MarkInMKUK

Oh, I kinda like the animations now I toned them down a bit. Besides which, if you were as deformed from the female norm as a DMRA body, who's to say you WOULDN'T walk like that just in order to shift those oversized chesticles?

Yes, npc's is the problem - hence the question. I know you can thoroughly bork the game setting npcs to unplayable.

Ferryt - you mean REAL girls don't walk like in the "sexy walks"? I'm shocked! :D (The first time I saw the package installed and saw a female guard in full mail walking like that I nearly died laughing! They look even stupider without high heels, which might at least explain some of the silly movement!) BACTrooper - Basically, Sexy walks = stereotypical exaggerated hooker man-enticing walks. The Sensual walks mod has some more natural ones, but the defaults are still set up to "hookerworld". Add Colourwheel's clothing mods and it looks like Soho, London on a Saturday night

The most accurate female body replacer is generally thought to be Roberts female body. Exnem's female body is also popular, and has given rise to the "Eye candy" variants such as HGEC for those who like to be able to give their females oversized silicone breasts and big butts. There are various texture replacers around for each of the body types - they give higher resolution or better looking or just plain different skin shading. As for faces, for NPCs look for TNR, and for your own character look for either Beautiful People or Race rebalancing Project, both of which seems to make it easier to get a prettier end result. Nothing much helps an Argonian, though ...

I've got the Race Rebalancing Project installed, and (like Beautiful People) it adds a few extra races, including assorted elf variants. Which races are "lore compliant" and which are "just tacked on cos they look cool", and how do I go about disabling the latter in race menu, without screwing up their use in people's mods?

Start with Oblivion, then Shivering Isles (if installing it), then the official patch to either Oblivion or both files. Then add Knights of the Nine and any other DLC addons. Add the unofficial patch and the unofficial mods patches, to get a "Vanilla install" starting point. Other mods opinions vary about load order - some suggest leaving the DLC mods til later, but I've not had a problem yet. Group your mods to decide which ones will affect each other - overhaul mods like OOO, MMM and Frans with FCOM inter-react somewhat and the result may alter some of the settings introduced by any of them - I suggest doing those as a group and making sure THAT works but some others suggest leaving them til later and doing as a group. - world mods like Better Cities and Unique Landscapes often overlap and need patches. Other big quest mods or add-on castle mods also can inter-react with them. Again, best installed as a group. - Graphical and environmental mods - should be able to apply at any time, but leave until near the end as other mods may overwrite textures with their own versions. - Body mods - install as and when - bear in mind some bodies may require clothing mods too or you'll make a vanilla skirt look like fetishwear on some bodies. That's more or less the basic order I use. Obviously use BOSS and Wrye Bash to sort the load order and free up ESP spaces The only reason to tweak the ini file SHOULD be to change options in the memory or display sections that you cannot adjust using the in-game settings menu. Be careful - you can bork your setup if you edit the wrong value.

If that doesn't work, try downloading someone else's custom Kahjiit-based race and see how THEY do it - might give you a pointer.

<grins> If you want a second similar horse, known for speed, call it Shergar ... no one EVER found out what happened to that poor horse...

If you look at DungBeetle's "Alternative Start Revamped" mod, you can start your character at assorted preselected levels and in assorted situations. That's probably the best off-the-shelf mod to do some of what you are looking for. This may clash with such mods as Better Cities Anvil due to the arrival by boat option, or any alteration to player-owned houses

Aaron - I strongly suggest that at this point you backup your downloaded mods, remove and reinstall Oblivion, and get tHAT working first. Then add mods carefully, one at a time, and check it works at each stage.

From my understanding, you MIGHT be able to do something VISUALLY using cloning of the player as npc companions, and then switching your player to a duplicate of a companion, and creating a duplicate of the player version you just left as a new cloned npc. Would get HORRIBLY complex to do, and you'd have no more control over the "npc versions" than you do over standard companions. It would involve a fair bit of work for whoever scripted the mod, and I have no idea how easy it would be to transfer stats across, as npc stats are not done the same way as player ones. Three simultaneous totally user controlled characters is NOT going to work given the game engine though.

