I'm interested in creating my own custom weapons for Fallout 3... meaning completely new models and textures. I've have some basic texturing and modeling knowledge, but I haven't started learning about animation yet... and weapon animations in Fallout 3 have me confused.

I cannot find any recent tutorials on custom weapon creation, but http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/82738-fallout-modelling-mini-tutorial/ is what I've been using as a general guide. This tutorial dates back to November 2008, and I'm wondering if it's even still relevant. Regardless, its the best resource I've been able to locate on the topic.

The technique for creating weapons in the tutorial seems to involve finding a similar Bethesda weapon model, and then copying and pasting sections from your custom model into the appropriate blocks of the similar Bethesda model in Nifskope.

However, what I don't understand about the weapon creation process is how to make use of the standard Bethesda animations associated with weapons.

Lets say for example, that I create a custom pistol model that's similar in function(but somewhat different in appearance) to the standard Bethesda 10mm pistol. I have some ideas and questions about how to make use of Bethesda's 10mm pistol animations:

-Do I need to line up/position my custom pistol as close as possible to the Bethesda 10mm pistol?

-Do I have to make my pistol the exact same dimensions... or pretty close anyway?

-Does a custom pistol need to be separated into the exact same number of parts(NiTriStrips) as the 10mm pistol?

-Would the separate model parts need to have the exact same names as the 10mm pistol's parts?

Confusing me further, I've noticed that in the GECK... there are several settings related to weapon animations: "Reload Anim, Hand Grip, Attack Anim, Animation Type". I assume that when creating a custom weapon model, these settings need to be adjusted to match the settings for a similar Bethesda weapon? And is it possible to mix and match different animations(handgrips/reloads) by changing these GECK settings... or does that end up looking strange and cause problems?

Also, I've downloaded many custom weapons from the Fallout 3 Nexus, but none of them use custom animations from what I can tell. Is it even possible to use custom weapon animations?

not really the best workflow. you can just set the mesh up correctly and press export. change 2 settings in nifskope and it'll work and animate in game. No matter how many times I answer this question of how to export weapons correctly, people just don't know what they are doing. The only thing you need to know and set up correctly is mesh pivots and node/mesh names. a little on exporting nodes(is just a bone) and making a hierarchy(select and link, 2 clicks) wouldn't hurt either.


pretty much yeah. if the grip isn't in a very similar position to the 10mm pistols. you will get clipping through the hand or oddly placed weapon. what isimportant is that your meshes pivot centers match the appropriet counterpart in the 10mm pistiol.


sort of yeah. again if it is too crazy then it'll probably clip with the hand or something


no. you can use any number of parts. more or less than the pistol if you wish.


yes. this is how the animations actually find and target specific parts of the weapon. Anything that begins with ## is going to be a controlled block in the animation kfs. so anything like ##mag, if you have a magazine in your weapon, that's what you should name it. or not, depends what the vanilla nif names the mag in that specific weapon.


some of those you need to have matched up similar to the vanilla nif you are replicating. simply because you have aligned your mesh, pivots and naned the nodes the same, which basically only will work with 1 attack anim setup. if you use a differnt animation set, that animation is looking for diffenent node names, and expects pivots an translation to be a certain way, each peculiar to the weapon/anim set. But you can use different reloads and hand grips,as long as they still belong to the same animation type.


yes possible aparently. but only saidenstorm actually has. and the total number of attck animations is hard coded. there are only like 2 unused sets or something. so unless you are the super ninja, not really going to happen for the sake of just 1 gun. I suppose maybe fose can force certain animations when a weapon is equiped, but my scripting is noob level, so i couldn't tell you.

Thanks so much for the reply Ghogiel. I really appreciate your detailed response and how you addressed my questions in a specific manner.




I think this part is what confuses me most. I'm very new to modelling and I'm still in the process of learning to use 3ds Max right now... so please forgive me if this is a noob question. How might I go about setting up the pivot points properly? I'm guessing they need to be centered to the corresponding imported parts of the vanilla mesh using the Align Tool? And are you supposed to match the different pivot points to each other... or do you match the pivot points of your mesh parts to the centers of the vanilla mesh objects(not their pivot points)?

As for setting up a hierarchy... I know how to do that with the select and link button... but is it necessary for weapons? And I'm not sure what you meant about the bones part... are they used with weapons? I thought bones were mostly for clothing/armor...

