Naturlich68

Yep, that fixed it fully, all NPCs "normal" (vanilla) in the clean install, but look like I made them when I transfere it to my game install, Thanks again!!

Thankyou Hangman! I decided that it was far better to carry out a second "clean" installation of Skyrim rather than messing with my game setup, and although all the NPCs now look rather freaky compared to on my game setup, they do now have proper faces! So, I'll copy the data from the clean install to my game install and hopefully everything should be fine, or atleast, I'll go see what they look like lol

sorry m8, I don't believe this is something you can do through console, only by changing the values in creation kit or probably tes5edit

I'll give that a try, I didn't install any, but I know some mod races that I have put some in there, thanks for the tip :)

I can't really give you an answer since we have different specs, that said last week I got myself an MSI GTX560Ti 1Gb /OC, my cpu is a Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.6Ghz and 4 gb DDR3 1333 @ 1066. It's well known that skyrim doesn't use more than 2 cores anyway, so the main thing on the CPU is speed not cores, but also skyrim only really passes Shadows to the CPU. with that out of the way, I run at around 50-60fps with ultra textures and High on everything else, with the view distance sliders maxed on everything. This is WITHOUT HD textures or ENB, and infact I have compressed my textures so I can install HD textures for things I want, like skins, and not fill up my vram and force skyrim to use system cache, thats bad lol In my experience the CPU hasn't been the limiting factor, the amount of vram was. Before I updated to the 560ti I was running crossfired HD4870's, but only the 512mb versions, the cards are very fast, but the lack of vram was causing alot of HD caching, so slowing the game down, but in 3DMark Vantage they were happily scoring 14k on the GPU tests, only 3k or so less than my 560ti, but 3DMark doesn't use as much vram as Skyrim ;) so, my thoughts are that you should be OK with ENB OR HD, but possibly not both (the 2gb vram should be very helpful), even so, you have the system now, so you get to try it out and post what you find :) Nat

oh, you can try exporting the facegendata and it might fix it for you, here's a guide: I started with the grey face bug, so I used the bug fixes I found on google to export the facegen data, that resulted in what you (and I) have now, grey faces with lines on them, but maybe it'll work for you. Nat

This is EXCATLY the problem I'm having with custom NPCs in my mod. Every time I export the facegendatat the textures are corrupted like this, tried so often and always get the same rubbish! Fingers crossed there's a fix that gets posted for us!!

Thats cool :) though you can ofcourse see the problem with this can't you. If I create a race and alter a default files to include my race as a vampire, then bill over there makes his own race, and mods the same files to include his race as a vampire... next Ted comes along and downloads both races, only 1 of them will function as a vampire, the last race he downloaded. See I've just started over with Skyrim, and am playing as a race I downloaded some time ago, I have a number of mod races and couldn't tell you which was the last I downloaded, if each race modified a default file this way, only the last race installed would work as a vampire, so I'm yet to see what happens when I become a vampire this time round, though I don't expect there will be any issues since I use Better Vampires. So it's really good work in following the scripts through to find the solution for yourself, but probably still needs more work to make sure that all custom races play nicely together as vampires. Have you tried using the Better Vampires function to enable an addon race to function as a vampire? It seems to be a better method if it's working because it should make the needed changes for the race you are currently using as a player and so isn't affected by modders altering a default file, and infact if Better Vampires makes the same changes to the current player race as you are making, your mod would actually break Better Vampires if I installed your race. Just some thoughts anyway :) :thumbsup: Nat

The last report I read on the Nexus here frmo yesterday was that there was no more Skyrim work being done :( Thanks DKM, might have to look into that :)

Cool, so we know for sure your system can handle skyrim, not sure about that graphic card though, so it sounds like it's onboard? They aren't usually the best solution, but as I said I've found Skyrim runs very well on most systems, and with 1.7gb vram thats handy too. I figure going through the optimasation mods listed above should help, but it might also be worth running a benchmark like 3DMark Vantage to gauge your system. Still, without optimisation mods there are alot of ini file tweaks that can be done that would really help, I don't have a link handy but if you google it you should find some really good tweak guides out there :)

essentially yes, but I'm also thinking of completely new areas, there really is only so often you can run around the same map with no more quests to do.. "Hey got this new sword, lets see how well it will kill yet another wolf" It seems making a new land isn't really a big deal, but when you add the quests, buildings, people and so on, it's a big project needing 5-10 people working to a common goal, I know it can be done as I've been a part of similar projects. Heck it can even start with some one just making a new land and publishing it for other modders to add and expand upon, I just know that Skyrim now needs something more than a new player house, armor, weapon, spell to keep some life in it :) I guess I might just have a go at making a real landscape and see what comes from it, Hammerfell might be interesting as it has alot of story behind it to build upon, dunno, just know that small mods don't expand the life of a game by much.

I was wondering, is there any consensus within the community to create it's own DLC? I come from a background of creating large addon packs for flightsims, created within our community as there was no support what so ever for the sim and we expanded the game well beyond it's original concept and infact achieved many things that the original programmers said couldn't be done, my "happy time" lol So, whilst there are many good mods for Skyrim, there are few that really add experience to the game as such, Tropical Skyrim and Maids are 2 good examples though, infact Tropical would have been great if done as Valenwood rather than a rework of Skyrim, but understandably this was too much for the author to undertake on his own, but with a few extra people working together there could have been a full expansion to rival any dlc. The life of a game is with the mod community, so, anyone/group working on a serious addon, or are we staying with small mods? Thoughts/ideas? Nat

I use Project Optimisation, I guess it helps, but since it's indoors where FR is usually better anyway.. but having it optimise interior cells is a good thing so it's worth having. One big problem I found that can seriously hit FR are textures, so I use Optimizer Textures by AdPipino http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/12801 I think it's an excellent program and really makes a big difference in my own experience. As an example, I've just started the game over from the beginning, but using Tropical Skyrim, and it killed my frame rate. Thing was, it was filling the RAM on my graphic card because it uses textures that have little or no compression, and LOTS of them. I ran the textures through Optimiser set to medium with mipmaps and I went for a crippling 10-15fps to a usable (though still slow) 20-30fps. Point is, thats a big gain for a heavy duty mod. You can run Optimiser to optimise all your textures and also textures in BSA files, and it will backup your current files for you in case you have issues. Seriously, give it a go. It would be helpful though, if you could tell us your basic system specs, ie: CPU RAM Graphic Card Graphic Card RAM size Contrary to popular belief, Skyrim runs amazingly well on low end machines, but once you start putting in the mods you can get really bad performance issues, and also if you're a high level character (ie lots of play hours), lots of clutter can build up, even stuff you are carrying or having loads of stuff stored, and all that can add to slowdown. Nat

Hey Migit As a quick tip for you with aligning parts, I also found that snap to grid isn't really effective, but there are a couple of things you can do to help, the main one, is when you put the 2nd part into CK, you get it as close to lined up as you can, but it doesn't quiet fit properly, double click the part in the render window, you then get a popup window with the part data, well, in the 3D tab you have x/y/z co-ords listed there. You can change the numbers and the part will move by that amount. so if you're a little off on the x axis, you can raise or lower the x-axis number a little until you get it spot on. another tip would be with the 1st part, change the 3D co-ords to exact numbers aswell to make it easier, so forinstance the Z co-ord will always be the same for each part and only the X Y might change. Anyway, have a play with the co-ords, it's a massive help with getting things lined up. I'm not at home right now, but if you need images to show you what I'm saying let me know and I'll do a couple later. Nat

oh I do like that :)

better vampires http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9717 number 1 in the search results

we need a "Like" button :) But I whole heatedly agree, no matter your taste, there's a mod here for everyone to enjoy, so a big thanks also goes to Nexus for having a home for all this talent :)

Just to add, if you really need a place thats split up into cells with load door, Underground Bathhouse has a version that has had this done to it and there is enough space inside for multiple followers :)

Sadly with optimisation, no, it's not something you can do, it's done when creating the mod. It's adding things like room boxes with portals and adding occlusion planes, in their own ways they stop whats not in view from being rendered so that a big area doesn't hammer the machine of the person using your mod, and ofcourse being careful with lighting and clutter/vegitation helps alot also. Some of it is unavoidable if the person making the mod wants his/her area to look fantastic, fantastic looking usually means people like you and me simply can't use it. Ofcourse the cheap and nasty way around doing all the optimisation is to use lots of load doors and separate cells every area... so then we spend more time in load screen hell than in the area itself! I'm not suggesting optimisation will fix all our woes, but spending time and effort on it before releasing a mod would certainly help. For example, my lowly machine used to be able to play Syrim with amazing detail settings, I was always massively impressed at how well a game like this played, and I've seen it play well on worse PCs than mine! But, since installing mods, thats changed, I've had to do some serious tweaking of all my ini files and my system itself to keep Skyrim playable (these are tweaks anyone can do to help). Removing some castle and dungeon mods did help alot though recently. As for followers, my Lakeview is full of them!! Hence the need for more space lol I don't think poly count is the major problem (though that depends on your graphic card really), it's more likely down to skin textures, if you use addon races/followers that are using larger textures, or you use a high detail texture that they share, that can really cause issues with alot of followers in view at the same time. I ran a texture optimiser through Skyrim to compress all the textures, it was from Nexus. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/12801 That helped me keep better quality skins and still keep the load on my graphic card down. Btw, my modding experience only comes from a Flightsim called Screamin Demons Over Europe, Unreal Tournament and UT2003 and Battlefield Vietnam, so I'm not entirely up to date lol But from all you've said, I certainly would like you to try my mod out and give feedback, because although I've tried to make the place look good and be a larger living area for groups of followers, I've also tried to make sure it's REALLY usable by people like you and me as well. So with that, I'll release it around 7ish tonight regardless. It probably wont be in a fully polished state, but mods are never really finished lol and feedback will help guide me more.

