Category:Tooling

A reference to all the various tooling that may be involved with developing Fallout 4. This page will include official, community made, and third party software projects.

Armor and Clothing Design

• Marvelous Designer: A 3D digital painting and sculpting software for Model Files, specifically for clothing and armor.
  • Marvelous Designer
  • As of this writing, offers perpetual licensing as well as monthly subscriptions.
• Outfit Studio: A 3D digital sculpting tool for Model Files, specifically clothing, armor, and body creation/conversion.
  • BodySlide and Outfit Studio
  • Used for bodies, outfits, armors, and static Model Files.

Audio and Dialogue

• Audacity: Open source, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Sound Files.
  • Audacity
  • Exports into XWM format.
• Creation Kit ESM Version Check Patch: A patch to remove the ESM version check from 32-bit Creation Kit so that lip files can be generated after patch 1.10.162.
  • Creation Kit ESM Version Check Patch

Character Design and Animation

• F4Biped Animation Rig: An animation kit for first person, third person, and vanilla animation import for Actor Model Files.
  • F4Bipid Animation Rig
• Face Ripper: A tool to transfer the player character face from one plugin to another.
  • Face Ripper
  • Used for the creation of companion mods or unique NPC mods.
• Fallout 4 Animation Kit: A detailed guide with tools and plugins for importing and exporting animations for Actor Model Files.
  • Fallout 4 Animation Kit

Documentation, Planning, and Promotion

• Canva: A web-based multimedia design tool with which one can generate visual content for websites and social media.
  • Canva
• Google docs: A web-based word processor.
  • Google docs
• LibreOffice: An open-source office productivity software suite.
  • LibreOffice
• OBS - Open Broadcaster Software: Open source software for video recording and live streaming.
  • OBS
• Pastebin: A web-based text editor.
  • Pastebin
• Scrivener: A word processing, metadata, note-taking, and outlining management software suite.
  • Scrivener
• Trello: A web-based list-making application for projects.
  • Trello
  • Project boards are set up similarly to GitHub projects.
• WordPress.org: Free, open-source website management software.
  • WordPress.org
• WordPress.com: Free and paid website hosting service using WordPress.org open-source code.
  • WordPress.com

Plugin Management

• Stupid Simple Plugin Manager: A plugin management software.
  • Stupid Simple Plugin Manager
  • Used for quickly enabling/disabling plugins during testing and debugging.
• Wrye Bash: A plugin management software.
  • Wrye Bash

Textures and Models

• GIMP: An open source image manipulation software for Texture Files.
  • GIMP
• Inkscape: A free vector graphics program for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
  • Inkscape
  • Used for complex paintings, illustrations, logos, poster art, HUD elements, etc. Adobe Illustrator's free competition.
• Material Editor: An editor for Material Files, both .bgsm and .bgem extensions.
  • Material Editor
  • There is also a Material Editor that came with the Creation Kit in the tools folder.
• Materialize: An open source PBR texture generation tool for creating custom Texture Files for Windows 64.
  • Materialize
• Mudbox: A 3D digital painting & sculpting software for Model Files and Texture Files.
  • Mudbox Subscription
  • Mudbox Student
  • Used for texturing, re-texturing, creating or editing diffuse(.d), normals(.n) and spectacular(.s) textures.
• Quixel Mixer: A PBR texture generation tool for creating custom Texture Files.
  • Quixel Mixer
  • Integrated into MegaScans, but you can import your own for generating new ones.
• Substance Painter: A 3D digital painting software for Texture Files.
  • Substance Painter Subscription
  • Substance Painter Perpetual
• Texconv.exe: A command-line texture compression and mip-map generation utility.
  • Texconv.exe is found in the Elric folder under Tools in the Fallout 4 folder after installing the Creation Kit.
  • Microsoft Texconv documentation
• TexconvGUI: A simple GUI for Microsoft's Texconv and can be used for grayscale heightmaps among other things if one does not have access to Adobe Photoshop.
  • TexConvGUI
• XboxDDSTextureLoader: For use by qualified Xbox One XDK developers, allows you to see Xbox textures ("XBOX" FourCC pixel format) on your PC.
  • XboxDDSTextureLoader

User Interface

• SoThink SWF Decompiler: A Flash decompiler to convert SWF to FLA and extract SWF resources. Windows and Mac versions.
  • Sothink SWF Decompiler
  • There's a 30-day free trial.

Utilities

• 7zip: A free data compression tool for Windows and Linux. It supports RAR 2, 3, 4, and 5 formats as well as ZIP format.
  • 7-Zip
• Champollion Pex to Papyrus Decompiler: A command line tool to decompile PEX binary files into human-readable PSC files.
  • Champollion
• HxD: A binary file editing software for raw data manipulation.
  • HxD
  • Notepad++ and Visual Studio Code have plugins for viewing raw data.
• Inspiration Pad Pro: A random data generation program.
  • Inspiration Pad Pro
• StringBuilder: A utility for building incremental strings upon copy and pasting.
  • StringBuilder
• WinRAR: A Windows data compression tool that focuses on the RAR and ZIP data compression formats for all Windows users.
  • WinRAR

Version Control and Bug Tracking

• AFKTrack: A bug tracking application designed for mod authors.
  • AFKTrack
• GitHub: A web-based GUI for Git that provides hosting for software development version control.
  • GitHub
  • You can also make static websites and have a wiki for your mod project.
• Perforce: Free version control for up to 5 users and 20 workspaces.
  • Perforce Helix Core

Worldspaces

• terrain.party: A web-based tool for real-world height map data.
  • terrain.party
• Wilbur: A fractal map generator for terrain data height maps.
  • Wilbur
• WorldMachine: A procedural painting and sculpting tool for generating terrain height maps for import into the Creation Kit.
  • WorldMachine
  • Free version produces height maps that are 512 x 512.

Notes

• There are plenty of other tools that can be used and listed.
• If a tool would be linked to directly, multiple times, then consider creating a standalone tool page and adding it to the Tooling category.

See Also

• Game File Reference
• Creation Kit Toolset