Also, you mentioned in your response that the separate parts of a custom weapon needs to have the same name as the vanilla mesh parts. But you also mentioned that a custom weapon does not need to have the same number of parts as the vanilla mesh. So... I assume this means a custom weapon must(at a minimum) have the same number of parts as the vanilla mesh so that all of the node names will match up? What happens if a custom weapon has less/more parts than the vanilla mesh... and therefore some of the vanilla node names are missing or don't match up? Are the missing or additional parts simply not animated?

Despite some lingering questions, I went ahead and created a custom pistol mesh from simple primitives. I made it with exactly the same number of parts as the 10mm pistol... since I'm unsure what happens if it has more/less parts. The parts of my pistol also had the exact same names as the 10mm pistol parts.

Then, I lined up the pivot points of my custom mesh parts with the corresponding pivot points of the 10mm pistol parts using the align tool. I assume this is the correct way? I also made sure my pistol was of similar dimensions and position to the 10mm pistol. Next, I moved the 10mm collision mesh to better fit my own pistol. I used the Reset XForm utility after moving/scaling everything around.

I made the UV map and applied simple textures before exporting the mesh and opening in Nifskope for some adjustments.

In Nifskope, I changed to the root node to the BSFadeNode. I also removed SF_Shadow_Map and SF_Shadow_Frustum from all of the BSShaderPPLightingProperty blocks. I can't seem to create the ShellCasingNode and ProjectileNode when exporting from Max, so I had to copy these nodes from the 10mm pistol and adjust their translations in Nifskope. Then I had to reference these new nodes as children in the BSFadeNode block.

Finally, I set up the weapon in the GECK and tested in-game. Everything worked fine except for the collision mesh. For some reason, the collision mesh was exported as a static collision... and my weapon would just float in the air if dropped. Ultimately, I had to go back into Nifskope and compare/copy the settings from the collision for the 10mm pistol into the collision settings of my mesh... and then the collision on my mesh worked fine.

I'm not sure why my mesh's collision did not export correctly since I merely exported the collision mesh from the 10mm pistol that I imported in Max.

Overall though, my first custom weapon was a success. Thanks for the helpful reply Ghogiel.

Those two nodes are nothing but bones just create two bones and name them ShellCasingNode and ProjectileNode they will export unless you hide them.



https://sites.google.com/site/saidenstorm/oblivionandfallout33dsmaxcollisiontutori
I never Import collisions so I can not tell you if the Max Importer... imports collisions with all of the correct settings but it absolutely will export them correctly if they are set up right.

Thanks for reply SaidenStorm. Its an honor to hear from you. I know you're a real expert on working with 3ds max and Oblivion/Fallout. Your Akatosh mod from Oblivion is one of my all time favorites. If its not too much trouble, could I send you a PM about collision mesh creation and your tutorial? I've tried following your tutorial and I'm not having much success. I wouldn't dare accuse your tutorial of being wrong... I'm sure its noob mistakes on my part.

Also, sorry if it's a dumb question.... but how do you create bones in max?

You can send me PM if you like -> I probably will not answer it right away but I usually get to them all eventually, I end up getting several a day from the different forums I am part of.

The tutorial kinda requires a semi working knowledge of Max and its rollout and modifier panels -> most of that information you get just doing the basic tutorials that come on the Max CD, Autodesk's web page also has tons of tutorials available for all of its registered users -> I believe registering for a trial will also allow access to their tutorials as well.

As for creating a bone they are located on the Modifier Panel under Create -> Systems -> Bones.

Thanks Saiden! I'm going to try and redo your tutorial from the start. If I still have trouble, I will send you a PM.

yeah just use the align tool to match pivots, that's what its there for.

not sure what you mean. the 'centers' of the vanilla mesh objects are the pivot points.


some yes. some objects are children of nodes. you'll have to look at the specific file structure of the nif in question to see if you will need to create bones and link anything together.


you could make a gun with 1 mesh object or 20. some parts of the weapon are animated. some aren't. like i have never bothered making a trigger. so my trigger doesn't animate. not that you can see it. nor do i even think the triggers actually are controlled anyway
if you don't have a separate trigger object, aptly named ##trigger, or whatever, and the vanilla weapon you are basing it on does, this means nothing besides your trigger just doesn't animate. everything else like a slide or mag will still be controlled if they exist in your nif and are correctly named to match its counterpart donor weapon.

but anyway good job. seems you have the the bulk of understanding it.

Could anyone post a step by step tut on what i need to do to get this working, or alternatively reply to my problem thread here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1132527-3ds-max-new-vegas-woes/

I am missing something simply im sure but im very stuck for the moment.