BarefootWarrior

I can't look at the picture your link directs to, I'm not one to download from a site that I don't know, but...you say you used a different model? But it looks fine in NifSkope. My guess would be that you didn't put the 'texture' and the 'mesh' into folders into the data folder and then link them up in Nifskope. Further, did you create an esp in GECK? If not, you need to make your new mod using GECK to create the new esp file so the game can see it correctly. Now I admit that I'm a novice modder myself, so some one else may jump in here and correct me. I create new textures for my own mods (clothng and such) and I use NifSkope to check the UV map for my diffuse and normals map, then go on to GECK and create my new mod. Not much help, but just going by what you are asking in your post.

I was intrigued by what I saw on Farcry 3, but once I got it and started playing it was disappointing. To be frank, I missed the 'fine print' about being a first person shooter. The same with Borderlands 2. I played both for about two hours and haven't touched them since. But that's just me, I want to see my character doing things in a third person view, and I want to be able to create that character as in FO3, Skyrim, whatever. Seeing just two hands holding a weapon in front of me is annoying to me. No one to blame but myself on that one. But, to be fair...The graphics in Farcry are beautiful, and I liked the storyline. The voice overs are very well done...but I just can't get into the game. I loved the 'art style' of Borderlands 2, but again...first person shooter, just can't go with it. I can say that if we had the versatility of first person along with third person, Farcry 3 would have been great fun to play. What little I did play, I could run around and explore, but I don't know how far the open world really goes. Right now, I think the game developers need to start thinking about having viewing options for their games rather then just staying with one fixed point of view. I for one enjoy Bethesda games, but I don't know if I want to go as far as to say I'd like some of their game elements included in a game such as Farcry. Bethesda does have some issues. I think all game production studios have their 'style' and I enjoy having that variety. And I will be much more careful about future purchases on any games and read much more carefully. :tongue: Buying two games that I probably will never play again gets rather expensive. :unsure:

While I am familiar with 'grain merge', I'm not sure how one would use it in a normals map. If the grain merge is already incorporated in your diffuse texture, there should be no need to add that feature again in the normals map. What I do to increase 'depth' in a normals map is to duplicate the layer, increase 'contrast' (in the duplicate layer) and then 'flatten' the layers, then go on to create (save) the final normals map. I do this in both Photoshop and GIMP. And, increase or decrease brightness in the alpha (if one is used) to add shine or to make dull. I'm sure someone else may have something to add to this, and possibly more familiar with the technique regarding your question. :unsure:

Thanks Fmod, I kinda wondered about that. But more to the point, I am still very curious as to why Skyrim didn't appear to have any issues. Is this because of the game engine perhaps? Curious minds would like to know. :thumbsup:

I installed a new GeForce GTX 660 Ti almost two weeks ago and immediately got white artifacts in FO3, FONV, TW2, and DAO, along with massive 'streaking' or drawing issues with Oblivion IV. There was also some minor artifacts and drawing issues with AC3. But, in Skyrim, there were no artifacts or drawing issues. I don't get it. For FONV, I removed all mods and tried again just to see if the mods had something to do with it, artifact issue continued, so mods are not the problem. This problem only occurs in games. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blender and there are no issues. I then installed the card into my back up system which runs Win XP / 64 bit. The only game I have on that system is FO3, and it happened there too, so it must be the GPU. I have already contacted Zotac and they are working with me, looks like an RMA to me. More to the point, have any of you folks out there ever experienced an issue such as this. I am more interested as to why there are no problems with Skyrim, and it is modded. Here is a link to look at some screen shots of the problem. My link If any of you have any ideas, I'd sure like to know because this one has me completely baffled. My specs Asus Crossfire IV Formula motherboard Phenom II T1055 six core AMD Coolit ECO R-120 liquid cooling for CPU Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM / 16 Gig Zotac GTX GeForce 660 Ti / 2 GB 310.70 drivers Corsair AX 850 power supply / 70A on 12V rails Creative Labs Supreme FX XFI audio Cooler Master Sniper Case / black edition 28 wide screen i_Inc monitor, not the best but works nicely 1920 X 1200 Win 7 64 Ulitmate I have pulled the Zotac GTX 660 Ti and went back to my old Zotac GTX 560 Ti. With the 560 Ti, all games are running smoothly.

