Arcane University:Nifskope Weapons Setup

This guide will details all there is to know about setting up weapons models to be game-ready.

This is a workflow-agnostic tutorial revolving around nifskope.
As long as your workflow allow you to export model into a bare NIF model containing only the geometry, you can follow along to get your weapon game-ready.

General Considerations

There is a few things to know before getting started: Skyrim only support a limited number of weapons variations:

• 1 Handed
  • Daggers
  • Swords
  • Waraxes
  • Maces
• 2 Handed
  • Greatsword
  • Battleaxe
  • Warhammer
• Ranged
  • Bows
  • Brossbows
• Special
  • Staves

Anything you may see in mods are just models setup to look somewhat right (or not) as one of the above type.

Aside the gameplay-oriented differences, the weapon type define:

• Where the weapon will go on the 3rd person model when sheathed
• Which animation set it will be using
• Which kind of impact it will create when hitting things (sounds and visuals)
• Where the player character will grip the model when holding it

If the last point (impacts) don't matter much here, the other 3 set the limitation with how different your model can be from the target weapon type.
A handle to big will see the player's hand inside it, a blade too long will clip through the ground when sheathed, a bow to wide will obstruct the view of the player when aiming in 1st person, etc...

As such, it is important to know in advance which weapon type your weapon will target, and eventually to use one of the vanilla model as reference for the proportions when modelling.

An other thing to keep in mind is that Skyrim support special 1st person models, which may be higher quality than their worldmodel / 3rd person model counter part as the model won't be used for cluttering, or worn by NPCs.
It is not mandatory to provide a different model for 1st person and 3rd person, unless the 1st person model absolutely need to be high poly and high-res, but this is something to keep in mind when designing generic weapons that may be used by the hundreds by a level designer to clutter an armory. On the other hand, unique weapons are probably best kept at high quality for both variant.

Pre-requisites

To follow this tutorial, you will need:

• Nifskope
• Skyrim Legenray Edition
• The Creation Kit
• A way to export/convert a model's geometry from your modelling software to a NIF.