Feeling kinda bad for having signed up on here but not locked down any plans yet, so thought I'd lay out all of my brainstorming so far.

I am really wanting to make my own outfit mod but am really struggling to visualize what I should make. What is a good way to gain an image in mind to work towards? Or is it a matter of having to just begin, with no real plan in mind, & just see what happens?

I'm kinda thinking Enclave or Metal Gear style. A stealth suit, standard & heavy infantry armor(maybe also PA someday), Intel/Support/Engineer's outfit, officer uniform & command/general's uniform.

For the stealth suit I'm kinda thinking Venom Snake's sneaking suit in MGSV The Phantom Pain. But IDK, should I closely follow that? Should I maybe start off following that image, than deviate from it later to make it more of my own? There would be these for Underarmors, this would be the starting point:
Sneaking Suit, Infantry Gear, Intel/Support/Engineer Gear, Officer's Gear, Commanding Officer's Gear. Likely would have passive healing rate like 1 or 0.5 HP/s.

Armor pieces would come afterwards

• Stealth Tactical armor: boosts stealth like shadowed armor, boosts AP, muffles movement, increases movement speed. Lower armor rating.
  
• Soldier's Armor: Good armor rating & reduces damage from Explosive/Flammable/Radiation damage.
  
• Battle Armor: Very high armor rating, immunity to Radiation/Flammable Damage, extreme reduction to explosive damage. These guys will be like Juggernauts, discouraging use of Missile Launcher/Fatman against them.
  
• (Possible PA): Slows movement but extreme armor rating. Immunity to Radiation/Flammable/Explosive damage. Best strategy against them will be rifle with armor pen, or secondarily, energy/cryo weapons. Likely around 70-80% movement speed in total, each piece will probably be like -5%.
  

I'm really hyped about Sim Settlements Conqueror, so I wanna get involved with something like maybe an Outer Heaven faction for it.

Personally, I started doing mashups of armors. Taking pieces I like and combining them into something different that I thought would work well together. Unless you can create your own models from the ground up, I can't see doing it any other way. This way you're using existing models=nif that just need to be tweaked/reshaped/pulled/pushed around.

There are lots of great outfits/armors that have assets (nifs) for doing this. I would think just the process of doing this would spark your imagination and direction. The modifiers you list at the bottom of your post are all addressed in the .esp created to get your armor/mod in game. Of course you would want your armor to look like it can actually have the attribute's you assign it after it's created.

I use Outfit Studio for most of this work, along with Nifscope, Gimp, Paint.net and Material Editor. There are others, but these are the ones I know how to use well. Blender is a great program for these things as well and many excellent modders use it extensively.

jacoboriley wrote:

Personally, I started doing mashups of armors. Taking pieces I like and combining them into something different that I thought would work well together. Unless you can create your own models from the ground up, I can't see doing it any other way. This way you're using existing models=nif that just need to be tweaked/reshaped/pulled/pushed around.

There are lots of great outfits/armors that have assets (nifs) for doing this. I would think just the process of doing this would spark your imagination and direction. The modifiers you list at the bottom of your post are all addressed in the .esp created to get your armor/mod in game. Of course you would want your armor to look like it can actually have the attribute's you assign it after it's created.

I use Outfit Studio for most of this work, along with Nifscope, Gimp, Paint.net and Material Editor. There are others, but these are the ones I know how to use well. Blender is a great program for these things as well and many excellent modders use it extensively.

I agree with this. I have done mashups already & it's a lot of fun, but my hype for Conqueror is giving me a push towards taking the next step so From the Ground Up is what I would most like to do. Plus with mashups there is the unfortunate concern of permissions from the sourced mods. I have some mashups I like but modding permissions concerns means I will never be allowed to release it as some I used in personal use mashups are expressly forbidden for any reuse at all. I regularly mixed in a lot of different mod-sourced stuff  so most if not all of them will fall under this. I've used NifSkope, GIMP a bit & tiny bit of Material Editor. From watching some of their videos, I'm thinking about spinning this idea into a faction for Conqueror so the ability to share what I make without any problems is a must.

I can 3D model a little in 3DS Max but struggled a lot to understand UV Mapping & Texturing. It's a bit of "paralysis" because I feel unsure what I am "allowed"  to do in terms of modeling without creating extremely difficult problems or maybe even impossible situation when later trying to make a UV Map. Aside from the variables of UV Mapping & 2D Texturing I believe that modeling all of these is something doable for me. I've done basics like exporting a NIF from 3DS Max 2013 for Fallout 4 & also exporting a NIF with Collision.

I've had somewhat of a plan in mind for trying to texture without massive  2D artist  skills. I will have simpler rather than highly intricate visual designs and convey realistic material details by utilizing Smart Materials in programs like Substance Painter/3D Coat/Quixel. I've also investigated ZBrush & I think  high poly modeling via sculpting could potentially be used for baking a high quality Normal Map. This way I could pair this Normal Map with a reasonable model & hopefully wind up with something reasonable looking. Basically my strategy in mind is to both give the Diffuse map a bit of a bump up plus also relying  less on the Diffuse Map to convey detail. I've struggled to come up with reasons to go through with this since it's most likely a big time sink(maybe 100 hours or even more) that's going to be required but I am absolutely loving Conqueror so I think this is literally the reason I need.

I think from Conqueror it shows that collaboration can be a big positive. As what I would create all on my own probably isn't very interesting. But when combined with other things I think the sum can become greater than the parts all on their own. With the idea of a Faction, that can give the outfits purpose and refine them into something better. Thinking about this idea gives me the beginnings of what they could look like.

I could show some mashups if it helps