A question of curiosity more then anything. For the past few weeks when I am in Skyrim my video just goes ballistic. I get colors all over the screen, patterns, or the game simply locks up and have had a few crashes...that is, the entire system simply shuts down. I am using a Zotac FeForce 560 Ti video card, with the updated drivers. Has anyone else using the 560 family of GeForce cards been having any issues? Any of the other games I play don't have any issues including W2 at Ultra settings. I have tried backing off on the video settings, but makes no difference. I know my power supply is more then ample to supply current to the card, so that isn't the problem. Asus Crossfire IV Formula motherboard Phenom II T1055 six core AMD Coolit ECO R-120 liquid cooling for CPU Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM / 16 Gig Zotac GeForce GTX 560 TI / 1 GB 290.36 Corsair 850 power supply Creative Labs Supreme FX XFI audio Cooler Master Sniper Case / black edition 28 wide screen i_Inc monitor, not the best but works nicely. Win 7 64 Ulitmate I do have a few mods installed and am wondering if that might be part of the problem too, but won't list those at this time. Thanks

UMMMM..if you found a fix for this, can you post how you fixed it? I have the same issue and at this point, have no clue what's going on. :whistling:

I have a similar issue with FONV. I installed the Nexus Mod Manager and tried it on FONV, but did not use it for FO3. I started having some issues with the NMM and removed it, from that point on, FOMM would not work with FONV, but I could still use it with FO3. Long story short, I un-installed both games, FO3 and FONV and FOMM and then de-fragged my drive. I then re-installed the games (clean install) and then FOMM thinking I would then be able to use FOMM for both games once again. NOPE! FOMM would not work with FONV, and I have no clue why. After much frustration, I ended up installing the NMM once again and that is what I have to use for FONV, but I can still use the FOMM for FO3 and the other games ( Oblivion and Skyrim). I have no clue what is going on, but since I installed NMM, It some how has changed or corrupted FOMM and GECK (my guess) and how it works. Further, I cannot get GECK NV to work correctly since installing NMM either. Getting off the subject just a bit, I am thinking that I will end up removing both games again and then installing them on my old XP machine and start over. I installed both games on my new system which uses WIN 7 /64 bit / Ulitimate...and I'm thinking that has something to do with it, but really have no idea. For now, I cannot use FOMM for FONV, I get the same message..." something bad has happened...blah! " Not any help here, but you should be able to do a manual install for any mods you want or continue to use the NMM. While I appreciate the work that went into the NMM, I wish I had never tried it out now as FOMM worked just fine before and I had use of the GECK NV, but not after I installed the NMM. Maybe some one else has some ideas on this subject. *sigh

I'm going to guess that you created a 'new' texture for this model? Not really enough information to go on here but...by the way the image looks, you didn't use the 'UV' map for the weapon and that is why your new texture isn't applying to the model in NifSkope. What you can do is open the model (mesh) in NifSkope and export the UV map and then use that as a template for (to create) your new texture. That way, your new texture will apply it self to the model (in this case a gun) correctly. I'm not sure this is what your problem is, but this is what it looks like to me. Hope this helps.

*looks up* what kschang77 said....I had this same issue and I thought I was getting 'corrupted' saves. My trick was to load up an earlier save and then get into the game, then load the most recent save I wanted. It worked most of the time. But, as it turned out, I had also added a mod and it was my load order that was causing the issue. Once I got that figured out, then I found that two of my mods were conflicting and that was causing issues as well. I love mods, but sometimes it takes a bit of work to get them all working together. I don't think you have a corrupted save issue, more of a mod issue. Turn the latest mod you added off and go from there. If that works, then you will need to see if there is a conflict. All part of the fun, eh? :rolleyes:

I will refer you to a post I made some time ago regarding the 560 series cards. It is hard to tell what your problem could be without your system specs. Read through the other posts and see if anything there might help you. http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/491348-geforce-gtx-560-ti-graphic-card-users/ In my case, I went back to an old driver version 266.58 and for now just leave it at that. :rolleyes: Asus Crossfire IV Formula motherboard Phenom II T1055 six core AMD Coolit ECO R-120 liquid cooling for CPU Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM / 16 Gig Zotac GeForce GTX 560 TI / 1 GB 290.36 / Beta drivers (not anymore, now using 266.58...sometimes having the latest and greatest isn't a good thing.) Corsair 850 power supply Creative Labs Supreme FX XFI audio Cooler Master Sniper Case / black edition 28 wide screen i_Inc monitor, not the best but works nicely. Win 7 64 Ulitmate

Good question. My understanding was that FNV (by default) will only us up to 2GB...but I could be wrong. I installed the 4GB enabler to get the game to use up to 4GB. Using this patch did make a difference in my game, just letting ya know. Asus Crossfire IV Formula motherboard Phenom II T1055 six core AMD Coolit ECO R-120 liquid cooling for CPU Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM / 16 Gig Zotac GeForce GTX 560 TI / 1 GB 290.36 / Beta drivers (not anymore. Went back to 266.58...too many black screen issues with new drivers.) Corsair 850 power supply Creative Labs Supreme FX XFI audio Cooler Master Sniper Case / black edition 28 wide screen i_Inc monitor, not the best but works nicely. Win 7 64 Ulitmate

It has surprised me what a mod can do in terms of performance. I have a fairly robust system and played Skyrim at Ultra settings, never even slowed down. I got turned on to FO3 and now FNV and installed some mods, settings at Ultra. I started to get stuttering and then things started to crash. This was (as I found out later) due to the load order of the mods, but also one mod in particular just brought my system damn near to a stand still at times, that being the 'Dynavision' mod. I love this mod, gives a depth of field touch to the game, but now leave it off and use it for screen shots only. There is also the issue in the back of my mind how well FO3 and FNV work with Win7 / DTX11? I don't believe theses games like DTX11 and wish we had a way to play them at DTX9. I could be way off base here, but just my thinking. I have had a myriad of issues with FNV on my system, but FO3 seems to be happy, have no clue why. In my case, I replaced my video card last fall and now I think I may have made a bad choice. That isn't helping my situation either, seems to be a constant driver issue and I finally rolled mine back to the driver that came with the card. Seems to run smoother now, so I gave up on the 'newest' and greatest drivers...for now anyway. But back to your issue, you might just want to 'clean' out your system, get rid of old files and the like so WIN 7 / Win XP...what ever, doesn't have to keep registering those while you are in game, and as you mentioned in your OP...defrag the drive, see if that helps. Also, if you have an application to use such as 'Advnaced System Care'...clean out your registry, that might help too. Hope some of this info helps, good luck. Asus Crossfire IV Formula motherboard Phenom II T1055 six core AMD Coolit ECO R-120 liquid cooling for CPU Vengeance DDR3 1600 RAM / 16 Gig Zotac GeForce GTX 560 TI / 1 GB 290.36 / Beta drivers (not anymore...now running 266.58) Corsair 850 power supply Creative Labs Supreme FX XFI audio Cooler Master Sniper Case / black edition 28 wide screen i_Inc monitor, not the best but works nicely. Win 7 64 Ulitmate

You might want to give a list of your system specs. But the fact that you are playing on a laptop says a lot just on it's own. No offense, but not to many laptops can handle everything that a game throws at it, even the high end systems. Your video is 'built in' and it may not be able to handle all the processing for the mods would be a good guess. Also, the load order of your mods might be an issue as well. Just a thought.

I was going through the same thing, my game would crash on the start, or in game, crash fast travel somewhere and always crash on exit. I am running some mods, and I do have the script extender and 4GB enabler, so this was driving me nuts! Turns out, it was my load order for the mods. I am using one very large mod, that being the NMC Texture Pack New Vegas (high resolution) by NeilMc_NMC along with FNV Project Reality by jjc71. There are several other minor mods including a few of my own that I made. I am also using a shaders mod. The textures pack really doesn't show up as a mod as such as it replaces most of the default textures by archive invalidation. That being said, as the game is booting up, these high res textures have to be rendered, while the other mods are being ramped up in the background on start up. My load order totally trashed my game and it finally got to the point that I could not play the game. I had used FOMM to install the mods and then (for some silly reason) decided to try the Nexus Modd Manager (NMM) , I'll leave it at that. NMM re-installed all of my mods but I didn't pay any attention to the load order and that seriously screwed me up. The large mods such as Project reality were loading first and I think this along with another large mod were crashing the game. I now have all of my large/major mods loading last and that seems to have made a difference. I still get an occasional crash, but now at least I can load up a game and exit the game without a CTD. So check your load order on your mods and even though I read all the 'read me' files on the mods, sometimes the suggested load order doesn't always work. I now place the larger mods at the end of my load order list to give the system time to load up. Seems to work so far.

I thought I'd update this. I tried updating my drivers (once again) hoping that Nvidia had solved this issue. They have not as far as I can tell and the black screen occurred more frequently then before, this being the 290.36 drivers. My solution (out of desperation) was to install an old driver, version 266.58. This last month, since I installed the old driver, I have not had a crash to the black screen. I don't know why, but it seems to work. I let it install the entire suite of drivers, including the 3D (which I don't use since I don't have a 3D system) and so far, seems to be happy. Will this work for you? Have no clue, everyone system is different, but there you have it. A big thanks to SoLoMaGIK for jogging my memory on this issue. Just remember to UN-INSTALL your old drivers first before you install any new drivers.

Sneaking with Lydia is impossible, don't even try or with a dog. First sign of a fight and they are off, plus Lydia's armor is always clanking. But, to my surprise, I can sneak with Vorstag. He is quite good at it and does nothing until I get things started or unless someone comes up behind us. Until then, he waits quietly for me and it has worked out quite well.

