I'm trying to figure out how to put a new item into the game. I wanted to make some new drinks, so I took the mead bottle and retextured it, but for the life of me I can't seem to get my new item to work. The problem is that I don't understand how the models work. World model, inventory model. Every tutorial I can find describes how to add custom weapons or armor, which is useless because they all refer to 1st Person model and ArmorAddon, which don't apply to other kinds of items.

I tried duplicating the existing bottle to make a new item, then opening the box for the new item, clicking Edit next to where it says Model, and applying my new nif. But then at the bottom of the edit model box where it has the 3D Name and New Texture boxes, it now says Marker Error_0 and a big red exclamation point.

After an hour of Googling and trying to make sense of it, I figured out how to create a Texture Set and use that in the proper area, so that it appears under that 3D Name and New Texture box, and I can select it and the preview image shows up correctly. But I have no idea if that's the world model or the inventory model, or how to set up whichever one it isn't.

If I try to put my nif in there after getting the preview image right, the preview image reverts back to being the red "you're stupid" mark. Selecting my texture set does nothing again; it now says the correct file name under New Texture but it's still listed as Marker Error_0 under the 3D Name part of the box, instead of listing the parts of the model available to apply textures to.

Could someone direct me to a tutorial on adding a new custom item that isn't a weapon or armor? Or is there a short explanation of how to do this? I have the nif and the dds files all ready, I just need to know how to get them into the CK.

Edited for clarity.

Unless you're using texture sets, the DDS file needs to be referenced from within the NIF file (using NifSkope). You then need to either create or duplicate a Potion object, and click the Edit button under "Model". Then click Edit again, locate the model and press OK. That's all you need to do.

Inventory Image and Message Icon aren't used and are just leftovers from Oblivion/Fallout.

Does the potion load correctly ingame?

Let me go clarify my post to better explain what I mean. The dds file is set up in the nif; I open it in NifSkope and it shows up exactly as it should. The problem is that when I apply that nif doing just as you said, I get the error with Moarker Error_0 and the exclamation point.

I haven't looked at it in-game yet... I tried to, but I couldn't figure out how to get a copy of the new bottle to check out. I tried adding it with the console and it tells me that no such object exists, so clearly the Form ID that the CK shows isn't the right one, somehow. Doubled-checked that the mod was loaded, too.

The first two digits are the mod index, they will vary depending on your load order. As the numbers are hexadecimal, 00 is Skyrim.esm, 01 is Update.esm, and it'll count as 02, ..., 09, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11 etc.

Chances are you'll either see your mod index as 01 or 02 in the CK, because that's what order it's loaded in in the editor.

Ah HA! Okay, lemme go check it out in the game. Thank you for your help.

Well I'll be damned. It does show up correctly in the game. Both the inventory image and the world image are exactly as they should be. This is by using the texture set method, not by selecting my nif using the Edit Model method. The model is still the original nif. I can't seem to change it to my new nif, otherwise I get the red idiot marker in the preview box. The texture set method seems to work, though, and I'm too tired to worry about why the other way is throwing errors.

The odd thing is, when I load the mod in the CK again and click my new bottle, then click to edit the model (figured I'd try it one last time), I get an error:

Textures: Warnings were encountered during texture swap for model 'Clutter\Ingredients\Mead01.nif'. Check warnings file for more details.

Edit: Ah, duh. The warning file informs me that I'm and idiot and the warnings are popping up because I didn't set a normal map or environment map for the texture. I forgot about it, I was just tossing it up quickly to see if the texture set idea would work, then when it did, I never went back to flesh it out. I'll fix that in the morning.

Thanks again for helping me out. I'd still kinda like to know why the nif method isn't working... but it's no longer a Problem.

Heh. I did eventually figure this one out, so I decided to update the thread in case other newbies ever have a similar issue. I find a lot of my info by searching the forums for old threads.

The nif method wasn't working for the simple reason that I had no idea what I was doing in NifSkope, didn't know how to change a texture properly, and managed to add a new texture property without removing the old one. I figured it out later on (before I asked the question) but forgot to start again with a newly extracted mesh, and kept trying to use the one I'd messed up without realizing that it wasn't the original. Oops.

Moral of the story is to always keep an untouched copy of whatever file you're working on, and make a copy of it to fiddle with. You'd think I would have known that.