Hi Ferryt, There's nothing to stop us taking a joint look at the available feet and deciding how we'd like to adapt them to whatever we do - as long as we give the original modder due credit as the basis of our work and as long as they don't object. I think we're stuck, to some extent, with the plantigrade foot, unless the people who've done the Curse of Hircine werewolf mod have done anything clever we can borrow from, or unless the alternate modified skeleton idea can be made to work. However, for simplicity, let's assume we take the "Beasty foots" mod, and tweak it. On 2/8 nipples - that should JUST be a texturing overlay - the option can be offered by suggesting one texture for two-boobed Khajiit and one for two-plus-vestigial ones. Not a major issue as long as we don't try to enforce a viewpoint, and most of the reskinned Khajiit variants are two-boobed. Breast size - I've gone for the HGEC AA size for my Argonian female because that's the flattest chest I can find. Once I learn how, I'm going to perform a nipplectomy on the mesh to smooth the last bits off, and similarly for the male (Roberts V5 muscular) mesh. I'm not sure how adjustable the Roberts female is, having not tried it, and part of the problem is also clothing mod availability. I certainly wasn't suggesting Reneer's varied NPC mod "as is", but wondering whether we can use his technique for different racial variants amongst the Khajiit and Argonian species - I know there are some more tiger-like and cheetah-like and even slow-leopard-like versions, and they could easily have differing body proportions using Reneer's method - the clothes self-adjust. I'm going to suggest using the latest version of Deedes max compatibility skeleton as the basis if we DO tweak things - the only incompatibility I've found amongst mainstream mods seems to be something not working with Growlf's latest body mod with the high heel bones. As Khajiit or Argonians in 6 inch heels isn't my idea of a good move, we're probably ok there for the moment. I like the idea of ultimately adding an ini file for all named characters, but that might need to be stage 2 ... or 3 ... or 4. The potential is there of course, along with the texture unlocking so we can assign individual faces, textures and everything else. As for volunteers, let's give people til after the weekend to look and speak up. Some may only get a chance to look at weekends, and this thread seems to be getting a fair number of looks. Reaper9111 has pposted a separate thread offering to do texture modding so I posted a "would you be interested in helping out" comment there - maybe she'll say yes.

You may save yourself a little bit of aggravation if you track down a proper disc install of Oblivion. I know there are a few limitations on the Steam version, although not as many as on the Direct2Drive one as that's an encrypted executable. I'm running a 3GHz AMD-based dual core system, 2MB RAM, GeForce FX1700 workstation graphics card, similar performance to a GTX295 from memory, and I certainly hit the "static" point ages back. More memory helps, especially if you have over 3GB and use the 3GB patch, but fundamentally you're pushing your graphics processor into meltdown territory with the demands you put on it with some areas. The fastest crash point on my system used to be Anvil Docks - with Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, and fairly low graphics settings my system STILL chokes in under two minutes. Add in a water mod and turn the viewing distance up, and it's closer to 30 seconds unless my character walks around looking at her feet the whole time. Heaven help you if you wanted to try 3D - the software supports it, but you'll need slaved graphics cards and lots of patience to even try. For the mods - I'd have to go check my current load order at home - I may post again tonight.

Summary Statement: Currently we have: Argonians: (Thanks to Drake the Dragon) Scripted self-fitting feet for several major body types, Scripted body-type replacement and Scripted clothing-shape replacement for upper and lower body, but only one or two trial meshes for footwear. A couple of nice texture replacements. Morrowind-style heads for those who prefer those shapes. Khajiits: (Thanks to JazzJR) Non-scripted wearable feet in at least one style, for one body type, plus (possibly scriptable) feet from another modder. No Scripted body-type replacement. No scripted clothing-shape replacement, no meshes for footwear. Assorted nice texture replacements. Not yet discussed: Varied skeletons for Argonians and Khajiit based upon Reneer's Varied NPC Mod which allows npc's to each have a custom skeleton. Would "tweaked" skeletons for the Argonians and Khajiits help with their "more realistic" appearance, or just lead to problems with clothing and the like? Support for other Khajiit-type races - how simple/complex does it have to be to add a second race to use the same body and feet, but it's own texture? Requirements: Mesh adjuster to make whichever feet are judged to be the best fit with more body types. Mesh designer to create footwear styles to suit for both Khajiit and Argonian feet. Texture Tweaker to take stock clothing and armor types and make workable footwear using the above meshes. Scripter to make it all work. Install script writer to make it all install as painlessly as possible. PERMISSION to make use of other people's mods where we are intending to combine them. Someone(s) to kick my ass if I forgot anything important. Do we have the talent available in the thread so far - if not, do we put out a request for modders to help in specific areas? What have I forgotten? Oh, yes - wages ... er... well ... Kudos to everyone who helps?

Hi reaper9111. There are a batch of us nattering on another thread about making Argonian and Khajiit-specific versions of existing armor and footwear. When we reach the stage where someone's put some meshes together, would you be able to help with mapping textures onto the new meshes, please? There are a couple of quest-related boots which we'd need to do pretty early one in the process - the rest is a little more optional.

