Software

There's a lot of software you can use to enhance and modify your FFXIV experience. This is against TOS, so try not to post about it publicly in-game or social media.

Installing Mods

In order to get mods to run in your game, the go-to tool is Penumbra. It requires Dalamud and XIVlauncher to run. These tools are all well-documented, so I recommend checking their respective websites.

  1. XIVLauncher
  2. Penumbra, Glamourer, & Mare

Optional Plugins

These plugins work in Dalamud and are compatible with the Penumbra and Mare plugins:

  1. Customize+ allows custom bone(body part) scaling and positioning.
  2. Palette+ allows you to change your character's colours outside of allowed game values.
  3. Heels is a plugin for floating your character, designed for use with specific high heel mods.
  4. Honorific allows custom titles for your character. Installs via the in-game plugins menu.
  5. Heliosphere, a modsite with plugin integration, which I heard works with NexusMods? See Finding Mods for more.

These plugins are handy for aesthetic & modding uses:

  1. VFXEditor allows you to switch and modify particle effects and animations. Necessary if you want to make your own VFX mods!
  2. Ktisis allows custom poses within Gpose. However, as of May 2023 it is still early in development, so I recommend using Anamnesis instead.
  3. Brio adds and modifies some Gpose features, such as additional character creation.

Other FFXIV Software

These are additional programs for FFXIV that otherwise modify appearance settings; heavily used when taking screenshots or in Gpose.

  1. ReShade adds post-processing effects of your choice to various games.
  2. Anamnesis allows you to create, save, and load custom poses, change the time of day and weather, load animations, and more. An invaluable Gposing tool.
  3. TexTools is required for creating 3d and many other mods. If you have space, use it on a separate install of FFXIV than your other mods.
  4. TTMP mod extractor extracts 2D (texture) files from a TTMP.
  5. FFXIV loose texture compiler lets you quickly edit and export textures for popular body mods straight to Penumbra.
  6. FFXIV voice pack creator is pretty self explanatory.
  7. Penumbra Mod Forwarder allows faster install of mods into Penumbra.

Art Programs

Creating mods is often about your artistic skill, so prior knowledge with other software will go a long way. If you're still learning, regular online tutorials for your program of choice can be a big help.

2D Programs & Tools

Photoshop is the queen of this arena, but if you don't have or like it, pretty much any 2D art program will do. (I'm a Krita fan.)

  1. GIMP is a free Photoshop alternative that allows you to edit colour channels separately; a necessity for many videogame shaders.
  2. PSD Normal Map painter (note, this may not work well for more sizeable objects' normal maps).

3D Programs & Tools (Blender Plugins)

3DS Max is the native format for FFXIV's models, but these days Blender's FBX export works just fine for use with Textools.
As I only use blender, I won't put effort into collating 3DS Max scripts/addons. (However, if you want to do it for me, I'll happily link to it here!)

  1. Blender, my AMV-making software of choice.
  2. Mek Tools helps speed up the import process for FFXIV models.
  3. Abnormal allows fine adjustment of vertex normals, useful for split meshes and low-poly model editing. AKA, when your model randomly has a seam and you can't see how or why.
  4. Material Combiner automates combining of UVs and textures, to help you avoid that pesky material limit.
  5. SKkeeper lets you keep shape keys when applying modifiers to your mesh.

The following plugins have more niche uses, and are not what I'd consider essential for 3D modding.

  1. PoseHelper allows you to make poses in Blender and export them to Anamnesis or vice versa. Due to being able to use hotkeys, I recommend using Blender to pose and saving some of your precious time.
  2. BlenderAssist allows you to import FFXIV animations.
  3. XAT is another invaluable tool for animating.
  4. Animation Retargeting is a handy plugin for animation-swap mods.
  5. FFXIV shader is a tool for making kickass renders of FFXIV characters/objects in Blender.
  6. FFXIV MMD Tools Helper is a tool for... moving your FF models to MMD?