Any idea as to whether 3d models made for Oblivion will usable in Skyrim? I was wondering whether aspects of scale, format, etc. were the same. It would be nice to bring my Ob work into Skyrim.

no, they use the same file format but more than likely it will have changed a whole lot, if you notice Oblivion and fallouts are not compatible, and I dont think morrowind's is either, there will probably be an exporter for blender or 3ds max, so you could transfer it like that

As far as I know, assets from one game cannot legally be used in another - one mod project which cannot be named got into stink about importing assets from Morrowind to Oblivion - it's against the terms of use or whatever it's called to do that.

they are saying that they want to bring their work over from Oblivion

Certain things like armor, creatures, character models, etc., I highly doubt would carry over, because they're likely using new rigs and such. If it were even possible it would likely be a massive udnertaking

When it comes to static meshes like rocks or castle walls or whatever, I don't see why there'd be a problem. Even if they use a different format or whatever, things can always be converted. Chances are the scale wouldn't match quite right, but it's really not that hard to scale something.

I don't think anybody other than the devs could say for sure though. But if we're able to get ANY of our own models into the game with the new editor, I don't see how it would be too difficult to get models we made for OB mods into Skyrim.

They mean recreate it. Like a sword or something. They're going to remake it...not copy it over.


By the way, OP, have you ever played a game where you could copy anything over to another game?

This is true but I believe he's referring to fan-made content created for Oblivion, and whether it would be possible to port this to Skyrim.

I suspect if you have the original work, before converting it to Oblivion, it will be possible to convert it to Skyrim but it may require a lot of work.

It would probably be easier to just try to recreate it than trying to convert it to Skyrim, right?

Skyrim is apparently still using the nif format, but also apparently with many changes, so it's entirely possible that a mesh made for Oblivion won't be any more compatible with Skyrim than any other mesh. It's about certain that they won't be directly compatible, so it's just going to be an issue of how much work is going to be necessary to convert them. So far as I know, for now, nobody outside of Beth knows.

They are still using Nif, and I know dispite the version differences you could somehow get your Fo3 models into NV. However, it's a whole new engine, so my guess would be you need to take the OBJ file and export it into the new Creative Engine friendly version of Nif. Then it should work. So essentially, yes with some work I think you will be able to.

Or, with Blender and an uptodate NIF exporter, you can just import the model into Blender and then immediately export it again as the right NIF version. Then again, it might need more work that that, depending on a few things.

no it is not, all that you have to do to convert it is import it and then export it again, 3d models take a lot of work to make

I am talking about 3d models and skins. Those should be portable to some degree as they were made by 3rd party tools using industry standard formats. I made mine using Blender. If new 3d models can be made then it should be possible to adjust existing models for the new game. Or ... maybe there is a reason why one can't ... thus the question.

Maybe so. I just hope not many people are going to do it. There are a bunch of wonderful models and stuff for Oblivion, but there are also a bunch of ... not so great ones. And some people (like me, for the most part) want to see some new models. I wouldn't mind if the Lost Spires was added to Skyrim though. I'd actually love it. The Lost Spires was the best mod ever for Oblivion...it needs to be recreated for Skyrim.

I apologize if I wasn't clear in the first post - I meant my own 3d models and not Bethesda's. I made a series of historically accurate weapons. I just prefer them to fantasy weapons. My own favorite is a schiavona, a late 15th century basket hilt sword. I also used a Main Gauche instead of a shield. If dual wielding sword/dagger is now possible that combination will work out even better.

That sounds nice - I might even have your models, if they were posted. I like that sort of stuff and have a few mods of such weapons.

I would sort of doubt that anyone will even bother to do a converter for old nif to new nif. It would probably be possible, and if it's simple I suppose someone might put one together, but I would think the first thing that's going to be done is a converter for a standard 3d modeling file format to the new nif, so the conversion process is going to be to convert your old nifs back to the original (or just start with the originals, if you still have them), tweak them if necessary, then convert them to the new nif format.

That tweaking part could be an issue too. If Beth made fairly extensive changes, then you might even have to make fairly extensive changes to the originals just to make it possible to convert them to the new format, whenever such a converter becomes available.

Bethie has confirmed the NIF format ( our modders know it well, Todd), so even with some predictable evolution it may be possible to import/export via a 3ds exporter, this wil need obviously to be available either with an oficial tool release or a community build version like the one we have for Oblivion, NIFSKOPE is also a very capable tool able to read many different NIF versions, even from other games like Guild 2 and Loki.