Riping character to sfm: Skyrim

[Pickle Juice]

so ive been watching videos of ripping characters from games and porting them to blender and then porting them to sfm (i know the blender to sfm already, im just not good enough making my own models...) and i wanted to try the skyrim game...but i cant find any way to find the chracters and i cant find any video that use skyrim as an example, only street fighter, mass effect and other games i never heard of...so where can i find the skyrim characters?

[Marco Skoll]

In Skyrim (and I recommend you use Skyrim rather than Skyrim SE, as the model and texture formats are more compatible with the existing tools for Blender and GIMP), character head meshes are in the Skyrim-Meshes.BSA archive at meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/skyrim.esm/XXXXX.nif

Where XXX is the character's base ID, easily looked up on the Elder Scrolls Wiki.
(DLC characters are in similar places, just in those specific BSA archives).

I'd advise getting familiar with either the Creation Kit or the TES5Edit tool (I prefer the latter), as you'll need it for looking up things like the correct hair meshes/colours for each character, and possibly which outfit parts you'll need (as Skyrim models are made up out of several parts, basically equivalent to the armour slots in game)

(As an aside, Skyrim or Fallout models need about a 0.5-0.6 scaling factor to correctly size them up against Valve's own models).

It's not a drastically difficult format to port from (although naturally, there are limitations around things like weight links and transparencies) - here's one I made earlier:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774327255

[Pickle Juice]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

In Skyrim (and I recommend you use Skyrim rather than Skyrim SE, as the model and texture formats are more compatible with the existing tools for Blender and GIMP), character head meshes are in the Skyrim-Meshes.BSA archive at meshes/actors/character/facegendata/facegeom/skyrim.esm/XXXXX.nif

Where XXX is the character's base ID, easily looked up on the Elder Scrolls Wiki.
(DLC characters are in similar places, just in those specific BSA archives).

I'd advise getting familiar with either the Creation Kit or the TES5Edit tool (I prefer the latter), as you'll need it for looking up things like the correct hair meshes/colours for each character, and possibly which outfit parts you'll need (as Skyrim models are made up out of several parts, basically equivalent to the armour slots in game)

(As an aside, Skyrim or Fallout models need about a 0.5-0.6 scaling factor to correctly size them up against Valve's own models).

It's not a drastically difficult format to port from (although naturally, there are limitations around things like weight links and transparencies) - here's one I made earlier:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774327255

oh thanks a lot! this will help me a lot! but i have two questions about this topic that just came out

1-can i transfer my own modded character?

and if so, can i trasnfer in the same way without issues if i use body replacers installed? cause im using "Real women of skyrim" and "CBBE body" plus the "KJ hairdos" mods on my characters and npcs, i mean, can i trasnfer the model with those mods added in or is just going to turn in the vanilla shape?

2-the model comes already rigged or it just the model itself?

if not i wonder if i can use blender to give her a rig or i can use a rig from the sfm rigs

[Marco Skoll]

1) Yes, mods can be ported. That version of Serana uses several mods - a vampire fang mod, a UNP body/clothing mods, physic-sed hair, etc. You just import the body mod into Blender rather than the vanilla version.

If you want to export your own player character (rather than a canonical game character) though, you'll need something like RaceMenu to export the character's face mesh.

As far as getting exactly the right shape from the game, Skyrim bodies/armours have sepearate meshes for "0% weight" and "100% weight". The overall effect is effectively like flexes in SFM (If slider at 0% , be this shape, if slider at 100%, be this shape), but with a different implementation.

If you want to have a character's weight correct, you'll have to import both meshes, turn the heavy mesh into a shape key for the light mesh, then set it to the right weight and bake it into the mesh. (The correct weight is again something you'll need to look up in the game files).

I generally don't bother and just pick one or the other. (Although this does mean cleaning up the neck seam, as each head's neck is sized for the character's correct weight).

2) The models are sort of rigged. I think the head meshes have no weighting, and you'll need to merge different bits of the skeletons from the different body parts to get one full skeleton, but it is mostly there.

Beyond that, the Skyrim skeleton has no hierarchy - it's just a load of unlinked bones floating in mid air, so you need to parent the bones together for SFM.
(Bear in mind that the upper arm twist bones and the forearm should all be parented to the shoulder, not parented in a chain, as should the hand/wrist helpers be parented to the elbow. If you don't, you won't be able to make an IK rig for the model, SFM doesn't allow IK chains longer than child/parent/grandparent).

Unless you're going to get into seriously into weight painting, I would recommend keeping the skeleton that's there (although you can rename it if you wish).
That will mean that rig_biped simple compatibility is impossible, as Skyrim models don't have enough spine bones.

One obvious limitation is Source's weight painting limits. Source only supports 3 weight links, Creation supports 4; Whatever you do, you cannot exactly replicate the weight paint and may have to fine tune the weight paint to stop it deforming badly*.
"Body physics" mods in particular tend to cause a problem in this respect, as they cluster a lot of weights around the upper chest.

*Worse than that, Source by default has a 5% weight link cull that can break attempts to feather weight paints to fix it. Fortunately though, that is a problem we now know to fix. (By coincidence, the first model we managed to fix was a Skyrim model).

[Pickle Juice]

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

1) Yes, mods can be ported. That version of Serana uses several mods - a vampire fang mod, a UNP body/clothing mods, physic-sed hair, etc. You just import the body mod into Blender rather than the vanilla version.

If you want to export your own player character (rather than a canonical game character) though, you'll need something like RaceMenu to export the character's face mesh.

As far as getting exactly the right shape from the game, Skyrim bodies/armours have sepearate meshes for "0% weight" and "100% weight". The overall effect is effectively like flexes in SFM (If slider at 0% , be this shape, if slider at 100%, be this shape), but with a different implementation.

If you want to have a character's weight correct, you'll have to import both meshes, turn the heavy mesh into a shape key for the light mesh, then set it to the right weight and bake it into the mesh. (The correct weight is again something you'll need to look up in the game files).

I generally don't bother and just pick one or the other. (Although this does mean cleaning up the neck seam, as each head's neck is sized for the character's correct weight).

2) The models are sort of rigged. I think the head meshes have no weighting, and you'll need to merge different bits of the skeletons from the different body parts to get one full skeleton, but it is mostly there.

Beyond that, the Skyrim skeleton has no hierarchy - it's just a load of unlinked bones floating in mid air, so you need to parent the bones together for SFM.
(Bear in mind that the upper arm twist bones and the forearm should all be parented to the shoulder, not parented in a chain, as should the hand/wrist helpers be parented to the elbow. If you don't, you won't be able to make an IK rig for the model, SFM doesn't allow IK chains longer than child/parent/grandparent).

Unless you're going to get into seriously into weight painting, I would recommend keeping the skeleton that's there (although you can rename it if you wish).
That will mean that rig_biped simple compatibility is impossible, as Skyrim models don't have enough spine bones.

One obvious limitation is Source's weight painting limits. Source only supports 3 weight links, Creation supports 4; Whatever you do, you cannot exactly replicate the weight paint and may have to fine tune the weight paint to stop it deforming badly*.
"Body physics" mods in particular tend to cause a problem in this respect, as they cluster a lot of weights around the upper chest.

*Worse than that, Source by default has a 5% weight link cull that can break attempts to feather weight paints to fix it. Fortunately though, that is a problem we now know to fix. (By coincidence, the first model we managed to fix was a Skyrim model).

so..im guessing you done this before...right? so if you have can you tell me whaat tools do i need...and....maybe if you can or want can help me step by step, i dont really want you to do it if you dont want to...but it will help a lot! also i really apreciate the help youre giving me, thanks!

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by Pickle Juice:

so..im guessing you done this before...right?

... that was somewhat implied when I said I'd ported that version of Serana, yes.

so if you have can you tell me whaat tools do i need

For starters:
- A tool for extracting Bethesda BSA archives. Search around on NexusMods (I assume you're already aware of the site) - I recommend looking in the Fallout 4 or Skyrim SE sections, as these tools will also support newer BSA formats. (The extractor I use is for Fallout 4, but works fine on older things like Skyrim and Fallout 3)
- The NIF tools for Blender for importing Skyrim Meshes. Sorry, I'm not sure where the latest versions of these are.
- Some way of converting DDS textures to VTF textures (GIMP has plug-ins for both, but I wouldn't be completely surprised if VTFEdit can load .DDS)
- Animation Tools N2 if you want to be able to extract the TRI files from Skyrim (these are the shape references for the facial animation). It extracts them to OBJ format, which you'll then need to copy over to the face mesh as shape keys in Blender.

(Bear in mind that this is kind of tedious, as it has to be done separately for each of the parts of the face - the mouth, teeth and head are all separate models. These days I just make the shape keys myself).

maybe if you can or want can help me step by step

I really can't help step-by-step, as I don't have a mega-refined way of working, do some things in a barse-ackwards fashion and have a distinct habit of skipping over steps in explanations.

I'll be able to answer some questions about specific problems, but I'm not a good tutor.

[Pickle Juice]

yes i have it, i used it to try what can i do with it, i dont have fallout 4 or SE (well i have SE but i dont use it, i use the legendary edition) o i do have .NIF and Blender, its ok i think you can find the newest NIF version on the official page... so... you recommend me GIMP or VTFEdit?
i diont know what the shape keys are but ill figure it out by myself!

its ok dont worry about, i said "if you liked to, i dont want to force you to help me"
its ok im not a good tutor ehiter...

[Marco Skoll]

You don't *need* Fallout 4 or SE to use BSA extractors intended for them. They're standalone tools, it's just that they're going to be more up-to-date than older BSA tools are, both in terms of the formats they can extract and any software libraries they need to run.

[Pickle Juice]

oh nice, and where can i found these tools?