RoNin1971

I bet you are using pynifly. As nice as it is to have, it comes with flaws & a stubborn author. 1. It only looks at the texture set, ignoring the material. 2. it expects the textures\blah\blah.dds files to be relative to the path of the mesh, truncated at .\Data\ 3. it does not check if the texture is actually there, nor does it use the path set for textures in blender. Note: Only opaque textures turn black, anything with transparency turn completely invisible. I reported all of this long ago and told author the textures fail frequently, especially as I keep my own nifs separate while working on them, but still use vanilla materials & textures. But that's where textures should/must be according to the author. Afaik, a full path doesn't work any better. It cuts everything before & up to the \Data\ and replaces it with the one from the mesh. The game-engine does a similar thing. (Some vanilla nifs contain full paths and they still work, although the path does not exist) Re-linking the right dds files is a "working solution" within blender, BUT keep in mind that although the materials are not used/displayed it does store them on import and re-adds them on export. Changing the texture this way will be a "problem waiting to happen" as you will get to see the textures from the material everywhere, instead of the one you added to the texture set. I usually import a nif after making sure a material is present, preferably, and a texture set to correspond with it (mandatory). (which both is not always the case) In case of sets, I now put them inside my exported data folder (on a separate drive, not under fallout install) I import one. Make sure the textures are ok and rename the .mat to match the texture name. Then import the rest and set the texture .mats to the same ones. So they all use the same .mat for the same texture. Saves a lot of copies & clutter. Change one and you change all. Otherwise you'll have a truckload of *.mat.001 to *.mat.999. Sometimes (especially on individual nifs) I just replace the material node for a correct one using Nifskope afterwards. Keep in mind that nifskope, CK & the game will all ignore any textureset unless no material is set. This is the 'reverse' of what you get in Blender! Edit: BTW do not copy/paste but create duplicates. When you copy a mesh blender will also copy the material & texture. Leaving you with long lists of copies. When using duplicate, it uses the same as original. Saving you from the clutter.

The statement is a bit outdated, agreed. Haven't tested with my current setup (2x Samsung 990 Pro 2TB (7450 MB/s read)), but got nothing to compare it to anyway. It loads a lot faster as on my previous rig, which had SSD's as well, but a lot slower. Those definitely took longer to load as my PC before that, which still had HDD's. Let's just say it doesn't load as fast as it should be able to with SSD's. 7450 MB/s vs 286.8MB/s for the fastest seagate HDD, that's over 25 times faster, not 2 ...

Why would you? There is no reason for that. Start of on your own and try to learn what you need to do. Modding can be hard work. A big "DLC sized" mod especially so. It can be as stressful as it is rewarding and satisfying (when it finally works). It requires dedication & determination, for years. Especially when working with a group. You need lots of experience and knowledge before starting on something really big, or if working alone you can learn on the job, but be prepared to start over. More then once. Best to cut it all down to a few basics. Need custom characters? Create one (a mod with just that) Need assets? Learn to make 'm. Need 'm buildable? create a (small) workshop mod. Create a settlement mod. Etc. Yes, it will take time to do all that and your real work hasn't started yet, but you will have the knowledge to actually do it and a lot faster too. Meanwhile others get to see what you can do and who knows, they might want to join you.

Most of it doesn't have any. Not sure what's used for trees and stuff. edit: They (tree trunks) show up red with CK, so that might be regular statics. (should work in anycase, but they will be just that. Static. No swaying with the wind).

About what? "A DLC sized mod" should not be "THE" goal. "Oh, it doesn't matter, as long as its big" doesn't work. So you must have some kind of idea you wish to create and how, etc?

instead of trying to find a modern game which is similar in performance (that's going to be very hard), I believe it would be better to look at what FO4 actually needs, and more importantly, uses. A modern game will utilize my i9 14900K's 24 cores, FO4 will only use 4 out of those (afaik). So, a CPU with less but faster cores, will do better, but also makes any comparison moot. FO4 loads a lot faster from a good ol' harddrive instead of (much faster) SSD's. On the GPU front anything higher as the 'recommended' will do, unless you want to play around with 4K or even 8K textures. Your GPU's memory should be the decisive factor in that case. For using all kinds of shaders and/or ENB's you don't really have to look at anything, after fulfilling the above. Unless you wish to turn on "Godrays" (don't ) You really need to buy something very cheap, not to be able to play a 10 years old 3D game in ultra settings.

That might be right. I'm pretty sure the 3D models they use are way more complex as the FO4 ones, so don't worry about that. My 2070Super could handle FO4 on ultra without breaking a sweat. It's when you load it up with 4K textures and an ENB where it will fall short. I'm sure a 4080super will have no trouble with that AND a bunch of 8K textures, just like my 4090.

Yeah. That still got me 'shocked'. If anything, the NG version should have fixed the loading speeds/issues, but even that was to much to ask. In general one should keep in mind the game/engine was never designed or optimized for todays hardware and their capabilities, so its never going to utilize all of it (correctly).

That's because the older games can't handle all those cores. They only use a few. The faster each CPU-core the better the game performs, in those cases. & FO4 actually is pretty bad with SSD's. It can't handle the speed. Consequently loading can take forever.

You would be correct, IF resolution was all there is to it. But it isn't. I'm actually running FO4 on the latest i9 with a 4090 & some of the fastest RAM & SSD's. My screen is an ultra-wide 3440x1440. (45") - (I use it for 3D modeling and stuff too) Trust me, I'm using all the power they have to give. (although the CPU never gets fully utilized) Why? Because I'm using 4 & 8K textures and the highest possible settings on my ENB. In vanilla mode I can hit 10.000 fps, but I can still bring it down to below 60fps by going for the max. in quality. edit: I actually started playing FO4 on a 780M (2016/17), which was already sufficient to run it in (vanilla) ultra mode. Switched to the 2070Super in between, which couls easily hit 2300fps in vanilla ultra mode, but still could not handle my current settings & textures.

Not that I'm aware of. I would definitely love to have it, since I've been working on way over 500 models (nifs) with an average 10 to 15 'parts' (TriShape data with a material) just for my Vault Pieces mod alone. (I've got at least one more mod (in development) with a similar amount.) Switching to 3DS isn't going to help you in any way for that matter. I only use it to create collisions, but there are ways to do without. As for the mesh part... pynifly doesn't do so bad, compared to the 'official plugin'. edit: I should add - The official plugin for 3DS can ONLY export a nif. To import one into 3DS you need another plugin (I believe I've got the niftools one currently). Those import plugins are never perfectly importing each and every detail from a nif. Since you can't get all the data in(put), its impossible to get it out(put).

Sounds good. You could just copy/paste the two NiNodes for the collision & helper to make it complete. (but only if the model still matches those. Otherwise you need to add something new.) As for the Wet Material. This is one of those things I dislike about pynifly. It is focused on clothing, like Outfit Studio. Not on general assets like walls. This gets worse with each update. Although it should not crash the game and you might hardly notice the difference, I do recommend swapping the OutfitTemplate with the original WoodTemplate.

Weird. There are 2 main differences visible here. 1: the copy does not have the "Wet Material" template assigned. I don't recall the lack of one could cause a CTD, but you could try adding that one. 2: Environment mapping has been added to the "Shader Flags 1" property, as well as a texture (cubemap). Why? this is only needed for shiny/reflective objects (glass, chrome, water) Adding the environment mapping to the nif could cause some trouble if the original material (bgsm) used does not. CTD? not sure, but you should definately remove that one as it has no use with a piece of wood. Imho. Its always best to keep the settings inside the material file & the nif exactly the same. (so, open up that BGSM and make sure the nif corresponds with that.) Not even Beth did that for all assets, so usually it should not cause (too much) trouble, but lets not use the poor handling of assets from Beth as an example of 'good practice'

It absolutely shouldn't. It's just a reference. Therefor the material itself can not give 2 different results. Did you compare the other settings for the BSLightingShaderProperty like Shader Flags 1 & 2 etc.? edit: & (if all is the same) what happens if you just delete the shaderProperty and copy/paste it from the original?

Well, actually, that is correct. Within Skyrim just pressing prt.scrn works just fine. Somehow it knows how to circumvent the snipping tool, or perhaps the key is set as default for screencaptures in Skyrim but not Fo4(? to lazy to check right now). This was not the case in the past. Anyway, to me it seems CTRL+Prt.Scrn should solve the "problem" for topic author.