Thaiauxn

In response to post #24495219. #24501694, #24502214, #24503509 are all replies on the same post. We have a donate system on Nexus, but I can add to the poll that was taken some months back that the donations we receive are around 8 in 165,000 unique downloads. Of those 8 I've got 15 messages asking if we had a donate button. :p The interface is very coy about it. That said, the money for our work is seen as a gift rather than a reward. It goes towards funding some of the expenses I've incurred in getting F: PB made. Even if monetization were available today, F: PB would still be released for free. that's the spirit of our project.

In response to post #23594979. #23595194, #23595354, #24454789 are all replies on the same post. @KGMeisenbacher O RLY?

In response to post #24495219. #24501694 is also a reply to the same post. That's what I've been sayin. :p https://gumroad.com/l/TqTzB We could get away with the donate system being more prevalent. A Pay what you will system would help drive home the message that there are people making mods, not just robots.

Has anybody seen my sarcasm? I seem to have misplaced it. Look: you can spend about 13,000$ buying all this software from Video Copilot, on top of almost 2k$ for After Effects. http://www.videocopilot.net/ Here are literally 500 free tutorials on how to explicitly not buy any of that software and do the exact same thing. http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/ http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/shockwaves/ Like seriously, I'm not making this up. Andrew teaches you, in HD, how not to buy his software. Okay, more relevant to games. http://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/buy Look at the price tag on this software; 3500$! Holy s***! 123$/mo! You could be on your way to owning a used car for this! https://www.google.com/search?q=3dsmx+tutorias&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=3ds+max+tutorials&safe=off&tbm=vid Look at all those tutorials! For free! Some by our very own Nexus modders! http://www.maxplugins.de/ http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/plugins Look at all these plugins for 3dsmax. THOSE ARE MODS. Software modifications. 3rd Party. Made with public tools. RELEASED 95% OF THE TIME FOR FREE. If you don't like that price tag, Gmax, Google Sketchup, and Blender are free. Kirtia is a photoshop clone, for free. Now go look up tutorials for those free software... oh, look, there aren't even 1/10th of them as there are free tutorials for the 3500$ software. How can that be? If that argument is correct, then it should be backward. If you show me an indie game or movie you're working on for-profit, and you need my advice? Email me. I'll respond ASAP. I don't give in to this idea that money ruins everything. If you're a student or hobbyist, and you want a career in games and movies, I want to help you. I want you to earn a living. I want you to be successful. Because I know that successful people tend to breed successful communities. That success need not be wealth, but it means survival, and it means innovation, and both of those take the same currency: hard work and sacrifice.

That's why there are no free online tutorials for 3DsMax, Photoshop, After Effects, Premier Pro, Maya, Mudbox, Zbrush, UDK, CryEngine, Unity, or World Machine... or Ndo & Ddo... or Papyrus, or C+, C++, Python, or Visual Basic... or pipe fittings, Honda Engine Manifolds, or oil changes, or car air filters, or paint & body work... or electrical wiring, or camera operation, or lighting setups, photography aperture & shutter speed vs iso/asa dichotomies... If there's money involved, people will just keep it to themselves.

You just described the game and film market in a nutshell. :tongue: I'm still saying, >95% of mods would remain free because people like doing things for free (cite plugins for any software,) 3% would do pay what you will or donations, and -maybe- the top 1-2% would ever be for profit only, and those should need a public endorsement from the Developer/Publisher & Nexus. I can't see a doomsday scenario in this. I can only see it getting better. Like Dark0ne said, half a million going into the servers alone... having some kickbacks from UG-DLC with 50-100k downloads, 5$/DL... even if there are only ever a handful of mods like that, even just 10 or 12 for any games, if Nexus takes 10%, Devs take 15-75% (UDK is at 15% of profits for indies making >25,000$/quarter,) then you're looking at the Nexus earning an extra hundred thousand dollars over the lifetime of a successful group of mods. Only major, serious mods could and should ever apply for that. The idea that tiny tweaks would be paywalled is ridiculous. Who would pay for that? Donations and pay what you will would do great there. But a Weapon Pack with 5 totally original lore friendly guns with a professional quality mesh and textures and new sounds? Yeah, that's worth a 1$. I just spent a month with 3 of my best online buddies, building a professional quality polished quest and level with all new 3D assets. I'm releasing it for free. Come on. Not everyone wants to do strictly for-profit work. Most mods would remain free. Even big ones. We're only talking about a tiny minority of people capable or willing to do a for profit system, or a pay what you will system, to enhance a career that is probably already developing games while eating a cup o ramen in a one room apartment. Dozens if not maybe a couple hundred people. There are hundreds of thousands of hobbyists and users. We will always be outvoted. It's staking the work of a few dozens of people against the demands of a massive majority of tens of thousands who want stuff for free. Who doesn't want free beer?

Downloaded these, and there is something really wrong with all three files. The 3ds I can't even open in Max, nor merge its contents. The TEST 4 Nif, when opened, crashes upon opening the UVW window. Blender won't open the nifs, with or without editing them. I'll try again later. EDIT: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5atoqqsx2mb4ak7/Carbine%20BLee%20Edit.nif?dl=0 Try this. I remade the mesh as a static really quick. Rearranged the nodes, and slaved to a dummy with new collision, and re-skinned. It appears in GECK just fine. If you rig this file as a gun it should work now. Just repeat your previous steps.

I just finished a good long war with Nifscope and GECK. I'm pretty sure you're exporting using Blender 2.49, which is exactly what needs be done. Make sure you have the old version of nifscripts on. The way you fix invisible meshes is this: Open your mesh in nifscope. Open a Vanilla mesh in nifscope. Copy all the surrounding bits you are missing from the Vanilla Mesh onto your mesh. (copy branch -> paste branch.) The parts you need are: BSShader... NiMaterialProperty BSShaderFlag Make sure that if your top line reads "BSFadeNode" (Right click -> Block -> Convert -> BSFadeNode) Re-import to Blender really fast, then export it one more time. now you're goo to import into GECK. Will fix collision meshes too.

Good news! RickerHK fixed it. Had a mixed up BSX flag. A quick import and export from blender solved our issues.

Heya kitty! Good to hear from you again! Been a while. The right path is actually textures\Brazil Misc\Silo\Silo Texture 1 [Diffuse] I copied the Shaders from that Walkway. Is that messing up the collision?

So, once upon a time, in Blender, I was able to make dozens of meshes with collision, no problem. Fast forward 2 years, after acquiring 3dsMax 2013, and I return to Fallout modding, just to run into a problem. It seems like Niftools has abandoned Fallout modding, and the latest Niftools for 2013 has some strange problem with collision meshes. You can open this mesh up in GECK just fine. Textures are fine, bounding boxes, anchors, UVs are just fine... And hey, look, the collision meshes are there too! Just as I planned, muahaha! But what's this? The player and Havoc objects fall straight through my carefully constructed Collision meshes!? NOOOOO! but they seem so perfect! I've gone through probably 50 variations, and its seems niftools can't fix it. I've tried running legacy blender and niftools, and that causes the same problem. Now I'm at the end of my rope. Spent a good 18 hours trying to figure this one out. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xf0tlzcdfj5vl48/Platform_01NifScope_take15.nif?dl=0 Here is the Nif file. Your mission is to identify where the breakage is, and help me fix these collisions. Then, we can rule the world with our obsessively detailed nuclear missile silo! >:D

I strongly agree with this. Best way to go in my opinion. Honestly, whatever says, "Hey Zenimax Vice Presidents. We're the Nexus. We're cooperating with whatever you guys want to do. Whatever about Steam, come use the Nexus. We made Bethesda modding what it is and really gave it a place to thrive, making you a boatload of cash and creating a totally new online economy around it. Keep respecting us, we'll respect your decisions, and together we'll be great." Doing the opposite of that, which is what this blog is about, is playing Russian Roulette against Bethesda's executive officers. If they want curated workshops in the future, they'll steamroll right over the Nexus to get there. Valve offers way more infrastructure and support than we do. If the Nexus shows its willingness to adapt to what Bethesda is planning, it increases our odds of survival, and it might just make a whole new economy based around indie DLC. That's great for the future of the Nexus, and even better for gamers and modders. Or we can dig our heels in and wait to see what they decide come E3. We'll either see them embrace Steam further, alienating us, or we'll see them maintain the status quo.

I actually really like you and your work. Always will. I think your opinion is wrong, but that doesn't diminish how much I enjoy what you've done for me or this community. :tongue: I'm pretty sure sponsored videos on youtube don't make quite as much as it sounds like in this thread, and I don't see it as being viable for modders. The Nexus takes its own revenue stream from its ads. If that went to mods, it wouldn't help keep Nexus staff employed, and that's important. I still think having an available Pay What You Will option is the best current solution to this debate that covers everything we seem to want out of both parties on Nexus. The donation system is nice, but as was said earlier in the thread, a poll showed that even mods with >1M views and >100k downloads only pull in MAYBE a hundred bucks, which works out to earning .01 cent for every hour on a massive new world. XD My experience was roughly the same. Providing sources, examples, and citing evidence for an argument is important to me. You can look up what google analytics "estimates" a user earns from their youtube views online. Because poor Gopher is the example people raise, his site is the one I looked up. I don't want to throw the guy on the grill, or defend him, he's just the example people are bringing up. Sorry Gopher.: http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/gophersvids Now, Social Blade (and Google Anayltics) are WILDLY INACURATE for many different reasons. They don't take into account Adblock, different devices that may not register hits, what videos they tagged for sponsors, and they have no awareness of what a person is actually receiving in the mail. That said, it's possible he could be earning a couple hundred bucks a month -- but there is no way to confirm that. Remember, it's wildly inaccurate. Unless you ask him and accept his reply you'll never really know for sure. He doesn't deserve to get harassed just because his name came up, so I don't suggest doing that. I don't feel any indemnity against the youtubers, or the Nexus admins, or the corporations, who are making money off of mods as a pure hobby. I do feel pretty annoyed that mods can't share in that though. That sucks. I think everybody should have the opportunity to make what they deserve for the work they put in, or at least gratuity. The more opportunities we create, the better the field will be. Having a pay what you will system for mods would be far superior, and it really would help promote the growth of a nitch community of modders who would do this as more than just a hobby on the Nexus. It would prevent Steam Workshops from being the monopoly it is right now. It'd also avoid that SIMS thing sesom was talking about. To me, the idea that games and software are any different than custom jewellery or motorcycles is just absurd. You can modify and resell the HOURS of hard work and product you put in to a watch or bike no matter who the original owner of the IP is. Honda won't come kick your ass for selling custom mufflers out of your shop on 4th ave (at least not frequently.) I don't understand why Bethesda has any place coming down on you for selling a new gun mesh for New Vegas. You wouldn't expect someone to mass-produce & release a mod for your bike for free (and deliver it to you for free with a 1 step installation process, and provide the power tools for free,) nor should you think someone other than your buddy would mod your game for free. You can mod your game yourself for free, totally. No one is stopping you. But if you DOWNLOAD a mod, you're not modding your game, you're installing f***ing DLC. The idea that modders are supposed to work for free, they're not AAA people, they're just hobbyists... that sounds like the old-as-civilization prejudice against entertainers. You'd never walk up to a Car Radio Shop and throw 25 cents in their guitar case while they change & tweak your car sterio. But an Entertainer? They do it for the passion. The work is its own reward. Or that. That works too. He replied while I was typing my 8th TLDR screed. :p

Why would they need to when they can use Blender, Gimp, Paint.NET, Nifscope, Audacity etc etc.... Exactly. I like that most of the arguments against this are defeatist, facetious, or they just want things to remain free because they're free. It's like asking people if they'd like to pay for something they like or not. Come on. For almost every professional software you can come back with a cheap or free hobbyist version. I don't see why mods should be any different. There will always be AAA multimillion dollar software, AAA DLC, and home grown software & DLC. The idea that the millionares are responsible and capable where indies are just lazy & incompetant is pure bullshit. Find a new argument.

Oof. I think like Mil said, Tech Support can't give legal advice. The right person to ask would be Nexus staff, and their answer is going to be no. I had to make that decision going from F3 to NV. Lost a lot of s#*!. But the act of working around that limitation made the content better. With an animation, that's just narrative. You can always write around it. Good storytelling adapts quickly to changing circumstances.

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-making-of-the-biggest-skyrim-mod-ever/#page-3 Nehrim: I can confirm what they're saying is 100% correct. When you can't pay anyone, you hemorrhage both talent and productivity. You can make some amazing mods - more like new games - but if you can't fund it, it puts you in the position to lose key team members at random every few weeks. And when it's finished, going back to support it is much much more difficult. Imagine playing a game, and your critical equipment keeps disappearing out of your inventory mid combat. You can do AMAZING things with volunteers. But don't bet on it. If you get one mate, maybe two, that is willing to spend 1800+ hours with you... thank them daily, because you'll never see the likes of them again. It's a true love. I don't have any illusions that money can buy that kind of trust or devotion. But it doesn't hurt.

Hi. Epic mod maker here. We're essentially 5 years in if we're being honest. This is my third massive DLC / Expansion pack mod like this, but the first that I've run the project as the lead. All have ended up being older games by the time we launched. I think it's worth it. Even if only a few play it, it'll be the right ones. That's why 95% of mods should, and will, remain free. I'd lay bets that after a few complaints that the mod would be taken down by the admins. Say **** on the Nexus chat and watch how fast you get banned. The same is true of mods, even the ones that generate lots of traffic. Like EWI...

The nice part about having a mod released for free is that when folks complain - which really honestly has been remarkably low - I can post this meme: The downside to being free is the malnutrition. But, what can you do? :p

Do you have any proof of that, if that's the case? Any past examples or evidence from similar scenarios? New Vegas's DLC are really the new standard for me. They brought back the concept of Expansion Packs as DLC, which Mechwarrior 2, 3, and 4 had, as well as Total Annihilation and StarCraft. Those were great. All of those games also had their own large scale mods too. See: TA: Escalation, MechWarrior: Living Legends, BattleZone II: Forgotten Enemies, Black Mesa... two of these have my hand in them, in full disclosure. The Horse Armour & Caravan/Tribal/Classic packs-- those were just gimmicks. Weapons of the New Millennium, Project Nevada -- those are professional quality and totally worthy of the same exchange rate as the bulls*** DLC. I'd lay bets that you'd get more of those from the community and less of the other if monitization were a thing. The reason Valve's mods are all hats and crap is because those games are geared for that. It's like blaming Pokemon, or Magic cards for only releasing cardboard for profit. That's their purpose. Our purpose making RPGs and Action titles is radically different. So too are the mods. Massive collaborations, specifically like Falskarr as you mentioned, are a really good example of the opposite of what you cited happening in the event of monetization. AJV put everything on the line for his mods, Deimos and Falskarr. He decided not to go to college, to stay at home, worked out a deal with his father to focus on his skills an extra year, and treated Falskarr like a day job. I mean, if his family was as poor as my family is, with dad passed away and mom elderly, even with my job as a freelance camera operator and visual effects producer, I barely get by, and I have about 30 people that I can rely on when things get rough. Had he been in the same way, he could have ended up homeless, or worse. But he pulled it through, did what he said he could do, worked hard, and then put his life on the line again sending out applications to the AAA studios - which worked. If his experience in the studios was anything like my Hollywood jobs, which nearly killed me a few times and left me in a very hard position, then he's a real badass to want to keep going. Honestly, just sending him a donation is a pithy way of showing admiration for that Herculean feat. I don't know if he's still on at Bungie, but that was a real amazing act of bravery and dedication that pulled off its objective successfully. I'd like to see a documentary filmed on it. Our mod, Project Brazil, we lost a team mate to Lyme Disease. He has two kids, a family, a good job. We lost another older member who lost his home, his relationship with his wife, and as far as we know of the story, the guy was living out of a storage shed in California with the deadline on rent closing in. Haven't heard from him in 6 months. The main reason we lost other team mates was because of college, they didn't have time. Our current team are all employed, myself included, and finding time when we can for the mod. Two of us are employed as artists at game studios, one with a newborn baby. The new guy is on break for College, and I will probably lose him after Easter. I want him to keep his grades up, which is more important than the mod. So if you're telling me that having the hope of making money - I'm not talking about buy a yacht and move to Dubai money - but enough to make a living wage for a year doing what amounts to an impossible, uncomfortable, almost banal job, is going to eliminate this as a form of expression... no, look, I'm telling you that the fact these massive collaborations exist at all is a god damn miracle. I've worked on 3 of these god damn miracles now, all have been released and blown the socks off those who played them. If monetization will be the thing that ruins User Generated DLC, then I'd like to see what food, a warm bed, and shelter would do. Survival, hell, a nice way of living, will definitely destroy modding forever.

Always except Valve. :p

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145595 BEND OF BROTHERS is a fun little script for 3DsMax that takes a flat geometry and bends it into a circle, a sphere, or a U shape - lots of options that would otherwise take a long time to create. It is PAY WHAT YOU WILL. You go to the website, type in what you want to pay, and download. If you type 0, it's free, fully featured, and there you go. It just passed 2000 sales. Got the email this morning thanking me for my 5$. It conflicts with two other plugins, and will not work on Max 2014 or Max <2010. Dumb folks didn't read the read me. You know what the author did? Fixed the conflicts. I'm saying that if you let professionals make mods, as the title of this thread suggests is the big division (modding as a hobby versus modding as a career,) that the same scruples that Lextripper uses would apply here. If the only reason we want modding to be an exclusive hobby is because it excuses mediocre performance and behaviour, well that's just a terrible thing to say. It sounds prejudiced against professionals and ingratiating while still patronizing of hobbyists. It effectively aborts what could be a beneficial marketplace of ideas and opportunity before it has a chance to iron out the bugs. It sounds dismissive and spiteful towards the modders that poured their souls and risked all to make a great mod already. Worst, it makes villains of people that have sacrificed so much to bring us mods for free for two decades, saying we're greedy and lazy and all we want is to hunch over our territory and profit from our poor users. That isn't true, and we all know it. Modders would do anything to make this community happy and better. We know that some modders will do extreamly well, that they produce Top 100 results only out of 20,000~40,000 others who 'many not do as well. If there was a reward for that, even if it's pay what you will, then this "hobby" could do as equally well as "career hobbies" like cosplay, miniatures, cars, bikes, 3DsMax Plugins, After Effects Plugins, Photoshop brushes... 95% would still be totally free of charge. The next .8% pay what you will, and .2% pay only. That's not the end of the world. It's the equivalent of the Top 6 mods on each nexus being pay, and the next 24 being pay what you will. If the reasons for not doing something that could be beneficial is: People will complain. People will be stupid. People will be lazy. People will steal. People will not cooperate. People will be obstinate. People will be greedy. People did it poorly already. It'll only benefit a few at the top. Bad things might happen. The gods will be angry. We can't change the law. It'll be hard. I'm not good enough. It'll cause strife. It'll cause arguments. It hasn't been tested. It hasn't been done. Then you'd better believe that we'd all still be sitting in a cave grunting at each other with disdain around a dying campfire, watching as the darkness swallows our dwindling species.

I have a little more faith in the community than that. Pretty girl follower marked as essential and an out of place player house... hey, that's exactly what some folks want, and I can't knock it. If the current numbers are true, well over 100,000 of them. Saying those mods aren't worth it is almost saying that we only download mods the same way we have loot kleptomania in games. We loot the Nexus because it's free, not because it's good or we need it. That's kinda spiteful to say. Telling, though. My mods, personally, don't add simple pretty girl followers marked as essential, nor just another player house. There are more like me, many more better than me, doing cool work. No DRM required. No spying, no annoying storefront. That's just hyperbolic. Even if there was a push to make mods payable, Project Brazil would still be released for free. I'd probably release smaller products for other games that would not be.

http://www.pcgamer.com/homeworld-remastered-review/ Tell me this isn't a mod. A Professional mod, for profit, on a 15 year old game. Now tell me it won't sell to fans of that game, and be good for the community.

I'm still pretty positive that if there was a monitization system for mods, there would be like, 5 must have paid mods, a little over a dozen for-profit mods, hundreds of pay what you will mods, and literally thousands of mods would continue to be free. (for New Vegas & fallout 3) Skyrim may have 3x that. Future games probably would hover around that number also. I too am a broke ass visual effects guy. I probably wouldn't pay for 99.98% of the monetized mods. But that one or two that I really like? Then yeah, I'd probably pay 1$-5$ for those. 10$ (max) if it's a really high quality quest mod - and I mean, it has to be absurdly well done. I'm certain that under the layer of vitriol that is true of almost everyone.

Triangles are Satan. Collapse your stack, Right click editable mesh and make it an editable poly. If it is still in triangles, use the modifier Quadrify. That should get you back to quads. :) Now you can unwrap. For this model, you should use pelt map.