LOL! I am the Barefoot Warrior...or maybe not. Not in this game anyway :rolleyes: I looked at the mesh for the feet and all they are is a 'boot or shoe' shape with a texture painted on them. All we can do is hope someone brings in a new full body mesh with good hands and feet. So, for now, I use the ragged cloth boots and will be content with that. Too funny. :whistling: It amazes me that in a game of this caliber that the modelers who created the body meshes would put out poorly detailed body meshes. I'll never understand that. For myself, I am hoping to see 'Roberts male and female' bodies adapted to this game and that will improve things a lot I think. oh well....

Here is a screen shot of the project I am working on. I need to get a full body mesh under the modified pants / shorts. I modified the pants texture into shorts and am using alpha to hide the lower legs and upper waist, and rope tie of the 'ragged pants'.

Guess what? I didn't understand what you meant by this until today. It was one of those 'wtf' moments when I saw what you were taking about. I could not believe what I was looking at. I am creating a modified texture of the 'ragged pants' or prisoners pants to make a pair of ragged shorts as it were just to experiment with alpha textures. The alpha in my texture is fine, but...umm..well, there is no butt...or anything else for that matter. Nothing, lower legs and then nothing up to the waist? I don't get it, the avatars are 'wearing' the clothes or armor items, and they couldn't give a full body mesh? This is the damnedest thing I have ever seen. Sooo..I do have a full nude male mod that came up recently and it is nicely done, thought I'd try to 'copy branch' in NifSkope of my modifed pants over to the nude body mesh (after a certain part was removed :rolleyes: ) and I can't get that to work either. If I wasn't confused before, I sure am now. Then I tried to modify the 'underwear' nif and to see if I could copy the properties of the loin cloth thing and use that to place my modified pants to the underwear nif...guess what again? There isn't anything under the loin cloth either. Gonna have to write this project off for a while, shame too, made a nice texture. :wallbash: You need to add an alpha channel to the mesh in nifskope: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/NifSkope/Change_texture#Enabling_Alpha As for just removing parts of the armor through image editing, it's very simple, you need something that can open dds files and edit alpha channels, such as Photoshop w/ the Nvidia DDS plugin, then go to channels and edit whatever you want transparent to be black. Sec, I'll get pics to explain: So I'll use the wonderful 'Wolf Armor Remix' that can be found on the nexus here to explain: First off I open up the texture I want to edit with the Photoshop + nvidia DDS plugin and get a screen like this (notice in the channels section in the bottom right there is one labelled 'Alpha' that is completely blank [meaning it will display in game everything that it detailed in the texture file...nothing will be transparent): http://i.imgur.com/yNJyk.jpg Say I want to edit out one of the chainmail parts to show part of the character's arm or leg, I selected the chainmail, then go to the alpha channel and fill the selected section in as black: http://i.imgur.com/lQWYE.jpg Then I just check to make sure I have everything selected by viewing the alpha channel as well as all the colour channels (RGB): http://i.imgur.com/0cwG6.jpg Done. Save, overwrite, load up your game and the part you edited out of the alpha wont appear in game. If you have any other questions just pm me, I hardly ever check the forums Thanks much for this, I'll see if I can get this changed. :thumbsup: In my case, I need to tell NifSkope that I do not want any alpha properties on the underlying body mesh. Since I don't have a full grasp on the commands yet, I'm trying ti get this figured out. EDIT: forget that...there is no mesh for the upper legs and waist, thought there was. :facepalm:

You are correct, this is simply a full mesh (pants) using alpha to hide the rope and lower part of the pants. There seems to be a full body mesh under, but not texture in the mid section, that is, lower waist and upper legs.

Guess what? I didn't understand what you meant by this until today. It was one of those 'wtf' moments when I saw what you were taking about. I could not believe what I was looking at. I am creating a modified texture of the 'ragged pants' or prisoners pants to make a pair of ragged shorts as it were just to experiment with alpha textures. The alpha in my texture is fine, but...umm..well, there is no butt...or anything else for that matter. Nothing, lower legs and then nothing up to the waist? I don't get it, the avatars are 'wearing' the clothes or armor items, and they couldn't give a full body mesh? This is the damnedest thing I have ever seen. Sooo..I do have a full nude male mod that came up recently and it is nicely done, thought I'd try to 'copy branch' in NifSkope of my modifed pants over to the nude body mesh (after a certain part was removed :rolleyes: ) and I can't get that to work either. If I wasn't confused before, I sure am now. Then I tried to modify the 'underwear' nif and to see if I could copy the properties of the loin cloth thing and use that to place my modified pants to the underwear nif...guess what again? There isn't anything under the loin cloth either. Gonna have to write this project off for a while, shame too, made a nice texture. :wallbash: