¶ The Toolshed
The following is a list of tools that are either necessary or useful to create mods for BG3. Please note that this is not a definitive list as there are many tools available, with a lot of overlap in their functionality.
¶ Extracting and converting Baldur’s Gate 3 files
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LSLib - essential for handling various file formats used in the game, allowing you to extract, convert, and pack files for modding purposes
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BG3 Multitool - quickly generate .paks from an unpacked workspace, unpack mods, index, browse and extract game files, among other functions
¶ Code editing
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Visual Studio Code (VSCode) - Free code editor created by Microsoft. Commonly used in the community, with several extensions available specifically for BG3 modding
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Visual Studio Codium (VSCodium) - An open source alternative to VSCode
¶ VSCode/VSCodium add-ons:
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BG3 Mod Helper - adds syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and other features to make modding easier See full documentation.
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BG3-SE-Snippets - Code snippets for the Baldur’s Gate 3 script extender, mainly event listeners
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BG3-GUIDinfos - Provides information when hovering over UUIDs
¶ Image & texture map creation & editing
¶ General image editing software
- GIMP - freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring, does not support all .dds files
- Paint.Net - free image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows, fully supports .dds
- Adobe Photoshop - useful, widely adopted tool for digital art that is unfortunately expensive and has predatory subscription practices, fully supports .dds
¶ Photoshop add-on:
- chaiNNer - free and open source node-based image processing GUI aimed at making chaining image processing tasks easy and customizable
- Krita - free and open source painting program, does not support .dds
- XnView MP - freeware to view, manage, resize and convert images in bulk, supports .dds
¶ 3D specific software
- Adobe Substance Painter (Creative Cloud)
- Adobe Substance Painter (Steam)
¶ Substance Painter add-ons:
- BG3 Skin Shader For Substance Painter, by Volno
- BG3-Substance-Painter-DDS-Exporter, by Aloija
- Quixel Mixer
- xNormal
- Normalizer by Friendly Shade
¶ CMD/script based
¶ 3D modeling & animation
- 3ds Max - professional 3D modeling and animation software that offers extensive features for creating complex models
- Maya - professional 3D software for creating realistic characters and visual effects
- Blender - free and open-source 3D modeling and animation tool that is widely used in the modding community for creating models and animations
- Blender - free and open-source 3D modeling and animation tool that is widely used in the modding community for creating models and animations
¶ Blender add-ons
- Volno’s Texture Toolbox - collection of tools and shaders, designed to assist in the creation and modification of texture maps inside Blender
¶ Data tools
- Excel: - useful for managing large amounts of data, such as character stats and item properties
- LibreOffice Calc - open-source alternative to Excel that offers similar functionality
¶ Miscellaneous tools
- Notepad++: - versatile text editor that supports many programming languages and is useful for editing scripts and configuration files
- Obsidian - project management app, free for personal use, supports markdown editing
- Notion - project management app, free for personal use
