I've scripted Oblivion mods for well over a year by now, but I still can't really get my grip on meshes. My latest failure was trying to make my own type of arrows. Does anyone 'round know how arrow/quiver-meshes work, and how to modify them? I've been looking for a tutorial on making my own arrows, but have been unable to find any.

Thanks in advance,
GBHis

I think the key is knowing your way around a .nif file. With arrows, there are seperate nodes for the quiver, and the various pieces of the arrow, and each one needs to be setup right to be used by the game. If you're trying to do meshing, you might want to try something a bit less complicated, bows, arrows, and helmets are just a pain in the ass half the time.

I have to agree...there is a huge deficit in bow/arrow tutorials...only one I think and it is quite old and assumes a bit of modeling knowledge.

I tried modifying the glass bow and arrow for the Vvardenfell Glass mod but gave up on it. Well, I actually passed it onto JCarl904 to see if he could figure it out but as far as I'm concerned, I'm just going to avoid them.

If somebody showed me how to create them, I'd have no problem creating a current tutorial for others but I'm a bit too busy to bug the few people who have done bows/arrows to teach me.

I have found that making helmets is very easy...the easiest of all armor / clothing. I even posted a brief tutorial on the official ESF for taking a new helmet model, rigging it and getting it in-game. And it was pointed out on the same thread that you "could" set the helmet in the 0,0,0 position without doing any rigging to get it working in-game but I prefer being able to precisely control how it sits on the head without having to do trial and error multiple times to get the fitting right (my PC is too slow). I'd post a direct link but I have not been able to access the official ESF all afternoon. It is located in the Oblivion Construction Set forum and titled something like "problem rigging"

LHammonds

With helmets my comments were more in relation to parital ones, which conform to the head. Static or weighted helmets occasionally clip with the head mesh on some races (orc, argonian, ect). While yes, there are tools for it, it sometimes requires additional steps.

Oh, I _do_ know a bit about both modeling and basic NifSkope-stuff like light, size, particles, etc.
I've made a mod which transforms most of the basic objects into weapons (bottles, brooms, scythes, forks, spoons, kegs, branches, etc) - I've forgotten to upload it, by the way

LHammonds, could you, by any chance, point me to the said tutorial?

Now that Bethesda's site is back up, I retrieved the steps I posted, cleaned it up a little and added it as a tutorial on my web site and on TESNexus and will likely convert it to wiki-speak and slap it on the CS Wiki.

I had a problem with a user-made helmet that was given to me to make work in-game and thought I'd also share that experience here. The source of the problem revealed itself after doing a trouble-shooting step that Qazaaq suggested: Export to NIF from Blender, re-import NIF into Blender. Here is the full posting

LHammonds

Oh, I was asking for the tutorial on quivers / arrows - I've made helmets and such already

It is in the Miscellanous section of this page. It's Windy's Bow Morph tutorial.

Sorry to bugger you again, but it's about spiffy'ing a bow model up - no arrows whatsoever are mentioned

Try and contact someone who's done it before and uploaded their work
nicoroshi is the man I'd ask
respectfully, that is, bows also may need an animation with the mesh
good luck

You're the man