DWooT

Thanks again. The picture I posted was a working draft to see it all combined and to tinker. I'll be breaking it back out when/if I move forward with the idea. I don't currently have 3DS Max so I have to figure out my options in that regard.

Thanks for the advice. I read a lot of forums and watched quite a few videos. It looks like I'm definitely not up for merging meshes and completely re-doing textures and UV maps. The most I may try is what you described above. It won't really reduce the total memory size concerns though.

So my main question is this: What can I do to optimize my mash-ups? I've been doing a lot of tinkering in Outfit Studio to make mash-up outfits for NPCs for a few mods I've published, mods for personal use, and drafts for upcoming mod ideas. But I was not paying keen attention to the size of the textures I was using or the number of different textures that went into each mash-up. Here's a very quick, rough, and very, very early draft of a mash-up I am working. It is "bare" and doesn't have all the extras I intend to add to it. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-j8D-o5MnZpN1VpUmpmSDF5enc I have intentionally left the colors mismatched until its closer to what I want so I can see the original shapes easier. Most of the textures to the shapes (meshes) in this mash-up are 4K. So the size adds up pretty quick. One of the contributing mod authors suggested I should consider merging the meshes and re-doing the textures and UV maps. That all sounds well outside my recently learning to dabble in Outfit Studio and just barely tweaking _d.dds in GIMP. So any help or suggestions or where to get started would be appreciated. Am I going to have to go all-in and merge meshes, textures, and UV maps or are there some other steps I can take to optimize the mash-ups? If I have to go all-in, where in the world do I start? Thanks in advance for anyone patient and generous enough to throw some advice my way.

I'm attempting to work with the Synth Uniform for one of my many mash-ups and parts of the arms (upper) and the legs (thighs) have parts of the mesh and textures missing from vanilla. And this also occurs in many of the mod author texture replacers for the uniform, though not all of them. (1) How does the vanilla mesh/textures have missing parts but displays whole in-game? (2) How do I work a mash-up when parts of the mesh are not there?

Thanks for the info on NMM vs MO.

Thanks. I've been on NMM since the beginning (yeah, really long ago, about 1.5 months). I just tried tonight tinkering a little with the NMM profiles. Not sure if I like the constant "bouncing" back-and-forth of the data directory. I may give the more "complex-trick" approach a try.

For those of you creating your own mods or testing other peoples mods, how do you create a pristine testing environment? Or in other words, how do I keep my personal game and all its mods separate from a baseline/vanilla game with only the mods I'm testing? Or in other-other words, is there a way for me to have two copies of FO4 (both on one computer, not boot-leg, only purchase one copy of the game) and two copies of NMM so I can manage things completely separate?

Well, he is well within his right to take them down but I have to admit I was rather irritated, I understand his motivations behind it but it still felt like a middle finger to the people who were fans of his mods. If the fans like that guy @OiramX5, then the middle finger will be the right respond. And right you are! I don't understand the entitlement mentality of Fans. I'm a big fan of your stuff. But I came too late to the game so missed out on your mods and thus all the many retextures of your mods too. But I feel it is wrong to go hunt for a boot-leg of your mods to feed my own wants. And those fans turning admiration into venting against the mod author makes absolutely no sense. If you ever change your mind and bring your mods back to the Nexus I'll be one of the first to download. If not, well that is your right as a mod author and I'm not going to go around that. Just wanted to let you know that not all of us fans are created alike.

I did something similar. First time trying to move stuff around instead of blending meshes. How do you "weight" something to the bones? OK. Read forums in Bodyslide/Outfit Studio and re-read Readme. Staring me right in the face. Select Shape/Mesh. Right-Click. Copy Bone Weights.

That sounds promising. I may give that a try. Perhaps I've been over-thinking the whole thing. I've just barely dabbled with quests, packages, and such so I haven't wrapped my mind on how all the pieces fully interact and work. That's why I was trying to stick to the original "design" if I could.

I have finally successfully added two caravan guards to Trashcan Carla's caravan. I did so without needing to edit any scripts. I only needed to edit the quests and packages that called the scripts (plus all the fun worldspace, location, npc stuff). Everything works fine for a new game. But I have been struggling how to figure out how to add the two guards for games in progress while keeping the code for a new game. I attempted to copy&tweak the original caravan quests and packages. Then hoped I could manually startquest or resetquest using the console for my new quests. But neither startquest or resetquest has any effect on my new quests. I have posted my current plugin to google drive. If there is anyone who could lend me some help it would be greatly appreciated. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-j8D-o5MnZpVW9tV2tNcVRYUVU Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks.

Thanks. I understood those warnings but not the first three warnings in my post. I just did not know why these weren't functioning and I knew that I could NOT set them to Optional. That would have allowed the Quest to run but it would have then ignored/not fixed my two new NPCs. I needed to fix them. I was just distracted by those other warnings and wondered if they could be the source of my troubles. Instead, I found my bug. I sloppily forgot to add the Unique Actor to the Alias. I had Alias ID, Alias Name, and Alias Packages but forgot the Unique Actor (ALUA). Once I put those into the Quest, the thing FINALLY worked. I still get those other three warnings but it seems from other posts that I should just ignore those.

These warnings are complaining about the two NPCs I tried to add. Or in this case the REFs to the two NPCs I tried to add. I need to understand what the actual warning means to see if it is why my mod is not working.

I have been trying miserably to add extra guards to Trashcan Carla's caravan. Mainly because the CK crashes if a butterfly flaps its wings too hard in Asia. So I've been trying to do things mainly from F04Edit and just load my plugin into the CK the minimal possible. I thought I finally had gotten all of the pieces of the puzzle. Location, Worldspace, NPC Actor, Quests, and Packages. But my changes still are not working in-game. Upon loading (making File:Data:Active) my plugin the CK is giving these warnings. So it obviously sees something I mangled or missed in FO4Edit. But I do not know what the warnings mean. Any help would be most appreciated! What do these CK warnings mean? MASTERFILE: <CURRENT> LCTN 'POIJeffB04Location' (000DC941) Ref 'TCGuard02REF' (02000819) uses location but is not in the unloaded ref data. MASTERFILE: <CURRENT> LCTN 'POIJeffB04Location' (000DC941) Ref 'TCGuard01REF' (02000818) uses location but is not in the unloaded ref data. MASTERFILE: <CURRENT> LCTN 'POIJeffB04Location' (000DC941) Warnings were encountered validating unloaded ref data for Location 'POIJeffB04Location' (000DC941). Here a google drive link to my .ESP: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-j8D-o5MnZpeTc5UmZjZDRkdUE Opening ... in the Warnings Pop-up, I selected all but CURRENT and clicked hidden. This hid all of the damn vanilla warnings and I found these extra Warnings for my plugin. But I think they are broken because of the warnings I'm asking about above. QUESTS: <CURRENT> QUST 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB) Alias 101 is non-optional and Forced to NONE. This quest cannot start. QUESTS: <CURRENT> QUST 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB) Warnings were encountered initializing alias 'TCGuard01' on quest 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB). QUESTS: <CURRENT> QUST 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB) Alias 102 is non-optional and Forced to NONE. This quest cannot start. QUESTS: <CURRENT> QUST 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB) Warnings were encountered initializing alias 'TCGuard02' on quest 'CaravanBase' (000DC8FB).

Make the potion equip the "monster outfit" and then later unequip and delete the outfit? What is your concept of what happens to their gear during the change? The hulk usually is not wearing anything more than clothes and pretty much destroys those during his change.

I'm not sure about changing meshes. But a simpler approach may be to make an Armor/Outfit that gives that full look. That would be fairly easy to create. It would also make it easy to give stats of armor so your "hulk" did not lose out on protection.

Looking in F04Edit, that ARMO record points to ARMA FC101 AAClothesMobsters2. The ARMA points to Clothes\Mobsters\2MobsterSuitM.nif and ...F.nif. Opening the male or female .NIF with NifSkope, it points to Materials\Clothes\Mobsters\Mobsters2.BGSM. Opening the .BGSM with Materials Editor, it points to clothes/mobsters/mobster2_d.dds, _n.dds, and _s.dds. In addition, points to Mobster2_palette_d.DDS. If you're not seeing any of those then you may need to extract data from the games .BA2(s). To do so use the Archive2 tool provided by the CK and located in Fallout4\Tools\Archive2. I hope that is what you were looking for.

Actually I just found a video that does a simple quest and puts an NPC in it. So combining what I saw there and your note about "rt click > Use info" it seems that Carla is put into the world space at an initial location. That must be what "instantiates" Carla thus creating her REF. That location also shows her Brahmin. Applying the same logic, I looked up one of the caravan guards for Lucas Miller. And found a location that Lucas, his guards, and his brahmin shared. So it seems the missing piece that I kept mangling was that I needed to add my two new guards to the worldspace. Then my other changes to quests, packages, ... should work. I'm going to go give that a try when I get a chance and see if that finally gets me working. Addendum... Tried doing so in CK and CK is such a buggy beast that keeps crashing. Though before crashing the CK was helpful with that "rt-click > Use Info" option. Opened FO4Edit and found what I believe I need in the Location=POIJeffB04Location. There are Location Cell Persistent Reference and Location Cell Unique. Both I need to add my new guards and I should be good to go. Thanks again to EveningTide for giving me their time and inputs :)

If she is a persistent actor, how is that done? I'm trying to add guards to her caravan and my guards never seem to be created even though I made them "I thought" in the same fashion as the other caravan guards. I created new NPC records. I added aliases and such in the associated quests and packages. But when I check sqv for those quests the REF for my new guards are always = NONE. Meaning I'm missing something somewhere. And you have been a help. Sometimes just sounding things out with someone gets the brain working instead of endlessly spinning in terrible directions.

Thanks. That was my understanding. But if that is accurate, I still need to find where the Ref is created. So does the Quest in the ESP that calls the QF_CaravanTradePOstCarla_001E07A9.psc instantiate/create the Reference or perhaps the Quest CaravanBase or its Script CaravanBaseScript? It is frustrating that something that should be obvious is stumping me so badly. Guess I'm extra rusty from my old programming days before I semi-retired and became a stay-at-home dad. I have tried to add debug code to the Scripts, re-compiled in the CK, made sure the CK File:Preferences:Scripts=Debug but I still get no debug code out. I do verify that new output compiled scripts are created. I don't know if the CK will compile the vanilla scripts in debug or if its ignoring my settings.

Finally found it. Saw a reference to changing settings on the Differences from Skyrim to Fallout 4 CK wiki page. Then googled script preferences tab. Guess I was brain dead when I looked at the File:Preferences window and did not click over far enough to see the Scripts tab.

In my continued attempts to figure out how all of the pieces are put together in the Scripts & Quests & Packages I have the following question... Does the script listed below create the NPC Reference or simply utilize a Reference already created? I believe it is the latter. QF_CaravanTradePostCarla_001E07A9.psc I have not included the code as it is the vanilla code found in "Scripts\Source\Base\Fragments\Quests\" and I was uncertain it was allowed to post the contents of the script in the forums. If it does not create the Reference, could someone point me in the direction of how to hunt down where the NPC is "instantiated"? I have been working with the various "...Caravan..." quests, packages, and scripts trying to figure stuff out and keep missing some vital piece of the puzzle.

How do I set the CK to compile scripts in debug? I looked at the wiki and several other places. They refer to needing to change config to compile in debug but don't actually state how to change the config.

I've been using the other three traveling traders for comparison. They are all set-up nearly identical and almost matching Carla. In fact they pretty much use the same scripting. It looks like the two guards were "removed" from Carla at some point considering the similarities. So at first it seemed straightforward to add the guards to CaravanBase Quest, the CaravanTradePostCarla Quest, and the various associated Packages (CaravanCarlaMove##Package, Heading, Rest). All without needing to edit the scripts. The biggest difference is Carla had the extra CarlaStayPackage, CarlaBrahminFolowPackage, and CarlaPatrolPackage. But having worked all of the above I'm still failing somewhere. I really wanted to get this to work in order to make my upcoming "Carla's Caravan" mod more interesting and closer to the same style as my other mods. Guess I'll experiment and beat my head against the wall some more.