ArchGaden

You can remove the cloth physics as langnao suggested, but that likely won't fix all of the clipping issues. If it doesn't fix the clipping, what you need to do is recopy bone weights. Add a reference body mesh (if one isn't there already). Select your clothing mesh. Select all the bones. Copy the bone weights (default settings usually work fine). What that does is essentially figure out how each vertex of the clothing mesh should be affected by body bones when moving. When those weights are off, the mesh doesn't move in a well synchronized manner, leading to clipping. If you had to import a reference body, delete it afterwards so it doesn't double up the body in-game. Cloth physics gets more complicated if you decide you actually want to keep it. The best way I know of to work with those is to find a vanilla mesh with similar cloth physics to what you want, and use that as a reference for copying bone weights... but you generally want to restrict that application to only those pieces of the outfit that need clothing physics and use a body reference for the rest of it. It's a crap shoot and takes me a lot of trial and error. The problem is that there is no cloth physics in Fallout 4. The cloth physics are faked using extra hidden bones on the characters. That severely limits what is possible to basically a specific dress and cape shape. Outfits that deviate from that will have issues trying to use 'cloth physics'.

Objectively, Fallout 4 has one of the most active modding scenes. Of course's not as active as it was during it's prime, which I judge to be a couple months after the Creation Kit finally released. The biggest effect has been Skyrim SE, as it sucked some dedicated modders back. There are still several new mods and dozens of updates every day. I've seen some mods vanish (Better Stores comes to mind) and some lose support (like Synth Fabrication). At the same time, plenty of new exciting mods have popped up. I don't think the modding for Fallout 4 will slow significantly from where it is until another Bethesda game comes out. There aren't many modder friendly options out there.

It's vaguely possible, but not something that would work well. You'd have to have software to hook between that incoming data and the game. You'd also need a lot more data than the pip-boy companion feature provides... such as velocity (not just position), animation data, looks menu customizations, and probably a few dozen other things. Essentially you'd need something that acts like F4SE in that it directly plugs into the executable (and need to be updated every time the executable updates) and has the ability to coordinate with others across the net. The 'mod' would, in essence, just be a dummy NPC with a unique base ID that the multiplayer extension software could control in-game to act as the avatar for another player. All the real work would be done in the external software. Realistically though, retrofitting multiplayer functionality in a game that it was not designed for just doesn't work well. There are great many adjustments required to get a reasonable multiplayer experience. Consider that you'd need a system that tolerates latency and gracefully transitions current data to match incoming data (to avoid warping/popping/ect). It would be a huge project to get something even halfway working, so I'd never expect to see it happen. That being said, I remember there being something like it in Morrowind, but I don't think it ever made it past a prototype stage.

There are probably only a few people in the history of Fallout 4 modding to ever attempt enemy replacement in general and joefor is possibly the only one to do it by that particular method you want to use. Your best bet is to talk to joefor. He's probably the only one who could possibly give you a step by step, although most likely he'll just be able to give you tips. If he's not around any more, then you'll just have to pick apart his mod to see how exactly it was doing. Start by making a few tweaks to try and get your own enemies spawning, and once you manage that, try recreating the mod from the ground up as your own. Before you do that, you might want to go through a few modding tutorials to practice making some basic mods yourself just so you can have a bit of experience with the Creation Kit. The tutorial might lead you through making a new piece of armor, a new NPC with some dialog, or whatever. Something simple like that will get you through the basics of using the Creation Kit so you don't have to conquer that and replacement scripts at the same time.

The Preston thing was just some terminal entries anyway if I remember right. You could just not read them or ignore them. If you really wanted, you could pop open the CK and change them. Personally I just omit what I don't like from my head-canon and enjoy the rest. Fusion City Rising was brilliant overall and made by some of the same people. It's a bit more lore-friendly, but still makes tons of pop-culture references and the city is overall too-clean to really mesh with the rest of the game. It's got a lot of great ideas that are really well executed and adds a ton of new stuff to do in the game. I'm just happy to have large mods like those at all really. They're huge efforts with a lot of people coming together to make it happen. If you're adding huge mods like that, you're just going to have to accept some lore-breaking as inevitably some will slip in.

That's weird, maybe author was in a bad mood or maybe you came off as insulting somehow. I'd guess the author was tired of taking flak over certain political references in the mod. Outcasts and Remnants is definitely not lore friendly. It's very high quality as mods go and even has some stellar voice acting for some of the characters, but I figured it was fairly clear that being lore friendly was never the intent. Considering that it pulls a lot from modern politics (sadly), makes a lot of pop-culture references, and literally adds a gang of stereo-type 80/90s style pimps.. it's about right up there with turning vertibirds into flying Thomas the Tank Engines. I loved the raider quests in particular and thought most of vault-tec chunk of the quest was dumb. The prison break was fun though. If the mod was lore-friendly, it would be a perfect addition to the game, but otherwise it's still a great mod overall.

NIF is the mesh format used by gamebryo engines and it's what Fallout 4 requires. A mesh is just your 3D shape data and some related things like bone weights, UV maps, and texture references. You probably know that bit if you're already doing stuff in 3DSMax. Bethesda uses a highly modified Gamebryo engine for each of their games, and every time, they change the NIF format, which makes it notoriously tricky to work with. OBJ is another mesh format that is much more popular and supported by pretty much every 3D Modeling application. OBJ makes it a great intermediate, since it's well supported and Outfit Studio can import it (and export as NIF). Bodyslide includes Outfit Studio, which is designed to help build outfits for Bethesda games. To get to Outfit Studio, you launch BodySlide and then click the Outfit Studio button. Silly, but that's how it is. You can ignore BodySlide otherwise unless you're building outfits for a special body type like CBBE, but you'll have to get it to use Outfit Studio at least. The alternative to Outfit Studio for Fallout 4 mesh work is NifSkope. Unfortunately, it can't import since version 1.2, but only version 2+ supports Fallout 4's NIF format. If you wanted to avoid Outfit Studio, you'd have to get a plugin for 3DSMax (apparently there is a good one) that allows you to export as Fallout 4's NIF format. There would be some adjustments you'd need to make in NifSkope before it would be usable in Fallout 4. NifSkope is powerful in that you can manually set bone weights, but it lacks an easy copy bone weights tool like Outfit Studio has. Since Outfit Studio can easily import OBJs though, I don't see a reason to use NifSkope unless you need to make some specific types of edits that it's good at.

I recently started modding outfits. I've found that a lot of the tutorials are terribly out of date and various tools have changed such that the process doesn't work unless you hunt down specific versions of those tools. Bethesda games are very picky about what nif mesh files they'll take. I've had to muddle through things until I've found what works as there don't seem to be any comprehensive tutorials out there, just lots of little tutorials covering pieces. Texture editing with Photoshop, Gimp, Paint.net, ect is easy. There are plenty of plugins to create normal maps for any of those and the normal maps work fine in Fallout 4. Specular maps are very different and there are no good guides on that. The color channels in specular maps have meaning for Fallout 4. A google search will lead you to old forum posts talking about what the color channels do, but as far I've seen, nobody has nailed it down and there aren't any tools to help with Fallout 4's weird use of specular maps. Older black/white specular maps still work okay in Fallout 4 for most cases, but you'll probably need to play around with it to get exactly what you want. You'll need to grab the Fallout 4 material editor from the nexus to reference your textures (ie, create a material file that is basically just a tiny file that points to the loose textures). For meshes, to start with, you'll want to install Body Slide (which includes Outfit Studio) even if you aren't using CBBE or a special body. It's on the nexus. Outfit Studio is necessary for working with outfits in general. There are many youtube tutorials on it's overall use. You'll also want a Bethesda achive extractor. There are a few on the nexus, I forget which I'm using right now and I'm not home or I'd check and be giving you links for things. It's easy enough to find the tools with simple searching though. You'll need an archive extractor because you'll need to use the base body and head as reference for outfits in Outfit Studio. It's also nice to be able to grab examples from the assets. NifSkope is also a useful tool for certain types of modifications to nif mesh files, although I've mainly just used it for toying modifying UV maps without going to Blender/3DSMax. Once upon a time, you needed NifSkope for the import/export process, but those features are disabled due to issues in the later versions and Outfit Studio handles importing/exporting just fine now. I've heard that 3DSMax has a nif export plugin that works for Fallout 4. I don't use 3DSMax, so I can't verify. I use the much more affordable Blender instead, despite it's terrible UI. The process I use should work just fine for 3DSMax though without a plugin. You should watch a bunch of tutorials anyway, as they cover portions of this more in-depth. A rough sketch of how to create a clothing item in Fallout 4 Unpack/find your reference asset (body or head mesh from Fallout 4 / CBBE / ect) Open that asset in Outfit Studio Export as .obj Import .obj reference in 3DSMax/Blender Build your clothing item (simply using the reference to fit your clothing) Export your clothing item as .obj Start a new project in Outfit Studio Setup your reference (either during #7 or after, doesn't really matter) Import your clothing item obj Set the mesh's material Check your mesh to make sure the 'skinned' flag is set (otherwise is invisible in-game) Tweak the item if needed with Outfit Studio's tricky tools. If it's a variable body type item (like CBBE) you may need to conform meshes. Select all the bones, select your outfit mesh, then copy bone weights (otherwise is invisible in-game or other crazy mess). If the item is a CBBE or other variable body size item, you'll want to build it with BodySlide, if not, just export the clothing item as a .nif into the final asset location Actually create an item in the Creation Kit that references your mesh (whole other can of worms, and there are lots of tutorials on this) IF your item is meant to have physics (like dress/cape/ect) you need to find a vanilla asset with those physics and use that for the reference (instead of the body/head) when you're copying bone weights in Outfit Studio. This is because Fallout 4 has no cloth physics. It has animated bones that mimic it. Unless you want to set those bone weights manually, it's best to just copy from something that works. Even if you're not creating a clothing item, Outfit Studio still works for translating between obj and nif mesh formats.

Is there an example anywhere of clothing in Fallout 4 reacting to the wind? I didn't even think that was possible.

I'm not sure how far along you are, but I played around a bit with blender and figured out what I think is the best current way to get meshes from Blender to Fallout 4. I found out that Outfit Studio imports objs easily. From there, you can export as a nif for use in Fallout 4. It's a much more direct and simple process than the old guides were telling me as most of those used NifSkope as a go between. NifSkope has lost the ability to import at all and Blender's nif export plugins are a crapshoot (best seems to require Blender 2.49). I also read a guide on how to get dress physics working from there. You have to grab nif from a vanilla dress in Outfit Studio and set that as your reference, then copy bone weights over to your version of the dress. That would make it possible to do the whole dress in blender. The slit should be easy to handle in Blender. I haven't attempted that portion yet. I'm still learning Blender! I really hate Blender's interface. 3DSMax was easy to learn, but I don't have access to that now. Blender is like Dwarf Fortress. If you wanted to add a slit to a dress in Outfit Studio, you could select vertices along a vertical line, then use the 'Separate Vertices' feature from one of the dropdown menus to split that piece into a separate mesh which you can then delete. You may want to remove more verts to get the shape right. If you move around verts, be careful to try and avoid warping UVs too badly. The tools in Outfit Studio are crude though, so it may not be possible to get the result you want there.

Have you checked to make sure you have the proper material applied in OutfitStudio? It allows you apply both a material and textures independently even though only the material reference should apply in game. EDIT: One more thing to check. When you created the armor in the CK, did you duplicate the combat armor entry? I believe that applies a material swap override as a default armor modification. If you duplicated the combat armor to make your own, it would have duplicated all extra data as well, including the default material swap.

I assume by removed you mean replaced with full transparency. However, the mesh itself needs a transparency mask setting. Open it up in Outfit Studio, find the relevant mesh, double click on that mesh, and check the transparency mask setting (forget exactly what it's called, but something similar no doubt). Usually you want the transparency mask set at 128. Anything more is masked out (invisible) and anything less is fully visible.

