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.

  • If you are looking to learn how to mod for yourself and as a hobby there are very few limits of what you can do. Learn as much as you want, and have fun! 

  • Modding is all about fucking around and finding out. Gotta be willing to mess with things just to see what happens.

  • Be curious, learn to be resourceful. Not everything in a guide needs to be FFXIV specific. Look up different ways to use the programs that you have available. Learn from as many places as you can. Can’t navigate blender? Youtube is your friend. Don’t know a term? Google it

  • If you want to learn how to mod with the intention to monetize your content keep in mind there are many things to consider. It is recommended that you start off by making everything free. It helps you find an audience and build your skills. 

  • If you are thinking of sharing what you have made, be it free or paid, try to include a list of your permissions. Is it ok for others to edit? Do you require that people credit you? This is about your own comfort and boundaries. You can look at other people’s permissions to have an idea of what other modders keep into consideration, but don’t outright copy and paste the permissions that others have put together.

  • If you are modding as a hobby but want to share what you make, try to keep your own preferences in mind first, then spend whatever energy you want to spare on other things. Sure it would be nice if your outfit was available for all bodies, but it is a big workload and you might get burned out if you overdo it.

  • Mods are rarely perfect and that’s ok. If you are posting something that has a few issues just make sure to mention it in the mod description. Ex. “Known issues: Some clipping at the knee with certain poses”. As long as you know you tried your best there’s nothing to be ashamed of

  • If you post your mods try to include at least one way for people to contact you. If someone is experiencing problems with your mod, the download, or maybe wants to know your permissions, they will need somewhere to message you. 

  • Modding can be expensive. Unless you can find free versions or yarrr harrr your whole set of software, doing full from-scratch mods can really add up when you need plugins, software, assets, subscriptions and such. It is not a bad idea to dip your toes with free programs or free-trials first before you spend a bunch of money on things you might not want to do in the long run.

  • Modding is not one single skill but a combination of many of them. You will need to learn how textools and/or penumbra works on top of other software like blender, photoshop, and maybe more depending how deep into the rabbit hole you go. Try to focus on one thing until you feel comfortable to try others.

  • Hair, clothes, make up, they all have their own characteristics and nuances that you must learn little by little. Some modders just focus on one specific thing and spend their time perfecting their craft.

  • If you want to bring your modding to the next level you must learn about game-ready models optomization (like retopology, proper baking, nice packed UVs, justified texture sizes etc)

  • In the end, however much you want to learn is up to you. Learn by yourself or with others, but focus on what makes YOU happy first.

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

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

Textools101

Textools 3.0 Overview: Menu Tabs

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)

(Text version not available yet)

Textools 3.0 Models, Materials and Textures Menus Overview

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)

(Text version not available yet)

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:

* DO NOT* start with the Donnut tutorial. It’s a showcase of Blender’s features and not something helpful for beginners.

* Avoid using version 4.1 of Blender for now, it has some bugs. I recommend 3.6 for compatibility with most guides that already exist.

* Learning any software goes beyond what a FFXIV-specific guide might teach you. Don’t be afraid to look things up and learn your own workflow and favorite features.

Blender 101

The fastest way to learn Blender

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

(6 min 34 sec video)

If I started Blender in 2024

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

(10 min 50 sec video)

Learn Blender 3D in 20 minutes!

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 have changed about modding. As of right now, modders are floundering about trying to learn these changes so they can upgrade old mods and make new better ones.

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, and lots of the old guides have been rendered outdated and even useless in some cases. When looking for guides make sure that they are still accurate or that they are current for 7.0

The classes posted in this site will all be new and include everything you need, but it will require some time to get everything recorded/written down and posted. We have some older, but still useful info and classes in our Discord if you wish to peruse it, or if you want to ask questions about where to start with a specific thing you want to learn. You can find an invite at the end of this page.

As a basic roundown of things that is never a bad time to learn before looking into modding guides or while you’re waiting for new and updated ones: