Update, 7/2/03: I've added a second part, on reskinning armor and clothing. It assumes you're familiar with the material on this page.

Before starting, you need two pieces of software:

NifTexture by Dave Humphreys, which you can download here. NifTexture is the recommended utility because it handles more texture file types than the others, and it is the only one which allows you to change the length of texture names.
A paint program. You can use any paint program that can open and save the file types you need. Morrowind originally shipped with all its textures in the .bmp and .tga formats, and that's all that's required for this tutorial.

DDS Format: the official plugins and expansions (and many fan mods) have upgraded to .dds format for both textures and icons. This format supports "mip-maps", which store the texture at different resolutions for different levels of detail depending on how close you are to an object. To use images in this format, you'll need a paint program that can accept Adobe Photoshop plugins (such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro), and the DDS Phtoshop Plugin, available here.

I'm assuming you know how to use your paint program -- if not, use its tutorial, or search the web for one. I'm also assuming you're familiar with basic operations in the TESCS, such as modifying an object's properties and loading and saving a mod.

OK, that's all the preliminaries. On with the tut!

(1) My mod needs a unique axe (the "Woodsman's Axe"), so we are going to take an existing axe and reskin it. I want a simple hatchet, so I start with the Iron War Axe. First, I'm going to make a new object based on the Iron War Axe.

I start the TESCS.
I click Data Files, and load Morrowind.esm and my mod, and set my mod as the Active File. (If you are starting a new mod for the tutorial, just load Morrowind.esm.)
In the TESCS, I click the Weapons tab, and double-click the Iron War Axe. In the axe's property sheet, I type in a new ID ("ST_WoodsmanAxe"), and a new name ("Woodsman's Axe"). It's always a good idea to preface a new item ID with your initials or the initials of your mod, so you and the mod's users can easily see what objects belong to your mod.
I click "Save". When asked if I want to create a new object, I click "yes".
I save my work. (If you're starting a new mod, you'll be prompted for a filename here.) I minimize the TESCS but leave it open for now -- we'll be back.

(2) Next, I'm going to copy the mesh and textures for this axe from the Construction Set CD to the Morrowind Data Files directory, so I can work on them without worrying about altering the originals. (For information on where to copy to, see this note on filepaths.)

But how do I know which files to copy? Well, the weapon's properties sheet tells me the mesh name (on the top button next to the icon): w\W_WARAXE_IRON.nif. So I'll start by copying that over and renaming it. Using Windows Explorer,

I locate Data Files/Meshes/w/W_WARAXE_IRON.nif on the CS CD.
I copy it to Data Files/Meshes/w/W_WARAXE_IRON.nif under my Morrowind directory.
Since it's a file from a CD, it's marked Read-Only, but I want to alter it. I right-click it, choose Properties, and clear the Read-Only attribute.
I rename the copy to ST_WoodsmanAxe.nif.

NifTexture (cropped) (3) Next, I have to find the textures this axe uses. NifTexture will tell me what they are.

I start NifTexture, click the File Open button, and navigate to Data Files/Meshes/w/ST_WoodsmanAxe.nif.
I see the dialog on the right. I'm not going to do anything in NifTexture right now, but I'm going to come back here later, so after noting the information in the list box I minimize NifTexture.

(4) This simple axe uses four different textures! I'm going to copy and rename them just as I did in Step 2. All textures live in the same directory: Data Files/Textures (but see the tip from Dongle!). I copy the files from the CD to Morrowind/Data Files/Textures, remove their Read-Only attributes, and rename them as shown in the table below:

Original name	New name	Original Texture	New Texture
Tx_metal_iron_rusty.tga	Tx_ST_axe_metal.tga
Tx_metal_strip_02.tga	Tx_ST_axe_strip.tga
TX_W_miner00.bmp	Tx_ST_axe_miner.bmp		(unchanged)
TX_W_waraxe_iron.bmp	TX_ST_axe.bmp

(5) Now comes the fun part. I'm assuming the reader knows how to use their image editing software -- a graphics tutorial is beyond the scope of this document -- but I'll just go through what I did. You can see the results in the table above. If you want to try for a completely different look, go for it.

I open the four renamed textures in Photoshop. Comparing the images to the original iron axe, I conclude that the "axe" texture is the blade and the lower handle; the "metal" texture is the shaft. The other two textures are used for minor details.

I'm not out for radical changes -- this is basically a recoloring job. I want the axe to be a little lighter and to have a mossy greenish look to go with the "woodsman" theme, and I want the lower handle to be metal and the upper handle to be wood (the reverse of the original).

I start with TX_ST_axe.bmp. I brighten the whole image by using "Image | Adjustments | Auto Levels", and make the rusty parts greener by using "Image | Adjustments | Hue/Saturation" and moving the "hue" slider. I then use the rectangle select tool to select the rings that attach the axe blade to the handle and the circle that goes on the bottom of the axe, select "colorize", and move the hue slider back towards orange to make them resemble brass.

I want the lower handle to be metal; that's the rectangular piece at the bottom of the axe texture. I notice that Tx_ST_axe_strip.tga is about the right size. I use "hue" to recolor it to something brassy, and then select it, copy it, and paste it over the handle part of the axe texture. I stretch it a little to make it fit.

