It's already common knowledge that you guys will be releasing the Creation Kit fairly soon, and that's going to definitely allow the modding community to expand massively on the content we'll be able to put into the game. Fallout 4 is possibly one of the most well-presented game that your company has developed, and to me it already offers a great foundation for which I can develop my own questlines, using characters I've written, and using 3D assets I've made myself to tell a story.

So I wanted to ask about the possibility of model exporters and importers for 3D Programs such as Blender and 3DSMax. The Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3 and even Oblivion modding communities have pretty much thrived on using Blender and 3DSMax to make custom armor, clothing and weapons that is often on par with the vanilla game's assets (although I think slightly more people use Blender since it's free and has the same capabilities as Max), so my question is about whether you guys are going to be offering official support on 3D model importer and exporter plugins for either or both 3D Programs.

The issue is that although teams such as the people responsible for Nifskope, and the current NIF plugins for Blender and 3DSMax developed absolutely integral tools when it comes to being able to put your own custom content into the games, a lot of the time it is very frustrating and high-level work, especially when the file format for your models changes with each game.

So, I'm basically just wondering on if there is any intention to offer support beyond simply releasing the Creation Kit and leaving people to their own devices to create NIF importers and exporters for Blender and 3DSMax.

Will there be any official modding tools or guides for 3D Artists who use these programs?

Hasn't been any before. Unlikely to be now.

I think you mistake Bethesda's intent with regard to modding. They use proprietory tools for asset management that they can not release for free. They strip those out. They use the Creation Kit in house, pretty much as is. That is all their own so they release it for us to use. Don't expect them to put any effort in to make it easy for modders. Heck, they never even fix bugs in the Creation Kit.

Think about it, they don't have nif plugins for Blender, they have proprietary tools for that. Making these plugins is a whole different thing, it requires getting involved with whoever is already developing nif plugins for Blender and all that, it's a LOT of extra work and nobody at Bethesda gets paid for that. Let's just hope that some clever soul will make these tools for us before Fallout 5 gets released

Due to licensing many of the tools they use aren't theirs to give away. This likely includes anything related to 3D mesh or texture work.

^ I don't actually mean the tools they use, so much as the possibility of the official creation of plugins and scripts for 3D Programs like Blender and 3DS Max. Similar to how Valve made the Source Tools plugin to put models from Blender and 3DSMax into Source Filmmaker.

It's the same issue. Bethesda most likely uses plugins that for legal reasons that are not allowed to release.

I think the plugin might be part of an larger package who also contain source control and other stuff. They might even have this special adjusted so its not an commercial package you can buy but they can also not release it.

Beth has never gone beyond the construction kit/geck for modding. I don't see that changing. All the tools for modding the previous games have pretty much been developed by the modding community. (I think .dds plugins were available for various paint programs though, modding community aside.) Since Beth has started making moddable games, (Morrowind, 2001) they have NEVER done anything beyond the CK/Geck. Ever.

I use 3dsmax for my models. Would it be easier at this point to export my models as OBJ and then import into nifskope? If that's even possible of course. I just dont feel like waiting until they develop a working exporter to begin modding.

I believe that at the moment NifSkope 2 (in pre-alpha state) has support for FO4 nifs, but import is disabled due to some fairly extensive changes to Bethesda's nif format that haven't been decoded yet.

I'm afraid that unless Bethesda can release something (which is looking unlikely), then we're all in for a long wait .

On the other hand, there seems to be some way of getting new models into FO4 (http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/7210/? using NifSkope) but I've seen no hint how it was done. Maybe enquire with the creator of that mod?

That's not actually true. They released the 3DSMax import/export plugin for the .nif format for Morrowind. They haven't done anything like that since then, however.

Ah, I missed that trick.... I am rather curious why they did it with Morrowind, but, nothing after that...... Back then, they were licensing the game from Gamebryo.... (or, whatever they were called at the time.)

Avoiding licensing issues, I suppose they could tell the nif-plugin developer community when they make changes to their nif format ahead of time, as in before the game is released. Give them a few nif's to play with. That way we could get the tools we need a little bit faster instead of nif plugin devs having to figure everything out when the game is out and there's already a need for the tools. That's extra work too, but significantly less.

I think it was with Oblivion that they started to include middleware from Speedtree and Havok. The Havok middleware in particular was supported with extensions to the .nif format, and any Bethesda export plugins would have included licensed code.

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The terms of their license with NetImmerse (I think at that date it was still them) may have been more flexible than the terms of their licenses with any other middleware suppliers.

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That would only be possible if Bethesda owns the rights to the .nif format. Certainly they have many custom extensions, and they may well own much of the codebase that they use to handle those extensions, but ownership of the format itself could be... complicated. Probably much safer for them to not give away information about the format that may or may not be theirs to give.

And if somebody out there reverse engineers the format... well, it's down to the format owner to do something about that or not, but certainly Bethesda can't be blamed - or sued for damages.

Concerning code that they do not have the rights to distribute, Man I wish Bethesda would (could?) use open source options. Such as Blender instead of 3D max.

Some big companies are starting to use open source for their products. I think Linux is used for just about every appliance there is now. Symantec appliances and even high end appliances and software like VMWare vSphere uses Red Hat Enterprise.

I know it is a pipe dream...

3DS Max has pretty liberal educational license requirements for the no charge version.

The Nifscope importer now works for all versions - even 2016.

Well worth your time to see if you qualify.

Really good package, and the educational version is all you would ever need for modding.

I found a file called bobbypin.max in the meshes bsa. Among other things, it has a list of a bunch of plugins and things loaded into 3DS MAX at the time it was saved.

The full list is here:

As far as I can tell all of these are standard 3DS MAX export plugins except hctmaxsceneexport.dle which is a Havok export plugin and GamebryoMaxPlugin.dlu which is presumably the main exporter for the .nif files.

So its clear that any official exporter from Bethesda can only happen if Microsoft (owner of Havok) and Gamebase (owner of Gamebryo) give permission.

But for those of us who are neither in education nor educators, and simply cannot justify spending a lot of money on our modding hobby... well, I hope those lucky owners of 3DS Max will be generous with their time and assistance

Incidentally, having created a model in 3DS Max, is it possible to either export it in FO4 format, or import a 3DS Max or Obj file into NifSkope 2.0 pre-alpha 4 (which has preliminary FO4 support)?

Random thoughts: Didn't they dump Speedtree for their own in-house thing when they updated to the Creation Engine? and I recall an interview around the time of Oblivion where Todd Howard pretty much confirmed their in-house exporter couldn't be released for a ton of legal reasons involving middleware and "other things", but I don't know how much of that still applies today. With all the new tech, it could be better or worse.

For anyone curious, here's the quote from the http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fan_Interview_IV: "We have an internal Max version 5 nif exporter we use. It only works on that version and it is NOT a slick program. The other ones people are already using for Oblivion that we didn’t make get the job done just as well. Why didn’t we release ours? It’s a very long answer that is mostly legal stuff, from all the middleware we use to…other things that complicate it more. Anyway, we feel strongly that if we can’t really support the exporter the way we want, there’s no reason to have one when similar ones are already being used. Search the CS wiki, and you’ll find excellent alternatives to creating art for Oblivion, and trust me when I say our ways are just as complicated. You aren’t missing a thing."

That was all the way back in '06 though. I wonder if their internal exporter is still a pain.

AFAIK they still used Speedtree in Skyrim. Most modern games do.

Does anyone know if the Skyrim mod tools included anything for working with .bsa files?

Nope. They dumped it and created a custom tree LOD for Skyrim.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/17/the-technology-behind-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.aspx

Actually they created that tree LOD system (and objects LOD too) in Fallout 3 and used a mix of 3D trees and SpeedTree ones there, same for Fallout New Vegas. Skyrim uses Fallout 3 lods with very minimal changes. Tree LOD is absolutly the same except for file names and extensions.

Fallout 4 uses Skyrim's objects LOD again with minimal changes, and they ditched tree LOD completely. In short Fallout 4 uses Fallout 3 LOD system, that's why it looks so bad compared to other modern games.

Have you ever actually looked at the meshes(in Nifscope) used for trees prior to Skyrim?