How much did CK cost you exactly, I understand there are many other things you probably downloaded to make it easier to use CK, and idk if there are any things you use that cost money. I understand if you don't want to tell me.

CK is free. Some tools you would use for other modding parts may or may not be free. GIMP, free. Photoshop, expensive. Blender, free. 3DSmax/Maya/Modo, expensive.

There is a free tool for just about everything. (If not everything) Though obviously, the expensive ones have their perks.

how does adobe help with CK? thought that was something different entirely.

If you want to mess with textures, you're going to need an image editing program.

which would you suggest?

Gimp or Photoshop.

I'll go with GIMP since it's free, and I'm cheap... ty...

If you can get CS5 through school or something for free do it. I got CS4 from school, and I use Photoshop for texturing, and Premiere/AE for trailers and whatnot. Though if you dont have school or money, GIMP will do textures just fine, and chances are you arent making trailers.

my toolset:

Skyrim - $60
CK - $0
Tessnip - $0
Photoshop CS4 - $150 (school discount)
Nvidia DDS and Normal map plugin - $0
xNormal - $0
Nifskope - $0
3DS Max '12 - $0 (school discount)
ZBrush 4 - $400 (school discount)
UVlayout - $0
Topogun - $100


total cost $710 (although a lot of that stuff most people will never need)

ZBrush?

sounds like you create your own models.

as for Topogun, I dont know what that is.

topogun lets you easily rebuild a low-poly game-ready mesh from a very high poly zbrush sculpt (i don't like the built in retopo features in zbrush)

so you use Zbrush to create new models and once they are ready to be put into skyrim, you use topogun to make them look better?

Actually technically you use Topogun to make them look worse. The game can only handle oh so many polys. So, if you make a super shmancy nice looking model, you need to make it a lower polycount in order to have it ingame.

ooooh... kk... what would be the highest poly count you would use, and how much did the original skyrim, unmodded, use.

yeah alex is correct, you are making a lower poly version (personally i try to target no more than 16k range for high res games like skyrim). the original zbrush sculpt can be anywhere in the 10's of millions polys or more. obviously you cant run that in a game engine, but if you can bake a really good normal map and your low poly cage is decent, the idea is to make it look identical to the highpoly where the untrained eye cannot tell the difference.


these days poly count is not that big of an issue when you factor in all of the other elements that can attribute to performance cost (lighting, shaders, textures etc). i dont think there is any real "set number" to limit yourself to. i have basic guidelines that i give myself, but more of just a guide: i try to target a total poly count of 16k -ish for a fully armored character in 3rd person.

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well skyrim cost me 59.99 dollars, so that's technicly 60 dollars but the creation kit is free but it is available only to people who have skyrim on steam.

Every PC copy of Skyrim has to be added to Steam account, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah... everyone on PC. Unless he meant consoles, in which case, yeah CK will never be available on console. I'd love to see someone try to develope a game with a controller.

well with really simple level editor stuff, like in Halo Forge, can be done fairly well with a controller, but anything else (especially scripting, quests and such) would be next to impossible (but of course that would require building an entirely new version of the CK just for console use).

alternatively it would be nice if in the future there could be an XBL/PSN equivalent of SW where console users could download at least esp's and BSA's created in the PC CK that can be used in consoles, but that all depends on MS and Sony (as far as i know technically it should be possible - performance issues aside - the main reasons why mods are not allowed in consoles are more political reasons than technical)

Last I checked, my mind was free upon birth. Or do I have my mom to thank for that, since those nutrients and proteins required to created the brain I have now, came at the price of pain 9 months later. something I would never wish upon her, and yet I could do nothing about.

So yeah, the CK was free.

Nothing (excluding the ￡28 I paid for the game). I don't texture, and use NifSkope for any basic modelling needs. Blender for anything more advanced. Notepad++ and TortoiseSVN for Papyrus. That's it really.