Stuck in Variant Meshes with my simple Unit Mod, mod

[MadKnight]

Hey All!

I have been wanting to get into modding for years and over the last few weeks I've begun to take it seriously. Studying after work and with these few days off this week with public holidays I have sworn to make my first mod!

I have watched all of Magnar's excellent video tutorials, made copious important notes from what he stated in his very helpful vids, read a lot here in the forums and, now successfully can compile my own version of a mod from other mods, so far...

Now, I wish to make a modified version of the Marauders in the game, a simple mod of a pre-existing unit, just to get my feet wet before plunging into my own full unit mods. My only actual related graphics experience was making tile images that were complex and repeatable with smooth edges in the 90's on PS, so I have a lot of experimenting to do. Which programs should I buy to have all the tools I need?

My goal is to change the heads of the marauders to look more fearsome with other Chaos Warrior helms. This is all I want to do as a test run to really getting into modding. (As, in game they look cartoonish :S)

Unfortunately, I am just kind of stuck on the variant meshes with this tiny project (Well, shoulda been a tiny project!) . As I don't have access to the Variant Editor in Tweak (*grrr,sigh* It just doesn't seem to be under 'tools', see screenshot below) I can't seem to view what the changes would look like prior so it's hit and miss unless there is a way to view the helms another way outside the .dds files that seem to be wraps of textures and hard to discern which helms I would like for the Marauder unit. Yes, you can see them in game but which helm models are which texture references?

How does the .dds file get referenced exactly?

I swear I have seen something like this in an old thread years ago about it but can't find it after many hours of searching and so I ask humbly for some assistance.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the modders of the TW community for their efforts. You guys have made my enjoyment of TW series of games over the many years beyond measure!

In the meantime, I am going back to Magnar's excellent tutorials and Sebidee's to see if I have missed something.

Please find some screenshots below to do with my conundrum :S

The four variants of helmets for Marauders in PFM
http://i.imgur.com/v9WKwVU.png

Rigid Model File
http://i.imgur.com/cXlVXRW.png


Tweak Conundrum Stepped 1-4

1.
http://i.imgur.com/shsr8Lr.png

2.
http://i.imgur.com/0lwNnkU.png

3.
http://i.imgur.com/D6npO8g.png

4.
http://i.imgur.com/eROMj4S.png

[MadKnight]

Found this area of the forum, I would still appreciate anything useful such as how are dds files actually referenced.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Variant-models

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-amp-Resources

And, what's going on with Tweak? I only installed recently but is the visual editor disabled now or something? (Please see screenshots above)

Thanks for any help or/and pointing me in the right direction.