DeathMotif

As far as I’m aware. Not sure how well this will work for animations, but from my personal research, this seems to be the best method.

Use blender, save in a format that outfit studio can open, and save as a nif through OS.

If you are referring to the “T-51 Standard Torso” option, that’s from AWKCR if you have it installed (I’m thinking that you do). As for the meshes, the only place that you can edit those is through Nifskope. I’m not sure that editing them is necessary. A lot of things can be edited (or added) through xEdit or the CK. Unless you have a macro program for xEdit,your only option is likely to be editing the entries by hand until you've fixed everything.

Yup. The non-playable flag is it.

Let me clarify one thing. The grenade does not show in your hand unless the animation event is already triggered.

I’m not at my computer at the moment, so my response is somewhat uninformed. However, I do not believe that grenades are equipped in the manner you indicate. That is to say, they are not visible equipped at all. To my understanding, they are equipped in the “grenade” slot, but that slot is not visibly represented unless activated. In other words, the game triggers a grenade throwing animation when activated. This requires verification of course, but I believe this to be correct.

Your question is rather vague. Which makes it difficult to answer. However, if all you are working with are textures, you simply have to point a bgsm file (in the materials folder) to the appropriate textures including the normal file you are using for bump-maps. This will allow the Fallout 4 engine to use your material. I should also note that you will have to create a material swap in the editor, and an object mod in order to use you material file in game. It’s a multi step process.

@chucksteel, thanks for beating me to the punch and saving me some time.

For the record, I hate using an iPad when posting responses. Half the time I get duplicate entries...such as the case here.

Meshes that are simple primatives are not copyrightable. They must be uniquely identifiable for them to qualify for copyright. The textures are another matter. You are better off creating your own, or taking an existing texture and transforming it. Transformation is key with respect to fair use. As for code, it depends. Some code is universal. Prime example, “Hello world!” Is a universal code to introduce people to programming. Such basic code is not copyrightable. It really comes down to originality. That said, code and scripts are definitely copyrightable. Once again, they may be transformed. However, it is often best to rewrite the code personally, unless you can get acces to open source code. In this case, however, you’d probably have to write your own code anyway. I’m reasonably sure that FNV script is not perfectly compatible with Papyrus. You can likely use it as a base, but you might have to tweak things a bit.

I had the same problems you had when trying to achieve this effect. Here's what I did to get around it. I did everything you did up to the image export. Instead of exporting as DDS, I exported as PNG. This saved the image with the transparency intact. I then opened the saved PNG and re-exported it as DDS selecting the BC3/DXT5 Compression. That saved with the transparency preserved.

Don’t know what happened there, but I seem to have generated two posts.

First of all, your question is rather disjoint and confusing. I’m going to ignore it and just tell you everything. To start, you need your texture files. Those are the .dds files. At a minimum you will need the difuse map. Those are usually the files with the filename ending _d before the .dds extension. You can also have a normal map (filename ending _n.dds), a specular map (filename ending _s.dds), a glowmap (filename ending _g.dds) and a couple of others. What I described is Bethesda’s naming convention, but you can use any naming convention you want. Just make sure the correct map is selected for each file in your material files (.bgsm files). Inside either the CK or xEdit, you will need to create a material swap (mswp) for each of your materials. You then need to either apply them directly to your object (weapon, armor, furniture, etc.), or you need to create an object modification (omod) and a constructible object (cobj) to make use of your new material swap. If you want to make it into an inventoriable object, you need to associate a miscellaneous object (misc) with the omod. I hope this answers your question.

First of all, your question is rather disjoint and confusing. Iâm going to ignore it and just tell you everything. To start, you need your texture files. Those are the .dds files. At a minimum you will need the difuse map. Those are usually the files with the filename ending _d before the .dds extension. You can also have a normal map (filename ending _n.dds), a specular map (filename ending _s.dds), a glowmap (filename ending _g.dds) and a couple of others. What I described is Bethesdaâs naming convention, but you can use any naming convention you want. Just make sure the correct map is selected for each file in your material files (.bgsm files). Inside either the CK or xEdit, you will need to create a material swap (mswp) for each of your materials. You then need to either apply them directly to your object (weapon, armor, furniture, etc.), or you need to create an object modification (omod) and a constructible object (cobj) to make use of your new material swap. If you want to make it into an inventoriable object, you need to associate a miscellaneous object (misc) with the omod. I hope this answers your question.

I thought I responded to this earlier, but, thanks!

I think you may have a misconception about pre-combines. They are called that for a reason. They are pre-combined in the editor. They effectively become a single combined mesh. This massively improves performance as it reduces the number of draw calls by the engine dramatically. I’m not even sure that you can touch them via script in game they way you suggest. As to your real question, yes, pre-combines can be partially broken. The important thing to remember is that you need to regenerate your pre-combines in the CKafter you’ve finished editing them. There is a real good tutorial either on YouTube, or the Nexus, or both, showing how to properly work with pre-combines. I’m not at a computer right now, or I would send you a link. For now you’ll just have to find it yourself.

Sorry for the WOT. :blush:

@Thirdstorm, everything you said is absolutely true. You'll get no argument from me. My discussion above is predicated upon well known mods like WIPAG and Kerrigan Bodysuit which both have many textures that, with few exceptions, bloat greatly due to creating many textures that are largely redundant due to minor changes. Keep in mind that the majority of these textures are new and don't use vanilla assets (aside from the power armor pieces) at all. I merely promote a method whereby the texture bloat can be mitigated to an extent. That said, I completely agree with you that material swaps themselves are inconsequential with respect to memory, and they add a profound amount of flexibility when modding, and should be used as much as possible...barring limits of practicality of course. Of course recycling existing textures is more efficient, but not always practical. It really depends on what an author is trying to do. In my experience, other than mashups, most authors create new assets rather than reuse old. I like to do both. I should point out that I always add material files to my nifs, even if they don't actually reference anything for display, just so that other modders have an easier time modding after me. As for the matter of BodySlide, not sure why they chose not to use vanilla assets. That would have been more convenient (not to mention more compatible). I guess they figured it wasn't worth the effort. However, the concept they have behind it should be put into use by Bethesda directly. Imagine having the ability to make all our humanoid races use a single mesh that takes in optional parameters (similar to how textures are an optional parameter) that natively to modify the shape of the mesh. With this "shape" file, you could have NPCs of all shapes and sizes, with the appropriate transforms for all worn clothing items and armor, without having to create duplicate meshes. To borrow a phrase from "Lord Todd", it just works. We could swap these shape files just like materials without bloating game assets. But I digress... Stretching is an artifact due to a system that wasn't designed to be modified in this way, being modified by an outside team who (possibly) doesn't have insider knowledge of the file structure, or perhaps they simply didn't design their software appropriately. Regardless, it's a great tool nevertheless, and would be my go to in the event I want to make my own custom body type (and you know I do. :wink:) Regardless, none of this changes the fact that your points are correct. @Oynlen Your texture problem shouldn't be that big of an issue. For one thing, the fact that the NPCs are of different races shouldn't matter. It's meshes and textures that are largely swapped. You are also able to swap other types of data as well, like stat buffs, perks and spells/effects. The race typically isn't involved with such stuff directly. Keep in mind that 3rd gen Synths are indistinguishable from humans, they use the same assets. I haven't looked into it, but I suspect that all that's different is that they are humans that merely add a synth component on death in the system. Possibly a bad example. Will have to look further into this another time. Back to the main point, hue change, color and especially clothes can all be swapped relatively easily using your existing setup provided you do so correctly. You are correct that the BSSubIndexTriShapes is where the actual mesh data is contained. Each one is a separate mesh within the nif, and thus may be modded separately. It's the way vaultsuits are set up. The body, trim and vault decal may all be individually modified and textures swapped. There are several examples of this on the nexus. Even I have a mod for this. The important thing to remember is what Thirdstorm said with respect to bones and weights. You need to make sure that the weights of the vertices are applied to the correct bone(s) for animations to look correct. Overall, it's your choice what to do. When it comes to NPCs and their meshes, I definitely defer to Thirdstorm. He is one of the most talented mod authors in this area. That said, If I were you, I'd definitely use material swaps. Otherwise your are doing things the FO3 way, and creating a separate mesh and texture for every variant you want to make. This is very wasteful. You should only need one or two meshes, and then use material swaps for your variability. Material swaps are not that difficult to make. However, they are not useful by themselves. Depending on how you intend to apply them, you will need at the very least an Object Modification (OMOD) to reference your material swap (MSWP). If you want your MSWP to be inventoryable, you will need a Misc. Item (MISC) reference to be used by the OMOD, and if you want to make your material constructable, you need a Constructable Object (COBJ) to reference the OMOD. There are many ways to reference OMODs beyond this. If you look at some of the armors (ARMO) in the game, they can hold references to OMODs. In fact, this is how many armor pieces populate with a variety of mods already applied. I recommend looking at combat armor, and you will see how it can be done. If you want something to use as a reference for how I applied much of what has been discussed, I recommend you look at my Jill's Armored Infantry of the Fusion Age mods. As for any "body work", I refer you back to Thirdstorm.

