brokefoot

We all know there are plenty of armor/clothing mods. Plenty of stat-change mods. Loads of settlement mods. And an ever increasing amount of weapon mods. But... What do you think we need more of? Perhaps there are a few mods out there you really enjoy, but wish to see more of or someone else version of it ? List them here so we can discuss. I'd start with an example of my own, but honestly I'm clueless... so that's also kind of why I'm starting this thread :)

I don't recommend either one. I get that they are 'optimized' in the sense of compression and/or lowering resolution. But I wouldn't want either improvement. Not only do those mods use up drive space (I'm running on SSD), they also don't allow the game engine to 'stream' from the texture archive. I had tried the more popular one (think its Tex Opt) a few months ago, but noticed zero performance increase. What I did notice, though, was texture quality degradation (due to compression artifacts).

I've uploaded two outfit mods so far. Have a look: Railroad Renegade - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9460/? Outlaw Outfit - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9782/?

Planned: "Outfits of Pandora" -Athena -Maya -Lilith -Patricia Tannis -Salvador -Axton -Mordecai -Scooter *Using remodeled/retextured F04 vanilla assets

Think I might know why. Have you altered the meshes in any other program besides Nifskope and/or Outfit Studio ? I know that the SubIndex Segments for Dismemberment Partitions gets really messed up when exporting from 3ds Max, could also be the same for Blender. I urge you to visit TumbaJamba's mod tutorial page and thoroughly read through the posts in the comments section as well as reading the pdf download. It covers what needs to be done to the meshes for SubIndex Segments, which I'm betting is what needs to be done to your meshes. Skip through the pdf until you find the relevant info on partitions/segments. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/7957/? Hope this helps. Your mod idea sounds cool, best of luck !

Likely you see black/grey retextures flood the Nexus upon game launch. Notice how most of them came really early. Not as many black rextures surfacing now that the game has been out a while. Its much easier to work with greyscale, than color. What I've noticed is the onslaught of camo retextures. Those showed up early, too, but are still being released on what feels like a daily basis. But, hey... that's what people like, I guess. For a while, my pessimistic side was telling me "if it ain't boobs, camo or guns then nobody wants it". Still feels that way, guess its just the general user base right now (?). Just my view, honestly. I hope Macintroll shows up to do a FO4 version of his New Vegas HiRes mod.

Would you stop, please ? Second post I've read of yours between two threads and all you do is yell at people (the other was the black retexture thread). Notice how I'm asking, not telling ? That is courtesy. Thanks for understanding.

I recently uploaded another ENB preset. You might try it out :) Rambo ENB

Ok, I've tried the method below with a little over 20 vanilla meshes and no failures. I'm sorry in advance for my poor explanation. I'm not very good at teaching, but here goes... The following method applies ONLY to 3ds MAX 2016 w/ latest Github release of Figment's tool and also Nifskope v2.04 (?) Alpha. The following method also applies ONLY to skinned meshes, not including body. I recommend using Outfit Studio to "zap" away parts of body meshes if you wish to remove certain areas and also use OS if you wish to alter size of parts of body meshes. Use TumbaJamba's tutorial fix for SubIndex Segments after all this: 1) Import nif into MAX keeping all Figment's import settings untouched. 2) Click outside the area of bones/meshes thereby deselecting all in scene. Any shapes you don't plan on keeping, select now and hit delete. 3) Select only the shape you wish to edit by clicking on it in the viewport and make your adjustments > "Modify" tab then "Editable Mesh". This WILL move your shape 'under the grid' but don't worry about that. Remove parts, scale parts or whatever. I'm not covering weight paint alterations here. 4) Once you're done with editing, click the "Create" tab bringing you out of "Editable Mesh" and back into the full scene. 5) Click outside the area of bones/meshes thereby deselecting all in scene. 6) Hit "Edit" > "Select All" and now "MAX Icon" > "Export" > "Export". Choose nif as file type and keep all Figment's export settings untouched except weld verts should be zero ( thats 0, not 0.001 or 0.010 or whatever... just 0). 7) Close MAX and open Outfit Studio. 8 ) Import any skinned vanilla mesh (doesn't matter which one, really) via the "Load Outfit" option. 9) In the same scene, import your MAX edited nif you just exported. 10) You'll notice your nif is much higher than the vanilla mesh. That's ok. 11) Delete any and all vanilla shapes, keeping only your edited meshes in the scene. 12) Export this as a new nif (we'll call this "A" for this tutorial). Close Outfit Studio (and BodySlide). 13) Open Outfit Studio, import your "A" nif via the "Load Outfit" option. 14) The following transform values are what I found to be the closest, but they are not exact. Play around with them anyway you want. - Select all shapes that make up your "A" nif and choose "Move Shape". - First do Z = -121 then hit "OK". Next again Z = +0.201 and also Y = +0.871 then hit "OK" - You might also try another method of transform found here (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5622/?) look for jet4571's post made on Feb 10th. That's it, the rest is just updating materials/textures/etc and also SubIndex (partition segments) in NifSkope. You can now freely edit this mesh in Outfit Studio for clipping and such or renaming reordering shapes, etc etc etc.

Good to know, jet. Haven't had that issue yet, but I will add this info to my tips n' tricks doc I'm compiling.

I think I know the problem, had the same issue myself. Likely one of the additions you made to your ini was the "invalidateolderfiles" thing, right ? Well, what that does is allow the game to load loose files. And its likely one or more of the mods you use involve textures, correct ? Well, for whatever reason (not sure exactly the format) the new patch will cause your game to crash if it tries to load textures that have formatting issues. Just a few examples that have been confirmed by multiple people are enhanced blood textures, settlement flag retextures and laser beam retextures. You might look into this. I'm sure the mod authors of the few files causing crashes either have updated their mods or are working on updating them, so maybe a simple update on your end is all that is needed. Again, not sure but you might look into that.

I'm glad to hear you're doing the testing like you mentioned. This, sadly, is the only 'real' way to learn - trial and error. Many things I've learned through rigorous testing. It can be frustrating, but once you conquer something - even something as little as textures/materials - you tend not to forget and grow stronger as a mod author ! ;) No problem, glad you got things working for now. Oh and thanks for supporting my mods all these years. Much appreciated !

That is good info ! I did not know that. Honestly, though, I just copy/paste a working/similar vanilla shader property over to my new nif and then just update names/paths. But still, good info aloot ! :)

Yes, there is no need really for assigning texture paths in Nifskope if you are using a Material file. As to Nifskope doing this automatically (if that's what you meant) - no, the current state of Nifskope for FO4 does not do this. I can change the Material path for a specific trishape all day long and the texture paths (purple gear, lol - I like that term now !) for that trishape will not be updated within Nifskope.

I wouldn't focus on the 'dds' (texture) files. If textures are missing or your material/nif points to one that does not exist, you'll just get a bright purple color on the model in-game. That's FO4's way of saying it can't find the referenced texture. But your problem isn't with missing textures, I think. You're more likely getting CTD because as I mentioned in the previous post - its the shader flags themselves. Now, it could very well be another issue - but I know lots of folks trying to edit material files and nif settings end up getting CTD because of minor oversights (and I've been one of them!). Here's what I would do: Open Material Editor and keep the program visible on one side of your monitor, then open Nifskope and keep it visible on the other side of your monitor. Now look through the Material File check boxes, being sure to examine each of the three tabs (general, material, effect) and take note of the check boxes. While doing this, glance over in NIfskope with the appropriate shader property selected and review the shader flags. If between these two they do not match, something needs to give. Not sure what your end goal is, but you'd want the material settings to match your shader settings for the nif. Again, not talking about texture paths - just shader flags (i.e, environment mapping, two-sided, skinned). Repeat this comparison for each material and matching shape in your nif. Also, not sure what program you use to edit/create textures - but I know the latest Bethesda patch is causing instant CTD for some users and its partly because of texture formatting. I can speak this truth, because my source of CTD after the patch was a simple little laser beam retexture mod. And many were saying their source of CTD was the Enhanced Blood mod or a settlement flag retexture mod. So something has changed after the patch where the game is treating certain texture formats differently (likely the CTD is due to improper formatting, but I haven't investigated it much).