Skyrim Models to Editable Format?

[phazer11]

What's the easiest way to get a model such as a Dragon from skyrim to where it can be edited in mudbox or maya, or such?

[TechAngel85]

Extract the nif and import it. I know 3Ds max and Blender both have plugins to import the nif files, but I don't know about any others. I managed to import a body mesh into 3Ds max once, so I know that works.

I'm sure Sparrow will come along and offer some pointers since I know he's done a lot of mesh work. I don't know what he uses besides Nifskope, though.

[Audley]

While I have not delved into this too much, I do know that there are .nif importers/exporters that are still supported for both Maya and 3ds Max. I think they can do the majority of the work, but I think it's going to be hard to avoid using nifskope at some point. There really doesn't seem to be an "easiest" way to do it. I think there are a few ways to go about doing it and all are equally annoying. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much documentation on the Max and Maya plugins. There is the older way using the older versions of Blender and the official nif plugin for that. That way has some guides on the Skyrim Nexus and possibly some YouTube guides. 

 

What are you hoping to do? From what I have done it seems that the models for Skyrim (and especially FO3 and NV) are so low-poly and not very well done. What really irks me is how "unclean" the mesh's are. The amount of duplicate vertices's is insane. It's like everything was rushed and they didn't use a good clean workflow. You cannot sculpt on them because it will just break the model. The only real use I see in using the vanilla models is changing the UV's so that you can better do a retexture. Heck it seems that even advanced modders who do some real good retextures eventually have to remodel certain parts of a mesh because they were done so poorly. I know Millenia had this issue for several weapons in New Vegas in his Weapon Retexture Project. In my opinion: if the meshes are so bad that it would be easier to completely REDO the mesh rather than work with it, it says something about the quality of the model. 

[Guest]

Audley knows what's up and I agree. Quadification tools can break the flow on some areas of the mesh, and you still have to do a lot of it manually anyway. You'll need to quadify to sculpt if my memory serves me correctly.

 

Is this an educational corner-cut again or what? :P I don't think you will be cutting many corners here by ripping models. Talking of ripping: I find it hard to believe there is nowhere on the internet to find ripped Skyrim models in another format.

[phazer11]

No, just curious really. Want to print one out, the school is letting us use their 3D printers and I need to take it into one of those programs (though sadly they don't have 2016, they're using 2015 since 2016 is so buggy so that's what I have so I don't think that plugin will work I came across it before) to do what I need to to make it work before putting it in the printer program. I found a pack with source filmaker format models but don't know how to make them usable in another program or even how to see them in source filmaker.

​https://sfmlab.com/item/274/

[MonoAccipiter]

There's no need to use NifSkope if you're just importing, though the nif-plugin for Max at least is liable to mess up some minor stuff. But, if I remember correctly, that's mostly skinning and such, which won't matter when you're not putting it back in the game anyhow.

@Audley: The key difference is that Millenia isn't working on a game, but rather a specific model, so he can give it much more attention (and use more modern tools) than any of the devs probably could. Some meshes were probably rushed, but I've edited okay-looking ones too.

Edited October 18, 2016 by MonoAccipiter