gammaleak

Thanks for the feedback! I decided to use it. So far, game seems great and I have no complaints. :)

Very informative, everyone! Thank you for the insights.

OK, I think I've determined that the best thing is for me to just leave it alone. Balanced Creatures doesn't touch bandits/marauders, so if that's all I really want from NPC Static Levels, then they shouldn't interfere with each other. At least... I think so. Thanks so much for your help.

OK, sorry to belabor the point, I just want to make sure I understand. See, when I right-click on the Bashed Patch and choose "Rebuild Patch" it presents that window showing you what it's about to do. When I click on "Leveled Lists" in the left pane, neither of the two mods I'm concerned about show up as being pulled into the Bashed Patch. Is that because... a) They don't really interfere with each other, so WB doesn't need to bother? b) WB doesn't realize they might interfere and I need to do something to make sure WB knows this? I realize that without you inspecting those two mods you can't really answer definitively. And I don't expect you to do that. However, is "b)" a possibility? Or am I fine and I should just get back to playing? :smile: EDIT: OK... ugh. My ignorance is showing. So... apparently both mods are being merged. But strangely enough neither one shows up in the "Leveled Lists" section that talks about what's being merged. So strange. Well, not strange... it just means I don't know what I'm talking about or what's going on.

Interesting! Thank you! So, is LOOT officially the best thing to use now, then? I started my mod list based on Bevilex's list and he points you to BOSS. In any case... man... I guess I need to do more reading. I think the order of the mods is less important here than just, "Do they get merged? Should they get merged?" It looks like they do not. In the Bashed Patch details neither one is listed. This makes me fear that only one of them (In this case, Balanced Creature Stats) is "winning" the load order battle. But I don't really know enough about Leveled Lists and how Wrye Bash knows what to do with the mods in order to know for sure if I need to merge them. Maybe, at the end of the day, it would be hard to do much damage if I merged them anyway???

So... Wrye Bash is a great tool and, especially together with BOSS, seems to know what it's doing all by itself. But I was thinking about the different mods I have installed and I realized that I've got two that modify leveled lists and it doesn't seem to me that they're being merged. In particular, I'm trying to use these two mods Balanced Creature StatsNPC Static LevelMy main goals are: better curve on the game's leveling and no bandits/marauders with equipment I feel they really shouldn't have (daedric armor, etc.). Inspecting the CREA records through Wrye Bash shows that there's a little bit of overlap, so they must both be affecting the same leveled list. But Wrye Bash doesn't detect that the need to be merged. Maybe because Balanced Creature Stats is fairly new and not included in a database of "what to do with this mod"? I don't know. Anyway, I apologize for rambling, but I guess my question is: am I right in thinking that I need to manually mark both of those mods for merging? Also, do I need to start my game over (I'm only a few hours in) or will I probably be safe if I remerge my Bashed Patch with both of these in there?

That's sort of where I got with my research, but I was curious if there was something specific I needed to do so that there wasn't this weird "I took my shirt off" quest in the quest log. Or maybe that's unavoidable? :laugh:

Hi! I wanted a mod that removed my character's shirt when doing character generation at the beginning of the game. This will help in the creation of OCOv2 Seamless characters who have matching head and body texture colors. I've written a script that will probably do the trick. It's very simple. You can see it below. My question is: now what? I've gotten the impression that I need to attach it to an Object or something. But... which one? The real point of this is just to do this one thing at character generation, so.....???? I'm sorry I'm so newbs and helpless. The CSWIKI isn't helping me understand what I need to do here as there isn't really a tutorial on "Do this when a menu is open." -------------------------------------- ScriptName bdsscgRemoveSackClothShirt ; This script removes the Sack Cloth Shirt from the PC in the racesex menu (character ; generation menu). This is done to aid the player in creating a character whose head ; and body textures have matching colors. This is especially useful when the player ; has installed the OCOv2 and Seamless OCO mods. ; Variable to make sure the script runs but once. Short bDoOnce ; Start when the racesex menu comes up. Begin MenuMode 1036 ; Only do this once If ( bDoOnce == 0 ) ; Check to see if the PC is even wearing the shirt. If ( Player.GetEquipped LowerShirt05 ) ; Unequip it if we found it. Player.UnequipItemSilent LowerShirt05 1 EndIf ; Prevent the script from running again Set bDoOnce to 1 EndIf End ------------------------------------------------

I'm curious about people's thoughts on AV Uncapper. What's good about it? What's maybe not so good about it? Do you recommend it?

Thanks for the very helpful and kind reply! I'll spend some time this weekend figuring out CS. Hopefully it will be a relatively simple mod. :cool:

Thank you, Striker, for your further insights and for your kind comments! I didn't know about all that history with the EGTs and other attempts to fix them. I didn't even know it was called an "EGT," :laugh: So that was helpful. That's an interesting idea to design a face in the CS. I might give that a try sometime. For me, I "saw the light" when I realized that the same problem (texture color mismatches) existed in Vanilla Oblivion and that it wasn't because the mods weren't doing their job. Once I realized that, I was able to focus on mitigating that issue within the parameters of the system. And it seemed strange to me that no one else in the mod posts was mentioning this, so I thought I'd get my thoughts out there. Hopefully they can be helpful to others.

I'm looking for a mod that removes the character's clothes during the character generation process at the beginning of the game. I recently did a lot of work with figuring out how to get the whole OCOv2 / Seamless thing done correctly, and my research revealed that while Seamless does get rid of the problem with the 3D geometry, it doesn't really fix texture differences between head and body in the character generation. That's not really their fault, because even Vanilla Oblivion has the exact same problem (on top of the nasty geometry seams). So, you absolutely can get a "seamless" character, but you have to know what you're doing when adjusting the "Tone" sliders (see my post here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/8275908-cant-seem-to-make-neckseam-fix-work-anymore/&do=findComment&comment=76357263). And the only way to really be able to do this is if the character doesn't have a shirt on. I can't find a mod that removes the character's clothes during character generation (i.e., showracemenu), but maybe I just don't know where/how to find it? Any help would be nice. If there's nothing out there and I wanted to make a mod to do this... what's the best guide to learning Oblivion modding in general and OBSE (my guess is that OBSE is going to be the answer here)?

The instructions for setting up "Seamless" characters with OCOv2 are confusing, strung across multiple mod pages, and even contradictory (OCOv2 tells you to install body replacers before OCOv2, but Seamless - OCOv2 tells you not to do that with Roberts and implies you shouldn't do it with HGEC). It's such a total disaster that I spent hours the other day finally figuring out repeatable steps for getting it right every time. In short, this is the order you want to do things in. OBSE Blockhead Skeleton (I use Growlf's, but Coronerra's might work too) EVE_HGEC_BodyStock and Clothing Oblivion Character Overhaul v203 HGEC texture compatibility addon (from OCOv2) Roberts Male Body replacer texture compatibility addon (from OCOv2) SR- OCOv2 BAIN (from Seamless OCOv2) SE- HGEC CORE (from Seamless - HGEC) (OPTIONAL) SE-HGEC BBB all-in-1 SE- Robert Male v5.2 CORE for OCO (from Seamless - Robert Male) If you want an HGEC retexture, this is the place to put it, but test it out in case it doesn't work well with head/body skin tone changes. Any animations you want to add (but this is its own swamp of problems)If you do any gear replacers besides the above and/or after these steps, the neck seams are likely to return. This is sad because I really like Vanilla Gear Redux, but it doesn't work with the above. An exception might be "More Revealing Standard Armors" (which was made for EVE HGEC) but I've never tried it because in my personal, subjective opinion, armor that leaves your belly exposed is just silly (it isn't armor, it's metal lingerie). Turn off character self-shadowing. Other .ini changes or game video settings are not needed. Follow the steps above and it should work! But all that said, there's something that everyone who does this needs to know. The concept of "Seamless" necks is far--extremely far--from perfect. Yes, this will make sure that the 3D models' vertex normals all line up and you don't get any seam from the game's lighting. However no one has ever developed a perfectly seamless transition from neck to body textures. This is true in the Vanilla game with absolutely no mods and it's true after all the mods above, too. In fact, even the Seamless mod itself has very obvious "texture seams" on Orcs (really badly) and Elves (less so on the Wood Elf) right out of the box. These can be fixed (very carefully) with the sliders, but in general, if you start messing with any of the sliders in Face->Tone you can easily and absolutely find yourself with a gross mismatch in color between the head and the body. In other words, if you think the word "Seamless" means, "No matter how I mess with the sliders, the head and body textures will always match," then, unfortunately, you must know this is not true no matter what mods or lack of mods you have. Also, body texture replacers beyond those specifically in the list above (i.e., HGEC, Roberts) will rarely work well. I've only found one exception (Female Body Retextured by montegris) and even that one is more "fragile" than the basic HGEC texture (i.e., easier to get mismatched colors and less range of color possible). Some tips to getting the texture colors on head and body to match up correctly: a) To get this right, it's essential to be able to see what you're doing. When the character generation first starts up, just name the Imperial Male and choose him. Then immediately open your inventory and remove his prisoner's shirt. Close your inventory and then open the console and type showracemenu (and hit <Enter>). Close the console. Now you can create your character while clearly seeing the neck/body connection. b) Your very first thing should be to go to "Face" and then choose to "Reset." This drastically improves the initial condition of Orcs and Elves. Basically, it puts both the head and body textures in the same place (or very close to it). c) You will get into the most trouble if you mess with the Face->Tone->Eye sliders. For whatever reason, playing with these really tends to get the head's skin tone way out of sync with the body's skin tone. You can adjust the Face->Tone->Eye sliders, but only within very narrow ranges from the middle. d) Whenever adjusting any of the tone sliders, don't click/drag the slider and move it wildly left and right. You will get bad results quickly. Always adjust Tone sliders by clicking on the arrows on either side of the slider. You can make small adjustments and see how they are affecting the colors of the head and body together. e) Use your head a little bit. Look at your character and then look at the names of the different sliders. Depending on the skin tones you're seeing on both head and body, what slider is most likely to help the situation? Although the sliders can get you in trouble, they actually do what they say, so they can also help. Experiment with that (again, click the arrows, don't drag the slider!) and after a while you'll start to get a feel for what you need to do. f) One of the problems with this system Bethesda created is that you can get weird results sometimes with "in-between" values. So, let's say you recognize that to make your head and body match a little better, you need to click toward "Orange" on the Skin Tone slider that has that option. So you do that, but then the situation actually gets worse, and very confusingly, less orange. That is what I call an "in-between" value, because if you click again (more toward orange), suddenly the next value will do what you want and it will look great. I'm not sure why this happens, but it does. A lot. So sometimes just a few more experimental clicks one way or the other will tell you if you're on the right track or not. g) This is probably not very intuitive, but the Beard sliders (even with females!!) can be a big help. If you just can't seem to get the colors right with the skin tone sliders alone, try playing with the Beard sliders a little and you can usually get it. That's about all the advice I think I can give. Hopefully it helps! Happy gaming and modding!