BadPenney

(Rambling monologue that may have a point): At one point I worked in the employ of a ubiquitous international corporation. I can say with high confidence that you are using their product right now if you are reading this. They have their own culture and university. They identify personality types. I was classed as an analyst and was sent to mingle with reflectors and activists and such confused and misguided types. It was upsetting. In the end, however, I was forced to see the value in other ways of approaching problems (for instance, I must now admit that getting out the manual to double-check procedure when your submarine is sinking may not reflect the proper sense of urgency and ultimately be counter-productive). I was given a secondary classification as analyst/pragmatist and given clearance to run pell mell into the land of CAD/CAM. Any residue of conceit for my own intellect soon evaporated there. But one thing I did retain from the cultural indoctrination was the handy motto of the pragmatist, “Whatever works!” and I use that totally when modding. I still say gather as much information as possible from different sources before seriously getting into production with a mod or video if you are new to the process and read the manuals first when approaching new tasks. (That’s analyst talking). That will help you get an idea about what you are getting into, what skills that you already have that can be useful to you, what new skills you will need to acquire and it will also help to weed out the misinformation that will cause you to waste your time. Software that I have found useful for making Fallout 3 cartoons: Fallout 3, the GECK, Fraps, Fallout Mod Manager, FO3Edit, Sony Sound Forge, Windows Movie Maker, Word, Excel and Photoshop.

Just for background, here is my own favorite mech video (hate the term "Machinima" myself, sounds like some snobby Cannes Film Festival jazz): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czNtCgtuOI8 Don't believe everything you see. Dialogue was created with a combination of scripted interaction between NPCs, conversation between look-alike player characters and NPCs, video editing and audio overdubbing. The seamless appearance of the action is all illusion. There is much more involved than simple GECK editing or scripting in my video, and likely in other videos that you have viewed, as well.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I love mods and modders, but rather than improving the operation of the big beast, I think that it would more likely cease to function due to all of the sloppy, amateurish, conflicting improvements on the already unforgiving program.

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/imageshare/images/1103832-1244322338.jpg All good advice so far. Use GIMP or Photoshop to retexture a skin for a custom race, or in the case of the pic above, a custom creature. There are plenty of public domain pics of tattoos online that one can find with image search. I don't know if it was wise, but I used Mike Tyson's facial tats for my supermutant. Please don't tell him.

I see no reason to seek to air dirty laundry outside of PMs, for what it's worth.

I see zero replies to your post so far. Maybe (like me) everyone has gotten this far and sodded off. You are that important because...?

Start up the GECK. Select Fallout3.esm as your masterfile by checking its box in the start window, but do not select an active file. Allow the masterfile to load into GECK and stabilize. Save the file with a name of your choice. There are no alterations to the mastefile yet, but it gives you an .esp to work with and load as an active file next editing session. Get into the habit of saving your .esp mod file often while editing with the GECK. It is prone to crash at the most irritating and unexpected times, but most frequently during complex and vital operations. The simplest thing then would be to select an existing vanilla armor set that is similar in type to your custom mesh (i.e. power armor) and edit it, saving it as a unique item ID with a unique name, so that your mod does not overwrite existing game assets (or get replaced by someone else's overhaul mod). Then replace the path in that armor's edit window to direct it to your mesh. A unique textureset for your armor can be made in a similar way. There are references for that sort of thing that I won't duplicate, but just saving an initially empty plug-in file will get you started.

What he said. I think the total number of textures allowable per quad is 8 (that binary 2,4,8,16,32,64... thing) but one of them is locked, giving you 7 to alter. Pressing the letter i on your keyboard while a section of terrain is selected will show 4 quads within that section and list which textures are painted in each quad. The textures are stacked in a heirarchy according to percentage of area covered in the quad. If all available texture selections are full, then you can no longer paint without deleting an existing texture. It is much less drastic to delete a texture that covers only 2% of the surface area of the quad than it is to delete a texture that covers 74%, so when retexturing I delete that smallest coverage first to make blending with existing terrain simpler. Now that you have learned how to raise and lower terrain, your next discovery is likely to be areas in your mod that look fine in the GECK, but are covered by a blurry, mottled fog when you check your mod in game. That will be the LOD terrain that you are not supposed to see. It is alterable, but it is generally not worth the trouble and fraught with great potential for mod compatibility problems. My advice if you see LOD in your terrain mod is to raise the terrain back up to the point that LOD no longer appears in game. Adjust your plans for the contour of the land if necessary. It will save much toil and trouble.

It is certainly a pain to have clever bosses at times. Here is a good example why one should not overdub people's posts with imagined tones of voice and facial expressions. A concise but hurried remark can easily be mis-read as a retort.

Did you look here? New to GECK and modding? Look Here Please.

If you haven't seen it already, check Cipscis - Scripting For Beginners

I haven't actively modded for Fallout 3 for about a year and the information stored in my withered brain is always suspect anyway. As the Ministry of Misinformation moniker disclaims, all of my posts are suspect for accuracy. I knew the head popping part worked, thought that the rest might, was too lazy to actually look up the details and reckoned that a partially correct answer was better than letting the post slip to the back of the stack without a word. The truth is out there, and someone with enough interest will find it. But yes, the tone set in a post can make a helpful comment seem scathing. It is easy to misinterpret one's intent. But seriously, if you know of an entry in a wiki that explains in detail a process being discussed, please go ahead and link to it or quote from it. Sometimes the location of useful information is counter-intuitive, and quite often I found nothing at all of use in the wiki while trying to accomplish something while modding, so I can understand the tendency to dismiss it. And from a different perspective: Instead of just looking stuff up, guessing can gain you unique and interesting facets to your mod, while using the wiki only lets you rehash someone elses answers. Workable perhaps, but also formulaic. There's always two sides to a point of view. Which one is better can vary depending on circumstances. Not that I'm trying to excuse my errors, that's just sloth. If the OP found something of use then it's all good, as far as I'm concerned.

I used a messy way to dismember static corpses for a mod. Place a unique NPC in a location where you want their remains to be found. Make sure that they have no AI Packages, set their health to zero and run havoc on them so that they fall to the ground in a way that you find decorative, and give them an object script similar to this: scn HeadPoppinDeathDismemberScript short doOnce ref thisRef Begin OnLoad if doOnce == 0 set thisRef to getSelf killActor thisRef 1 set doOnce to 1 endif End This causes their head to pop off on load, so it is more believable if you make sure that the NPC loads out of view and earshot of the player if you want it to appear as if the player is coming onto a scene of existing carnage. The KillActor thisRef 1 bit is the part that makes the head go, I believe. You might be able to experiment for the other body parts. Something like KillActor thisRef 1 1 1 1 1 might blow off all the limbs, or 1 1 0 0 1 might leave some parts on. PS the codebox looks much better once again. Kudos on that Admin.

Have you cleaned your mod with FO3Edit? If you use it to seek and remove identical-to-master records it can dramatically reduce the size of your .esp.

Personally I have no interest in porting anything from Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas. I would like the new game to be a fresh experience, not just a rehash, and I would prefer making a fresh mod with fresh assets. After I play it to death first. As for modders making better games than people getting paid for it... I've heard it said before, but have yet to see it. Modders here don't make games, they customize them. It is primarily derivative work. Got to give props to the original artists' work that one's own work is based upon, imo.

I've recently become aware of Topic Title's GECK tools. I must admit ignorance of their existence previously and I am very interested to see any more information about them. Occlusion Planes apparenlty are invisible to the eye while playing in the game, but can be placed in landscapes in the GECK as a barrier preventing the rendering of objects blocked by them from the line of sight of the player. At least that is what I underatand at this point. It seems that a wall made from a train car may block the player from viewing objects rendered behind it, but it will not prevent those objects from actually rendering. That means an improvement in performance and FPS for my mod if I block what you can't see from rendering anyway. hikky71 made me aware of these tools. I hope he won't mind if I quote him for starters: He was kind enough to create an .esp plugin to augment my Return to Shady Sands mod. I haven't had time to check it out yet, but I'm excited by this development. There are many quirky consequences to having a small area with many rendered objects that may well be improved with the addition of these tools. I hope to integrate them into a new version of the mod at some point. In the meantime, I wanted to present these topics in case other people are interested or have more information to share about these or other useful but lesser known tools and methods.

There is also at least one backpack mod. Maybe the inventory management system of Fallout 3 was designed to be more consistent with earlier Fallout games which are part of its lore and less like Oblivion, which is not.

I have found that installing mods with FOMM avoids many of the problems mentioned above, especially if the mod author was kind enough to turn his mod into a FOMOD. Then all of the meshes, textures and such are installed in the right folders and when you want to uninstall the mod they are all selectively removed again without touching files belonging to other mods, even if they are in the same sub-directory. Non-FOMOD mods can be made into FOMODs after download with a little effort, if the author has not provided it in that form.

Come up with an idea for a mod or look through the mod suggestions forum until you see an idea that inspires your creative juices. I also recommend that you get familiar with FO3Edit to keep your mod clean operationally. I think the easiest type of mod is one that requires no new items. If you just use stuff from the original game or DLCs then you don't need to learn a bunch of programs on the side. A house mod is often a good starting place. Lots of static objects to summon from the objects list and place around. It also can be useful to your character almost immediately as you build it. I don't recommend placing houses in the Wasteland though. It is a hostile place and can be frustrating to a new FO3 modder. Just a linking door perhaps. My first mod for FO3 (that I never uploaded) involved turning a blank shell house in Springvale into a player used home with a bed and simple storage. I used it for my own character and practiced with the GECK by decorating it; adding a basement and then NPCs that eventually got AI packages and navmeshes and dialogue. I started simple and then embroidered as I went along. The process was good practice for later making a whole town.

If you want to make the guard do more than change directions as he walks, then you may want to link idle markers. Make sure to set each marker for at least one hour or the NPC will probably walk past quickly and ignore the marker's associated idle animations. The easiest way that I found to set up NPCs with patrols was to find NPCs in the vanilla game that did things similar to the behavior that I wanted my NPCs to follow, and then find them in the GECK and study their AI Packages and markers. I could usually find something close that I could modify for my own diabolical intentions.

et cetera, et cetera. Too harsh. Keep your hat in your hands when asking for favors. I always try to remember that no one owes me an answer when asking a question here, so I don't take it personally if I don't get an answer that suits me. Stating conditions and demands upon which you will accept advice as an opening line will net you defiance or disregard in most cases, not benevolent interest. People are touchy like that. Also, remember people may not see your posts, or may not know the answers to them, and so pass them by. If you are copying and modifying an existing NPC check that you have removed any existing AI Packages from him. Otherwise, no matter where you place him in this world or the next, he will skitter back to wherever the original AI tells him to go. Also, make sure that your NPC is not set to be Very Aggressive or he will attack anything nearby, including you. Aggressive and brave is good enough to keep him running from his own shadow without turning him into a hooligan. Also be certain that he has no old faction loyalties that make him go postal when you arrive. Anyway, those are problems that I ran into with NPCs while trying to make them behave.

I think that it is common for Wasteland NPCs to not offer aid when you are under attack. Unless they are faction enemies and set to be aggressive and foolhardy then they will likely ignore the commotion unless they get hit, and if you hit them then they might come for you instead of the raiders.

Say you have a diner in the middle of nowhere with a tall sign that says "Eat at Cannibal Joe's" and you want to make it show up from a long way off. You make low resolution .tga files of the high resolution .dds files that are associated with the high resolution meshes of the diner and the sign. Then when you generate object LOD for the diner and the sign in your worldspace their LOD wireframes will have skins.

Disposition range: 0 = Incoming!!! 25 = "Oh it's you. What do you want now?" 50 = "Good afternoon." 75 = "Hi! How are you?" 100 = "Thank God you are back!"

Yeah, probably. Try using a console command to max your character's speech and barter skills and see what happens to your selling prices.