Next is Tx_ST_axe_metal.tga. I want the shaft to be wood, rather than metal. There are dozens of wood textures that ship with Morrowind, so I go back to Data Files/Textures on the CD, and browse textures starting with Tx_wood till I find one I like. I choose Tx_wood_wormridden.tga, and open it in Photoshop. I apply the same hue adjustment I used for the blade, to give it a greenish color, and tile it four times over the original "metal" texture, so it will have the same resolution.

I save all the modified textures under the same filenames.

It isn't necessary to use textures of the same size as the original, but if you use a smaller texture it may look blurry in the game. All textures must have pixel dimensions (width and height) which are a power of 2, for instance 64, 128, 256, 512.

(6) Now it's just a matter of modifying the .nif to point to the new textures.

I bring NifTexture back up, with my .nif still open.
I click on each of the filenames I'm going to change. I use the Browse button to navigate to the modified texture in Morrowind/Data Files/Textures on my hard drive.
I click File | Save.

Before & After (7) Done -- the axe is retextured! Now I just need the Woodsman's Axe object in the CS to point to my new mesh.

I restore the CS and double-click ST_WoodsmanAxe.
I click on the .nif button, and navigate to Morrowind/Data Files/Meshes/w/ST_WoodsmanAxe.nif.
I click "Save".
I create a new interior cell called "test" to work in, and load it. When testing objects, it's convenient to work in a separate cell so you don't accidentally modify something else; you can delete it when you're done.
I turn on the lights in the TESCS, and drag my axe into the render window to look at it, together with the original Iron War Axe. Not bad!

(8) Now all that's left is an icon for my new axe. I could just recolor the original Iron Axe icon, but I prefer to make something more distinctive.

I turn on "fog" to give the TESCS render window a black background, and position my axe at an angle.
I take a screenshot of the render window -- you can do this with screenshot software, or simply click Alt-Printscreen to copy the window to your Windows clipboard.
I switch to Photoshop, and click File | New, and then Ctrl-V to paste the screenshot.
I crop the image in a square.
I choose Image | Image Size, and change the size to 32x32 pixels. I adjust the levels a bit to brighten it.
I use the Magic Wand tool to select the black background, and click "delete" to delete those pixels (this prevents your icon from having a black square when you drag it into the game world).
Note: This method works for me in Photoshop. In Corel Photopaint, I find that masking (seleting) the icon is enough. In other image editors, you may have to explicitly provide an alpha channel (a black-and-white bitmap that shows which pixels you want to be transparent).
I save the icon as Morrowind/Data Files/Icons/w/tx_ST_WoodsmanAxe.tga.
I go back to the TESCS, double-click the axe, click the icon file button (the lower button next to the icon), and navigate to my new icon.

(9) Voila! All done. Now to test in-game:

I save my mod, enable it from the Morrowind load screen, start the game, and load a save.
I open the console and give myself the axe by typing the following: player -> addItem "ST_WoodsmanAxe", 1
I check the icon in my inventory, and then drag it to the game world, making sure the icon transparency is correct.
I drop the axe and check it on the ground.
I pick it up and equip it, and look at it in both first and third-person view.

(10) Pretty much what I had in mind... but I can't resist fiddling with it a little more...

If you want to tweak the textures at this point, you can simply continue editing the texture files. To update the object in the TESCS:

Save your texture edits in your image editor
Switch to View | Preview Window in the TESCS, and wait a few seconds
Switch back to View | Render Window in the TESCS; your object should now show the new textures

(Thanks to SciMuse and Ankit Sharma for the tip on how to update textures!)

On art file paths

.nif files must go in a (direct) subfolder of Morrowind/Data files/Meshes; but it doesn't matter what you call it. Similarly, icons go in a subfolder of Morrowind/Data files/Icons. The game uses letters to name the subfolders, as follows (the Morrowind Alphabet!):

a	Armor	f	Flora, Furniture, terrain	o	cOntainers
b	Body parts	i	Interiors	r	cReatures
c	Clothes	l	Lights	w	Weapons
d	Doors	m	Misc, books	x	eXteriors
e	spell Effects	n	iNgredients

You can follow this or make your own folders, but you can't use nested folders.

Textures normally go all together in Morrowind/Data Files/Textures. However, Dongle suggests a method for using subfolders (from a TESCS forum post; he credits a Feanturi post in the "3D Studio Max Answers" thread):

You can have a .nif use sub-directories below \Textures\. I've done this with models I've made in Max so I could use the stock textures in \Textures\Water\. You cannot use a different directory altogether.

To reskin an existing .nif I use a combo of NifTexture and hex-editing. If you know which bytes to hex-edit that allow you to change a texture name length you can use hex editing alone.

Create a sub-folder in \Textures\ and place your texture file there. Say; "\Textures\DGL\CoolTex.dds". Now make a copy of your texture in your working folder. Rename it; "Textures-DGL-CoolTex.dds". Then use NifTexture to re-skin your chosen .nif with this reamed copy of your texture. Finally open your .nif in a hex editor and replace the dashes "-" with backslashes "\". Voila, you now have a pathname in your .nif texture pointer. Works too!

Notes: You must have the top folder "Textures" in the texture path name, otherwise it won't work. Stick with short subfolder names, the editor limits you to 32 characters, and counts the path in that. If you're making a fresh model in Max you can use your renamed copy of the texture when building your model, and hex edit after export.

Unfortunately, Beardo adds that this doesn't always work, for reasons that are unclear. Experiment at your own risk.

>> On to Part II >>