Reskinning Tutorial

Part II: Armor and Clothing

Armor and clothing work differently from other objects. That is because these objects are compound: every object (except for rings, amulets and belts, which don't appear on your character) is composed of multiple meshes. These are:

• The "ground" object: what you see if you drop the item.
• At least one "male" body part: the part(s) that are replaced when you put the item on.
• Possibly, one or more "female" body part(s), if there is a difference between the male and female version.

We're going to start with a common shirt: common_shirt_02.

(0) First, as before, let's copy our shirt to a new object. Find common_shirt_02 on the Clothing tab and double-click it. Change the ID to ST_common_shirt_02. Click Save, and agree to create a new object.

Take a look at the property sheet for common_shirt_02:

From this, you can see that to retexture this item, you will have to edit no less than five meshes -- the "ground" object, three male body parts, and one female body part. We'll come back to the ground object later.

Why only three male parts, when five parts altogether are replaced by this shirt? Because the shirt uses the same object for left and right upper arms and left and right forearms.

Why only one female part? Because the game only uses female parts if they're specified; otherwise the "male" parts are used for both genders. So females will use the same arm objects as males; they're only distinguished in the chest. (You can make as many "special" female parts as you want, of course; or, if you only need one version for both, use the "male" column exclusively. Yes, this is sexist.)

Where are these body part meshes? You can't see that directly from this dialogue. The ground object is referenced directly here, but the items in the "male clothing" and "female clothing" lists aren't meshes -- they're the IDs of objects on the "Body Part" tab of the TESCS.

So, to retexture this shirt, you need to follow these steps:

(1) Open the property sheet for the item you want to retexture. Make a note of the body part IDs you'll need to modify:

(2) Go to the "Body Part" tab. Open the property sheet for each of these objects and note the .nif. For each .nif, use NifTexture to find out what texture(s) it uses. (Note that this dialog allows you to specify what body part it represents, and whether it's male (default) or female.)

Male Chest object

Body Part ID	.nif	Textures
c_m_shirt_c_commonl02	c\C_M_Shirt_C_commonL02.NIF	TX_C_C_shirtcom02.bmp
c_f_shirt_c_commonl02	c\C_F_Shirt_C_commonL02.NIF
c_m_shirt_ua_commonl02	c\C_M_Shirt_UA_commonL02.NIF	TX_C_LA_shirtcom02.bmp
c_m_shirt_fa_commonl02	c\C_M_Shirt_FA_commonL02.NIF

Not bad -- four objects, but only two textures. The male and female chests use the same texture, and the upper arms and forearms use the same texture. Only the most elaborate garments use different textures for every body part. (Of course, if you want to make this shirt a bit fancier, you can add new textures to differentiate the different parts/genders.)

(3) At this point, you can just go ahead and retexture each part, following the instructions in Part I of this tutorial:

• Copy the .nif and texture files to your Morrowind/Data Files directory, and rename them, using the initials of your mod as a prefix (see the table below for suggested names)
• Edit the texture files (I decided to make this common shirt a little less common by re-accessorizing it; do what you like)
• Use NifTexture to make the .nif copies point to the modified textures

(4) Now you'll need to make four new body part objects for your new shirt. Double-click each of the four parts for the original shirt, change the ID, click "Save", and choose "Make a New Object". Make each new object point to your new .nif. If you've used the naming conventions suggested in Part I (prefixing each file and object name with the mod initials), you'll have a result like this:

Body Part ID	.nif	Textures
ST_c_m_shirt_c_commonl02	ST_C_M_Shirt_C_commonL02.NIF	TX_ST_C_C_shirtcom02.bmp
ST_c_f_shirt_c_commonl02	ST_C_F_Shirt_C_commonL02.NIF
ST_c_m_shirt_ua_commonl02	ST_C_M_Shirt_UA_commonL02.NIF	TX_ST_C_LA_shirtcom02.bmp
ST_c_m_shirt_fa_commonl02	ST_C_M_Shirt_FA_commonL02.NIF

(5) Whew! Now we have to put the whole thing back together.

• Go back to the Clothing tab, and double-click ST_common_shirt_02.
• Under "Male Clothing" and "Female Clothing", select your new body part objects from the drop-down lists. (Each list includes only the body parts of the relevant type.) The result should look like this:

(6) Now you're finally ready to see what the whole thing looks like. Make a test NPC by copying an existing one to a new ID (or use one of your own). Drop the NPC into the render window, double-click them, remove the upper body clothing and armor from their inventory, and drop ST_common_shirt_02 in. Click Save, and voila!

(7) Not quite done yet, though. You still need to take care of the ground object, remember? Right now if you drop your new shirt on the ground, it will look like the old shirt.

The ground mesh is referenced directly by the clothing object: c\C_M_Shirt_GND_commonL02.nif. By now, you should know how to reskin that.

• Use NifTexture to find out what texture(s) this model references; usually, it's one or more of the textures used by the armor or clothing object. In this case it's the chest texture, TX_C_C_shirtcom02.bmp.
  
  
• You've got the texture; you just have to copy the mesh. Copy it to ST_Shirt_GND_commonL02.nif in Morrowind/Data Files/Meshes/c. (Note that I've shortened this filename a bit; .nif filenames can't be longer than 32 characters.)
  
  
• Use NifTexture to make this mesh point to TX_ST_C_C_shirtcom02.bmp.
  
  
• Back to the CS. Click on the upper button by the icon, and navigate to ST_Shirt_GND_commonL02.nif. Click save.
  
  
• Drag the shirt into the render window. You should see something like the image above right.

(8) Are we done now? Yes! No! Wait -- the icon! Clothing and armor icons are a bit trickier than other objects, since you don't see them in their full glory unless someone's inside them. If you use the screenshot method described in Part I, you'll have to erase some body parts. Still, this usually yields the best results. Follow the directions there to make a new icon and make your clothing object use it.

(9) OK -- now we really are done. Start Morrowind and test your object in-game, as described in part I. Make sure you test it on a male character, a female character, and on the ground, and remember to check the icon.

A note on Gloves and Robes

The steps above will work for most clothing and armor items. There are three types of items that require reskinning yet one more mesh: gloves, gauntlets, and robes. These items are partially visible to the character in 1st-person view, and this requires a special mesh.

Gloves and robes are one-part objects (robes have only a "chest" piece); the 1st-person mesh is on the Body Part tab, and it must have exactly the same ID as the main body part object, with ".1st" at the end.

So, if you're making gloves or robes, make sure to copy, rename, and reskin the ".1st" part in addition to the others. (Generally the textures are the same as used in the standard object, so it's just a matter of modifying the mesh.)