<snip> WastelandAssssin said it better

What you see from the inside is the outside static landscape, not the people. Weather All Natural sets the weather outside, The addon to give interior effects looks at the outside weather and approximates it for inside.

Beautifying Oblivion can be addictive - and can also make it unplayable if you go too far. If you are unlucky you get to the point of a wonderful, near-photo-quality still frame that sits there for three minutes and crashes to desktop. I suggest you start by actually playing the main quest all the way through on unmodded-but-fully-patched Oblivion, and make a list as you go of what "looks" wrong. By the time you have done that, you'll know more thoroughly what you want to change - you may decide that the real bugbear is the water, or the sky at night, or the grass. Or you may want to apply every patch you can find,- but remember there's a finite number of active ESP files you can have, and once you hit that you're into merging files and other complex stuff. At that point you're in danger of never playing the game again. Personally I added the Better cities packs, the Unique Landscape packs, improved the night sky and weather, and updated the textures with QTP3 reduced and redimized. I then had to uninstall some of it because I got the "static photo / crash" problem. Don't be too greedy, and you can get it looking pretty good, but be careful.

Bear in mind that the FCOM superpack is ONE guy's idea of how to do it. Personally I prefer a few other mods in place of his selections, so I use OMOD versions of OOO & MMM, add frans to that, and then run uFCOM which is an OMOD version of FCOM and does a lot of autoinstalling

If you want an almost idiotproof install of FCOM and a lot of related stuff, try the FCOM Superpack. Look down for the Oblivion install stuff, grab the v4 and 4.01 patch, and install them. You are stuck with someone else's choice of addons, but it seems to work pretty much out-of-the-box if you do exactly as it tells you with Wrye Bash.

A couple of off-the-cuff ideas. Maybe something based on your speechcraft, but modified in some way to take into account how "nature friendly" your character build is. A "ranger-ish" build (light armor, bow/light blade, stealth type) would be easier to imagine as an animal-coaxer than a raging barbarian type waving a huge axe or a paladin clanking along in plate mail - war horses have to be trained not just coaxed. A mage would probably take the easy option and cast a spell, unless they had a specific reason to coax an animal, in which case speechcraft and maybe illusion would be the factors. City animals like rats and cats and dogs may respond better to the noisier types - not sure on that. If we're going to use fantasy stereotypes, a mage should (traditionally) be rat or cat friendly, or maybe snake-friendly for the more evil ones, and possibly bird-friendly as well. Ranger-types tend towards wolves and big cats, maybe falcons and meerkats. Thieves might drift towards rats or cats too, maybe a snake. Warriors? Horses, Tigers, but they tend not to be that easy on animal companions so maybe less stereotypes apply. Coaxing might also need knowledge of the animal - things it eats, habits, etc - maybe scrolls or books about them for sale or to be discovered. Also a few npcs ought to gain pets, just to make it look "right".

Official Better Cities thread with the patches listed - just read down til you hit them - there's one there for scribe Supplies. Do NOT patch that which doesn't need patching, only apply the scribe patch unless you NEED to apply more.

VGI - if you use both the argonian Beautification stuff AND the Scripted Feet, and actually read the recent discussion between myself and Drake in the comments section, you SHOULD be able to make a flat-chested, reptile-footed , moderately convincing bipedal Argonian with NO "add your own feet like socks" - but with the drawback you cannot equip boots because we are still working on that bit. To see the end result, this is "Walks-on-tiptoes" - the black bars are there to hide areas that would otherwise potentially get a photo removed. Currently the best Khajiit feet I've seen are these ones (there's also a VIDEO) or the one in THIS video (sorry, no idea whether the modder ever uploaded it) - but they need a modder who knows what they are doing to make them applicable to the various body mods, and to make them auto-equip. Then we need to make suitable footwear and to make Oblivion auto-replace the meshes to suit. As I said earlier, Drake's scripted feet script also allows for a different body shape than the humans, I think Khajiit would look good as maybe a A/B cup body as an evolved cat race - starting with smaller litters, any extra nipples would become vestigial and leave a pair of "in use" ones. There's at least one replacement body texture that adds back in the positions of the remaining ones to give the visual effect. Clothing is the other irritation - because the clothing contains its own mesh, you have to use a clothing pack that matches the body underneath, rather than it "just fitting", so for my ideal setup of "flat" Argonians, A/B cup Khajiit and E-cup humans/elves, I'd need three clothing sets for the top body. But if it actually works, it's worth the effort. I have the ideas and the vision, but as yet none of the abilities, hence I started this post.

In addition to the above, I use the Real Light mod for indoor lighting - the light now actually seems to COME from the lights, not look like a floodlit room

Tutorial HERE