in anticipation for the CK coming out i've been modeling some mod ideas i had, but i have a couple questions for ones that may have done this before

firstly, how do animations work as far as going from the 3D program (Max in my case) to the game? I want to make a new weapon and it has some moving parts, so how would i go about animating and exporting that? The different parts that animate are currently separate objects themselves, would they be exportable as one object for use as a single item in the game?

Will it matter a great deal if i have more than one texture map for the item? Like i said, right now the different parts are different objects, so each will have their own UV map and texture.

First, you are on the bleeding edge so I would not expect a lot of detailed tutorials at this point. In Skyrim, animations are handled by Havok. You can download Havok 2010.2 Content Tools via intel website which only work up to max 2010 (maybe 2011). You can in theory use those tools to export animation for use in the game directly. I've released a converter that can take existing animation and convert to Gamebryo format and vice versa for import/export to max. The release post for that tool is on this forum with some basic instructions on their usage.

Bows are an example of a weapon with their own skeleton and self contained animation so I would look at those if I were you. Presumably you can have a complex weapon with multiple parts but I really don't know what problems you will encounter. The big uncertainty at the moment is what to do about Havok Behavior Tool compatibility since Bethesda uses it and there is no free equivalent compatible with Skyrim. This tool in part defines how animation transitions between each other. Not sure its required for this weapon but it probably will in some form.

thanks for the info. I wasn't expecting too many details but i figured i'd ask because i had assumed it wouldn't be too different from the likes of Fallout 3 or New Vegas or oblivion.

I suppose theres no sense being coy, the "weapon" im working on is the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXliD189bss (the gold/brass one with the green light if you're not familiar). So those fly open and grab the claws to close animations are more or less what im lookin at doing