One thing I should point out. Textures can be very expensive with respect to memory. The size texture you choose to use will have an impact upon people downloading your mod. Be careful to avoid the temptation of making everything 4K. Yeah they look pretty, but they are memory hogs. Ignoring compression, 2K textures consume four times the amount of memory than 1K. Similarly, 4K consume four times the memory of 2K. This is because every time you double size, you are actually doubling the size across two dimensions. So 4K consumes approximately 16 times the memory of 1K textures. As you may imagine, that means that people with smaller memory video cards may not be able to run the game with your mod loaded if your textures take up too much memory. Another concern with respect to material swaps, you need to be careful with customization. Most meshes can only display a single texture (unless they are comprised of different parts, like the Vaultsuit.) You'd need to create a separate texture for every combination that you want when mixing and matching. I have found that a less memory intensive approach is to create multiple layers on the mesh (simply by duplicating the vertices if necessary), and applying a different material swap on each layer. This requires that every layer except the base layer support transparency, but that may be avoided by simply using mesh layers that only have the faces needed for the effect, without duplicating everything. An example of this is every mesh that has a decal applied (such as the vaultsuit number on the back of the vaultsuit). Using this technique, you can reduce the number of textures from ( _m_ base layer variations * _n_ successive layers * ( _P#_ variations ) ) to simply _m_ + _P#_ variations. For example, if you have three different areas to modify on your texture, and you have 4 options on the first change, 2 on the second, and 3 on the third, you'd need 4*2*3 textures (24 total textures) each requiring memory and a separate material swap. If you use layered meshes, that would be reduce to 4+2+3 textures (9 total textures) along with 9 material swaps. It's a trade-off, mesh complexity versus number of textures. On thing to remember is that there are limits to the number of vertices you can use in a mesh, so efficiency is key. The rest I leave up to you.

Everything has a cost in terms of memory, and memory is a precious commodity. It's a balancing act every time you create more meshes or textures with respect to memory management. The purpose of material swaps is to allow you to reuse a mesh with different textures. In this way you can save memory resources while extending variability. Keep in mind that for every material (texture) you create, you will need a separate Material Swap (MSWP). That is how the game recognizes and loads materials. I would suspect that your meshes contain your default material, so providing a material swap won't be necessary unless you have two or more materials total and want to swap between them. Please keep in mind that this is a separate issue from leveled lists, unless you want the NPC to have a random chance of having a particular material swap on an outfit. Given your use case, material swaps probably won't be effective. That said, is there a particular reason that you need the NPC to be so unique? Are all the armors compatible only with this body type? Is there a reason you didn't use BodySlide and OutfitStudio to make your NPC more compatible with existing body types?

I generally use DTX3 for everything except those requiring transparencies. I use DTX5 for those. There are some who use DTX7, but I'm not aware of how they are doing it. However, I have noted that Visual Studio is capable of opening any format and converting them to others, including DTX7. Frankly, I haven't seen a reason for DTX7, so I'm not sure why that format is being used (not to mention the general lack of support for that format at the moment). Strike that. I found my notes: BC3 for Transparency and Diffuse maps BC4 for Height maps, Specular maps, and other greyscale images BC5 for Normals BSA and BA2 are simply archive formats. They have nothing to do with file formats themselves. So no, they do not choose DDS file compression formats. That has to be selected in GIMP. To my awareness, GIMP only supports up to DTX5, and that only if you have downloaded the right plugin..

What you really are looking for is public domain music. http://freemusicarchive.org/member/cheyenne_h/blog/A_Ton_of_Public_Domain_Songs

Thanks for the response. Any chance you can share a pic of the relevant fields just to make sure I'm following correctly?

I'm presently working in Nifskope, and I'm wondering exactly how Fallout 4's engine uses BSConnectPoints. Is there a specific naming convention that we must follow when assigning variable names?...and how does that relate to targets? Furthermore, what role do roots play? The reason I ask is that naming seems to be rather arbitrary, and while I've seen some NiNodes names used under Roots, other Meshes' roots have names that I haven't (yet) been able to track down in related meshes. What I really want to know is if I can use my own names and targets, and if not, why not, and under what circumstances I can use them, and when I can't. Any help here will be greatly appreciated.

Not really. You have some limited ability to expand things, but generally PA frames, particularly the furniture version, functions like a mannequin. You can add armor pieces, and thatâs just about it. Thereâs a little leaway here, but not much. No weapons Iâm afraid...unless they are set up to be worn as armor pieces. The biggest problem is that much of the PA system is hard coded, and not designed very well for modding. Edit: If you are looking to treat PA like a companion, check out Power Armor Autopilot.