In my (non-professional) experience, you almost always start with the mesh primitive. Get the mesh to look like you want. In my case it helped a lot to load an official mesh & skeleton to get an idea of the boundaries and joint positions as I modeled. Texturing can wait 'til the end. (you may find that you need to alter the mesh a lot ~that could invalidate your texture artwork).

My own steps (for the links below) were generally GECK work, to duplicate/rename a new item; Mesh & UV, parenting of the mesh to an official skeleton (if needed), assigning the vertex groups (if needed), testing it, texturing it, and trying it out in the game.

That uses Blender 2.46 (It might be useful to have 2.49b installed separately).
There is another book out... http://www.amazon.com/Blender-Foundations-Essential-Guide-Learning/dp/0240814304/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281560445&sr=8-1

I've not looked at it yet myself.

** Miaximus is right ^

the mods im making arent for fo3 there gonna be for fo nv. there going to be part of a bigger mod. im going to atempt to convert fo nv to the rifts rpg world. changing factions names and gear. creating all diff power armors and weapons etc. so i figured id learn now. start working on the armor replacements. get them ready for when the new vegas nifts etc come out. then do any editing and tweaking i need with most of the bs stuff like making the meshes etc being done.

I plan to make a http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/SAMAS-1.jpg next myself, but such a total conversion would take... about as long as it took to make Fallout New Vegas ~but with a team of many professionals making it their day job.

... Try one mod at a time, but try the simple mods first (like re-skins of a death's head for the BOS PA)

** If you really want to try a coalition armor... try just the helmet first.

if you plan on makinga samas unit good luck with the hover system lol and if you need info on it let me know weapon systems etc i even have color photo of one

I've barely speculated on it yet, but the hover system effects are already in the game, and there is at least one jetpack mod I've seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viIGr8tTfog&feature=related

theres also a hover chair mod

how do i get files from a different game that id like to add to fallout

You don't. Importing resources from one game to another - even between Bethesda games - is strictly forbidden due to the individual licensing restrictions for each game.

Moving this to the New Vegas board since, assuming that FO:NV gets a GECK of its own, there'll presumably be a sub-forum for it to which this thread would belong.

actually i wanted to take the niffs from jericho game i have instead of messing up my fo game. practicing till i figure out what im doing before hacking fo to pieces. cus i tried messing with geck just looking around. and i had to completely re install all my mods again afterwards. and really dont wanna have to do that repeatedly lol. so i figured id mess around with this other game i have and learn. if i hack it up no big deal i havent played it in yrs.and since there both games for windows learning to use import and export with blender and messing around in blender with the models. i can learn in a safe manner. not ruin my fo game that i can still play when taking a break from learning. besides being totally dif games. jericho wouldnt work in fo. no 3rd person views weapons systems are comepletly dif and its got spells and magic. the demons would be cool to take from it. but we have enough stuff like that already. tho i like jerichos undead alot better than the ghouls. way to many diff to swap form one game to another. but i digress question still remains. how do i get niff into blender from another game thats on cd and all game files are in zip format that it wont let me unzip.

and besides i see star wars mods on the nexus armor from metroid halo crysis warhammer etc if your going to say we cant do that you have to do it to everyone not just a few individual's thats called discrimination its ok to make starwars stuff but not predetor stuff see what i mean

Nexus isn't in any way affiliated with Bethesda, it's just a site where independent users upload mods.

You will not get any advice on how to violate the licensing restrictions on any games on this forum, because it is against the rules.

thats just it im not going to be violating rights just learning how to modify diff things so i can make and add my own stuff

Ooh, moderator ping-pong!

ok i tried using blender 2.53 beta works great cant see backround images tho so i uninstalled and went back to the 2.49 version. im again having same issues. its not detecting python now. i have both python 2.7 for the 2.53 version and python 2.6.2 for the 2.49 version and its not seeing them. what gives i changed file path in blender under the preferences for python to python 2.6. and when i reload blender i still get the dos mesage cant detect python. if blender has a support telephone number someone can pass to me id apreciate it. cus im out of ideas to fix this. tried wiki file path didn twork. tried diff versions. tried uninstalling blender and python and loading them in different orders didn twork. only time blender saw python was when i installed the new beta version of blender. but half the beta stuff isnt working yet

Discrimination? Come on
It used to be a time when such mods uploaded to the nexus were taken offline almost immediately.
Some modders are good enough to recreate armors from scratch, and may look like their models came straight from another game. Other simply get the mesh, re-rig it, and implement it in FO. In any case, I doubt the licensing police is going to knock on your door and demand you stop modding your game anyway you want.

You can make an cool rat mod for Fallout 3, just not using Oblivion's rat :shrug:.

**Ripping MasterChief or Warhammer PA is different tho'
(you are not really supposed to upload such mods.)

Yeah.

I'm amused that my purely hypothetical Marcus the Mutant example turned out to be completely accurate. I hope nobody was planning on making a Marcus the Mutant companion mod.

Well, if he isn't a companion for the vanilla game I am completely sure that someone will make one in the first months.

actually id like to add the super nasty monsters from this game i have called clive barkers jericho talk about blood n guts its deffinatly not for the light hearted lol