Sprout Kit

Things to Keep in Mind

Modding can be a fun and rewarding hobby and a great outlet for creativity. Even if it’s just for yourself, being able to modify your characters to see them just how you envision them is very rewarding. It is also a work of love. If you start modding with the only intention to make money you might easily find yourself frustrated, or will eventually realize that good quality mods take a lot of effort and time.

Do what makes your brain tick, put your enjoyment first above popularity or money. As long as you can find the time to sit down and learn, you can make all kinds of things, probably even things you didn’t think yourself capable of. Give it a shot, and be patient. Like with all new things, it takes time and practice.

Difficulty Chart

This chart is very subjective since difficulty might also depend on your own knowledge and experience, but if you have absolutely no knowledge on how modding works in FFXIV or in any other game, this might help you decide where to start or how much time/energy might be required for what you want to make.

Easy / Few steps:

These are things that can be achieved with some very basic knowledge of Textools/Penumbra and blender and/or photoshop (or another program of your choice).

Intermediate / Several steps:

These require a good grasp of your chosen software and more detailed knowledge of Textools and/or Penumbra. Especially when it comes to textures and colorsets.

Difficult / Many steps:

These require knowledge of several programs, a good understanding of many aspects of 3D work (like topology, UV Unwrapping, etc), or it might be something so new in the community (like animations mods) with less information available.

Very Difficult / Lots of Unknown stuff:

Since animation mods are still very new to us and we have little information on how they work they require lots of previous knowledge and trial and error, as well as probably previous knowledge on animation and other programs altogether.

Type of Mod Description Difficulty
Colorset/Texture edits Changing the color of gear or giving your hair highlights Easy
Makeup Adding a transparent png to your face diffuse Easy
Simple editing for (static) weapons / gear / minion Deleting/Removing parts with Textools or Blender Easy
Skin Edits Making or adding a tattoo Easy
Swapping VFX Changing vfx with the VFX Editor Easy
Customizing existing VFX Changing colors, lighting, sounds, sizing via VFX Editor Easy
Resizing Clothes/Accesories Making modded or vanilla items fit certain bodies. *Note that vanilla items can be more challenging to work with than modded ones Intermediate
Making a mashup Grabbing different parts of mods or vanilla items to make a new mod Intermediate
Making a static item (Props/Furniture) Making something simple in Blender with simple textures Intermediate
Tweaking or replacing simple animations VFX and sometimes additional software knowledge necessary Intermediate
Minor Sculpting changes Editing a face or a body just enough that it doesn't require reweighting Intermediate
Creating clothes from scratch Making the mesh, retopology, texture making, and colorsetting knowledge needed Difficult
Creating hair scratch Using hair cards to make hair and making textures Difficult
Porting assets from other games Requires a good grasp of how weights and textures work to make the models functional in FFXIV Difficult
Making complicated and/or animated props Requires lots of Blender, weights and sometimes animation knowledge Difficult
Making raw assets compatible with FFXIV If animated, requires skeleton/weights and textures knowledge Difficult
Porting Animations Significant VFX knowledge and other software for ripping and editing animations Difficult
Completely remade body/face sculpts Requires advance sculpting skills, and often reweighting and baking textures Difficult
Making VFX ??? Very Difficult
Making animation mods From scratch?? In this economy?? Very Difficult
Colorset/Texture edits

Textools & Penumbra

While Penumbra is now the main tool for installing mods it is not user-friendly. Some users still prefer Penumbra for making mods, but I would not recommend it for a beginner with zero knowledge. A lot of its features require several steps, and not all of them have documentation that is easy to find.

If you are not familiar with it at all you want to check Reni’s guide to set it up and cover some of the basics. As of right now, Textols 3.0 is the most flexible and powerful tool for modding. Not only does it cover everything that you need to make a mod, but it can also do it in few steps. Its newest version also includes tools that can help you speed up the process of certain things, like merging two mods together, or moving a mod from a certain head, accessory or gear into another.

If you’re already familiar with previous versions of Textools you might want to read the documentation for the changes in 3.0

TEXTOOLS 101

Textools 3.0 Overview: Menu Tabs

Textools 3.0 Overview: Menu Tabs - Youtube Going over what the different menu tabs are for in Textools 3.0 + Some miscellaneous info about body scaling and what the Modpack Converter does. (Includes Timestamps in the video description)

Textools 3.0 Models, Materials and Textures Menus Overview

Textools 3.0 Models, Materials and Textures Menus Overview - Youtube This is the second part of the Textools overview. Mostly showing off where our most important features are and some of the new toys. (Timestamps in the video description)

BLENDER 101

While programs like 3DS Max and Maya are considered the best software options for videogame industry standards, Blender has taken over as the main modders’ software since it is free and largely perceived as easier to work with The following videos were recommended by Meku as some of the best videos to get started if you have zero knowledge. Some things to note:

The fastest way to learn Blender

The fastest way to learn Blender - Youtube

A short, meme filled video describing The Fastest way to Learn Blender.

(6 min 34 sec)

If I started Blender in 2026

If I started Blender in 2026 - Youtube

This video helps you come up with a game plan for learning Blender

(10 min 50 sec video)

Learn Blender 3D in 20 minutes!

Learn Blender 3D in 20 minutes! - Youtube

Do this if you've never opened blender before or if you want to get deep into some absolute basics.

(18 min 32 seconds)

Dawntrail Graphical Update

With Dawntrail (7.0) lots of things changed about modding. As a baby sprout a lot of the information about the changes might likely go over your head unless you have knowledge in videogame development, but it is important to keep in mind that there are HUNDREDS of old guides out there that have been rendered useless or could be at the very least slightly outdated. It is recommended you check the date of the documentation or guide you are using. Anything prior to July 2024 should probably be run down by someone else with more experience who can confirm if the information is still accurate.

Some general basics

These are just things that it's not a bad idea to learn while you are diving into modding for the first time, regardless of what you are planning on doing: