Topazanite

So I made birds. I mashed them to the imp skeleton, and now they're flying around, happy as can be. You can see them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xM8CJisSK8 I have to fix the mesh a little bit more tomorrow -- to fix the tail and make it less clunky and more hawk-like -- and I will be improving the UV map while I'm at it. My texture, as you can see, is completely miserable. That bird is supposed to be a hawk, although it looks more like a pigeon right now. This is due to my bad texture as much as the mesh. Since I have to modify the mesh and re-do everything texture-related anyway, I was hoping to recruit a better texturer than I to assist me -- full credit would be given for your work, of course. :thumbsup: I might modify the resultant texture to make more birds, like robins and birds of paradise.

Found the problem. My .nif files were pointing to textures in the :C/Oblivion/Data directory. People who had Oblivion installed in other drives had nif files that were unable to find textures where it was pathed. It was a first armor post so I didn't know; figured I'd put the solution here in case someone else had the same issue. :thumbsup:

So I posted an armor mod today, and it works swimmingly for myself and for others who download. Unfortunately, some people are CTDing when they try to equip it. I don't know what the problem might be, beyond it being high poly. I see this happening with other armor mods sometimes, is there a common way to fix this? Armor in question: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34611

Well, I have tried and failed to do this myself, and I've been trying all day. :confused: There is more than one mod that allows the player to play the lute, and separately there are mods that introduce "minstrel" npcs, but these npcs don't really do anything bard-like. I am unaware of any mods that make an NPC to play the lute outside of animation mods. I'd like to see a mod where you ask an npc to play a song, so he whips out his lute and plays it for you. Mainly, so I can request use and add it to my mod. Woe for my lame mod skills. The lute object already exists, and the animation already exists. Creators of the existing lute mods that use these don't know where either the nif of the kf came from, so apparently they're free to use. Kudo and credit to anyone who can make it work. :whistling:

It's currently at the default script run time. I did see some strange behavior with her idling after the script ran -- think it'll fix it if I attach this to a new quest script with OdileRef as the target? I'll give it a try anyway, how often should this be running? EDIT: Tried a new approach and made the lute an animobject, attaching an idle anim to it, hoping to make an AI package out of it. Having trouble making that work as well. :wallbash: This is so frustrating! SOMEONE has to know how to do it.

I'd like to be able to select a dialogue option that will make my companion play the lute. Currently, my script isn't working. This script is modified from the existing mod Reaper's Animated Lute and attached to my main companion actor's script. if playlutetoggle == 1 if ( OdileRef.getitemcount a1OdileLuteRef 1 ) OdileRef.EquipItem a1OdileLuteRef 1 set a1OdileLuteGlobal to 1 playsound a1OdileLuteSound OdileRef.pickidle return elseif ( OdileRef.getitemcount a1OdileLuteRef 0 ) Message "Odile doesn't have her lute." set playlutetoggle to 0 endif endif if playlutetoggle == 0 OdileRef.UnEquipItem a1OdileLuteRef 1 set a1OdileLuteGlobal to 0 OdileRef.pickidle endif a1OdileLuteref is the lute item, OdileRef is the NPC, and there's an animation idle set for when a1OdileLuteGlobal is set to 1. As it stands, when I select the dialog option that toggles the playlutetoggle variable, nothing happens and I am no longer able to speak to my NPC. . . . Panic ensues! o_O

I approve of this mod! However, I see an engine limitation that might get in the way: Oblivion doesn't really like having more than 20 actors in screen at once. I can see a workaround if the player is going to be on the defending team. Make a bunch of static objects that look like soldiers, in various poses, and place them in a camp below. Add a few real actor soldiers on patrols to give movement to the camp. From castle wall tops, the illusion wouldn't be obvious; but if the player was attacking and had to mingle with the soldiers, the statics might be immersion-breaking.

Sooo . . . you don't want to use a body replacer? Using HGEC or Robert's replacers will fix that right up. Just like the link you posted, actually . . . am I missing something?

Does it generate lip files for extracted words? I can't tell from the description.

For lore friendly books, here you go -- http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22344 Or, using these resources: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26414 http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33486 You could just copy and paste real books from Project Gutenberg into the game. (Wasn't that done with Morrowind? I remember seeing a mod that did that, actually.) http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Or, for real grimoire texts that a mage might read, try here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/ I think these should get whoever wants to take this on started; using the resources above, making books in the CS should be cake. =D I'd be interested in making the grimoires myself -- some of them, particularly the hermetic stuff, have some pretty cool looking diagrams that would add a lot to a magic type quest mod -- but I'm busy working on something else. )= I hope this was helpful, though!

So, I've made a companion that I originally voice-acted myself, but then my voice-acting sounded horrible in-game and despite a great deal of effort I couldn't make functional lip files for it. As a result she's completely functional, but without personality. I need to make quests for this companion using only the Vanilla Redguard voice-acting for her, and only Vanilla files in general for other characters involved. POSSIBLE BASE: I've compiled a few likely lines here for a plot about a major heartbreak: "I'd stay away from him if I were you; there's something very wrong with that man." "I'm angry. I want to stay angry. That anger keeps me going." "My heart is broken . . . " "Sorry . . ." So, if I can find some male vanilla lines that'll correspond to the player's confrontation with an ex-lover, that would work for one. Any other ideas? Any ideas for any quests for her at all, using vanilla voice files. Specific files are helpful, but not necessary; I'm willing to go fish. =D

Are you familiar with nifscope? If the invisible part of the clothing is supposed to be skin, then you can copy in an upper-body branch from another nif and that'll take care of it. What clothing mod? If you're not up to it I might be able to do that for you. Well, if it's simple enough; half the time my nifscoped stuff doesn't work.

Would it work if you were to edit the Vanilla NPCs and check all their respawn boxes in the CS?

Construction Set tends to crash alot when editing an NPCs face -- I have to check the view face box thingy first thing when I open the NPC editor. A lot of other people have to do the same thing; have you tried that?

Might I recommend Ryk's Simple Dress? A simple search on the Nexus will find it. It looks very much like that -- even has a blue dress that color, with a white apron. The textures are very simple, but easy to work with if you feel up to some GIMP.

I'm trying to mash my favorite in-game outfits into one piece each for ease of use, but the CS crashes if I try to view it. My Scene Root NiNode says it has the proper number of children, what other variables should I check? One branch under the initial NiNode IS a child, right? Due to what I'm trying to do, there is a very large number of children. Could that be the problem? I've used Nifscope before, and I've already successfully imported mashed-up armor into the game. Why isn't it working here? Last time I used way more Blender than I'm using now, that should have complicated things but it went fine. I'm very confused.

Oh, sorry to misunderstand there! I got my hopes up is all. Thank you for the help clarifying, though. Of course I'd make whatever I could to help out, but my current .wav files don't work for Oblivion. Although, I haven't looked at some of that software; I'll check it out.

Have you looked at the Aquamer race? http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16366 They have great textures, although I don't know if you wanted to look at getting permissions.

If you look in the Companions:Other category on the Nexus, there are a number of companions NPCs specifically designed to follow you around while adventuring and fight for you. For a no-frills, no-fuss companion, I recommend Companion Neeshka. Megatarius's suggestion works just as well, but I never liked the loss of immersion from being able to recruit every NPC in game.

Oh, score! Thank you so much for considering it. =D I'd like my companion to at least look like she's saying her lines, even if her lips are just going 'blah blah blah.' The longest dialogue I've made my companion modding is 12 seconds long. I've looked at companions Saerileth's and Neeshka's files a lot too, and I think Saerileth's dialogue files hit 15 seconds once. Maybe really lengthy quest modders who write out dramatic plot-lines would need longer, but Oblivion just won't allow NPCs to say more than two or three lines of dialogue at a time. 15 seconds should be plenty enough time for a solid resource. So, I would propose making lip files in second or half-second increments up to 15 seconds long. Either just 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, etc. or .5 seconds,1 second, 1.5 seconds, 2 seconds, etc. The latter of the two would be much better for accuracy of course, but that's 30 files (!) and I don't want to strain your good graces.

I definitely went through all of that already. Exactly 122 times, in fact. Problem is, I can't make .wav files to fit those specifications. Audacity won't save to those parameters, not in the version for Windows 7 in any case. I made a ton of lip files, but they looked all kinds of jacked in-game. Hence, the request for filler lip files. I'm already grabbing lip files in the lengths I need from the game folders, but the idea was so that this wouldn't have to happen again in the future.

First off, my computer just won't let me make lip files. I uninstalled my CS and installed the old one, made over a hundred individual lip files, and when I reinstalled CS 1.2 the files were all kinds of jacked. It's probably because I can't find a converter for 64bit .wav files, but at this point it's a non-issue because I'm just really frustrated. But from the ashes, brilliant idea for a mod -- everyone uses silent voice, but why hasn't anyone made generic lip files? Sure, the movement wouldn't match, but if you have a 5 second sound file and a 5 second lip file to go with, it'd still look ten times better than no lip files at all. The closest thing I found is thePOSTALdude posted a 9-second lip file. Can anyone with the ability to use both Construction Sets whip up this modder's resource? ( I'll let you play with my companion mod beta. =D )