I think you'll find that more often than not this problem can be solved through optimisation. My system isn't "upto spec" anymore really, and I hate buildings with lots of load doors because then I spend all my time waiting for the next area to load, then the next, and back again, and so on, so frustrating, but a place causing constant lag can be just as bad! The place I'm hopefully going to release later today is a fairly big place with sleeping space for 17, and 4 coffins (not honestly sure is NPC's use coffins), and sufficient space for them to move around in. There are a number of areas in the mod, and aslong as you're in the Dark Brotherhood you can use them all, even if your not you should be able to use Davokiin's room without the guards feeling the need to behead you lol. I've tried my best to optimise the place, and as a level 1 player (using COC from load screen to test the place) I get no problems with performance, when I use it with my level 91 character I get some of those annoying game stutters around wall torches and the few shadow casting lights, so I may swap out the torches for wall scones instead. I've split the place up with room boxes and then occlusion planes inside rooms so I'm confident that this large place wont make a large hole in any ones FPS, but that remains to be seen I guess when it's released, I am a beginner and mistakes are probable lol but I have put alot of work into it. My system specs are Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.4Ghz, 2x HD4870 512mb crossfire, 4gb (3 usable) DDR3 So, I'd say to other beginners, and probably some experienced modders also, to forget how good their own PC is, and hammer away at optimisation. Beautiful places are only beautiful the first couple of times you look at it, after that they are work places that people want to use, spend some time on making it run as smoothly as you can and strike a balance :) Hey though Counciler, I'll be looking for particular feedback from you once it's released! Nat

Hi Guys So I've gone through exporting the facegen textures for the NPCs I created in my Cell, but they are all corrupt. They look like a fully greyish texture with bars straight across the top of them, and this is now exactly how they look in game, so I know that the export worked as such, but the textures are useless. Is there a work-around or a fix for this? Just to be clear I've followed the instructions on exporting the facegen data, going to the correct folder in the object tree, not using a filter etc, I even then tried finding each npc in the tree ie male nord folder with my npc and exporting from there, but I get the same results, textures exported but bugged. I'd greatly appreciate any help. Nat

My experience is you can only have 4 shadow casting lights "in view" at any one time, which is why they can seem to go on and off rather than the same 4 always being light, as you're view changes a different 4 can be in view. The shadow caster can be a big performance hit so it's probably not a bad idea the way they've done it, but it does mean you have to think more carefully about light placement and you wont always get the atmosphere you were looking for.

Well you know Force, we just keep plugging away at it, you'll get there in the end :) For my part, I have managed to get my Bard working in my custom cell! The problem wasn't with the Bard, she was setup right as per this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4r23zAhO0s The video is a start and helps in as far as it goes, but it doesn't cover putting a bard in a custom cell. My problems was I hadn't setup my location properly, to be exact, I hadn't used an XMarkerHeading as a CenterMarker properly, so the changes I made to the location to list it as an inn were ignored. It's possible that others have setup their cells correctly from the start and wont hit my problem, but being a beginner, well, mistakes happen.. So, to fix my problem, I had to drop an XMarkerHeading in my cell, and change it's Location Ref Type to "LocationCenterMarker" and hit OK. Then, in Object Window, go to worldData/Location and find your cells Location Marker, double click it to bring up it's window Under World Location Marker Ref, click Select Reference in the popup window you need to select your cell in the Cell dropdown menu, then hit OK. (Dont worry that it doesn't list it on the left, it will show up on the right under Loc Ref Type). Last thing is under Keywords on the bottom left, make sure you have added LocTypeInn Once you have that all set, and you created a bard as per the video, you should now have a singer in your cell :) Hope this helps you out at least a little m8, or anyone else that has the same issues that I had, and thanks for the thread and dwiss for tips and advice :) Still keeping an eye on your thread though, lets see what other usefull info can come out of it :)

I'm on dwiss's "crawl, walk, run" ladder, somwhere between crawl and walk LOL So I'm very likely no help when it comes to scripts, I'm learning all the time, no doubt as you are Force, but I'm concentraing on what I can do now and learn the harder stuff as I get more confident with the "easy" stuff

a worthwhile endevour for sure :)