I'd love to see a good ball dress added to the game. I'm just learning how to mod in clothing myself. I recently released my first attempt (grass skirt and coconut bra mod) and I'm proud of the result. The skirt is essentially a retexture of the grognak outfit, removing the boots and gloves, and hammering the vertices with Outfit Studio's tools until they fit the CBBE female body. The bra is the result of importing a mesh from fallout's resources (a nuke head) and some heavy vertex hammering on a Monno Bikini top (the author has given standing permission to use their assets with credit). You can do quite a lot of rehashing existing outfits in Outfit Studio (part of Body Slide) and could potentially do your whole ball dress there, or at least a good 'first version' to learn some basics with. As a brief overview of outfit modding, here is what I've been through; Texture modification is the easiest part. I use Paint.net (free and powerful enough) but the bigger fish like GIMP and Photoshop are probably the preferred choices by artists. I'm not much of an artist myself. You can get plugins for Paint.net that handle making normal maps. There is online tool (easy to find in a search) that handles normal maps as well with a quick and easy web interface. Specular maps are arcane trickery that no modder seems to fully understand yet. Basic old school black and white specular maps work alright in some cases, and if you look around, you can find guides detailing some information on how Fallout 4 uses color information... enough to muddle through making a decent specular map in most cases. Cloth and metal are probably the easiest cases to handle, so you may not have to muddle much with specular. The nexus has tools for selectively unpacking Fallout 4 assets and modifying materials to point to your own textures. For the ball gown, I'd recommend starting from one of the existing dresses (pre-war, house, sequin, ect). You can slice up meshes in Outfit Studio to make a frankenstein dress from pieces you like. In your case, I'd recommend starting with the longest of the fallout 4 dresses you can find. Judging by the concept art, you want it long. Cloth physics are VERY finicky in Outfit Studio and it's easy to accidentally destroy them. Cut out as much of that dress as you want to use and try not to meddle much with the bottom portion where the physics part is. Leaving that as untouched as possible is your best bet. Expect to screw it up a few times before you get the dress working right. There are plenty of guides out there detailing how to do specific things with Outfit Studio and Body Slide. You'll have to pour over them a few times. I'd estimate it took me about 10 hours of work to get a mesh working how I wanted it to in-game for my first attempt and that was just the grass skirt. Once you've got a first attempt at a mesh, you'll then have to make an outfit for it as an ESP/ESL mod. I highly recommend looking at how a CBBE clothing mod with a similar piece is setup... what body slot it uses, how the fields are filled out, ect. You'll want to start by replicating that for your dress. For my grass skirt and coconut bra, I made the terrible choice of trying to start from the base grognak files, which essentially replace the body, when really what I wanted was more akin to a separately equippable bra/panty combo. I eventually looked at several bikini and underwear mods to see how it was setup, fixed a few issues, and got it all working nicely. Starting by the example of other CBBE items will save you some trouble I think. In the case of a ball dress, you'll probably want several choices for materials. There are several guides out there detailing how to create armor material swaps that can be changed from the armor workbench (ie, create a material mod category with options to select in-game). I found two big guides on that, and both of them missed one BIG step. You have to add a display name to your attachment point keyword. If your mod slot isn't showing at the workbench, check that! I spent probably 3 hours trying to figure out where I went wrong. I eventually stumbled upon a buried forum post that solved it. Someday, somebody might stumble upon this. I'm currently trying to figure out more advanced mesh editing. Outfit Studio is limited in what it can do and has some issues (like some vertices not being selectable) and is generally quite awkward for fine work. If you want to create something new you need some real 3D modeling software. Blender and 3DSMax are popular for working with Bethesda's games. 3DSMax seems to have much better support, but you have to pay for that. The transitions between Blender and Fallout 4 is tedious I'm finding... I still haven't' successfully managed to get a mesh from Blender to Outfit Studio, but I know others are doing it. There are lot of obsolete guides out there. Once I crack that, almost anything will be possible. As a note, Fallout 4 does not have real cloth physics. As I understand it, it has cloth bones in preset locations with preset weights, so you can really only create outfit physics that conform to that. If you try to make your ball gown drag that floor, I don't think that will be possible without some messy or static behavior in-game. Most likely, you'll have a lot of trouble making anything longer than the basic Fallout 4 dresses (roughly ankle length). Similarly, you probably can't deviate by too much shape-wise for those physics enabled vertices. Your concept art looks doable from my limited experience though. A little shaping within reason doesn't seem to cause issues. There could be an even more advanced way of adding new physics bones and weights that I don't know about yet. I do hope there is.

I'm not familiar with the mod or mesh, but it should be relatively easy to fix the gap yourself with Outfit Studio (part of bodyslide, which you might have installed). A simpler solution might be wearing a dark colored body suit beneath the armor to hide the gap that way. If the suit is setup such that it takes up the under armor body slot, you could load that bodysuit in outfit studio, export the bodysuit's mesh, then export that mesh into Viral Armor to combine the meshes letting the body suit fill the gap. That's a bit quicker and simpler than manually moving vertices.