Hi there.

I need to alter some of the skyrim creatures.

I need to remove the antlers from deer and elk, and the tusks from sabre cats and mammoth in order to make 'baby' varients of those creatures.

However, I'm not sure if this is possible. I hope it is, as I've seen mudcrabs edited to have hats, so I guess it must be possible to remove something as well as add something?

Not only that, but I don't have several thousand pounds to buy 3DS max, so will need to know how to do it promptly so I can do it within the trial period.

So, I've had one bit of advice, but it's quite complicated.

Is there anyone out there who could help either walk me through it, or willing to do it?

Just thought I'd ask!

Why don't you use Blender instead?

Is there a .nif tool for it?

Nedius, this should be a very simple task.

I'd suggest you convert the entire mesh to and Edit Poly, (right click -> convert to -> editable poly), then be in the Modify tab on the right-hand panel (it's the second one from the left), then click on vertex edit mode, and go ahead and select all of the vertices of the antlers besides the ones closest to the bottom.

Once you have them all selected, hit delete, and switch to border edit mode, select each of the holes that should now exist in the now very short antlers, and hit cap.

Voila, that should just about do it.

You may have to adjust the UVs for it to look nice, but maybe not also.

Let me know if any of those steps are not obvious.

PS

Are you a student? The student version of 3DS Max is free for at least a year or two, and comes totally guns blazing, as far as I know nothing, or close to nothing, is nerf'd in the student version.

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender but it doesn't work for Skyrim. Neither do the ones for 3DS Max and Maya.

You need to use http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/NifSkope to extract the original mesh as OBJ, then load it into the 3D-moddeling program of your choice, edit the model, save as OBJ and reimport in Nifskope.

There a dozens of 3d modelling programs in every price category and all of them will open and save .OBJs.
No need to wangle a student copy of the most expensive one.

Ok, I got it into Blender, but the mesh was not editable. I imported the object, but it wouldn't let me select anything to delete or remove the bits.

Any ideas what to try?