Baelkin

I think this is a mod installation issue. Custom models/meshes/new items showing up as triangles/warning signs with a big exclamation mark in-game indicates that while the mod's .esp works as intended and is installed to the correct folder, the path to the models referenced from it are not where they are supposed to be in the Data folder substructure. Make sure that you have unpacked all the content from a mod zip/rar/7z archive into the correct place and not just the .esp file - sometimes you accidentally only unpack part of an archive and can't figure out why it won't work and then you realize you only unpacked half of it. :) As for the models appearing red in the GECK, this typically happens if you haven't unpacked the Textures.bsa archive in the Data folder. The GECK can't find the files in this case and just shows the texture as a flat red color as this is the default color used for meshes missing their texture - mind this is only in the GECK as the game itself simply reads the Textures.bsa archive and fetches the textures from there instead.

You can use both, but FOMM, opposed to the default launcher, remembers information about what mods you are using as well as allowing you to setup the mod load order and other operations that allows you to run mods much more smoothly. In addition, some mods require FOSE (Fallout Script Extender) which now "ships" with FOMM, meaning you are not likely to run into a mod that cannot be run due to you not having FOSE installed. :) So in short, get FOMM and learn to love it - it's much better than the default launcher for modding purposes.

While the problem has been resolved, I'd try running the game at a different resolution just to check if it happens in different resolutions as well. The system might be having trouble generating the proper screendump output at that resolution for whatever reason and it's nice to know whether it's just an anomaly or something that happens consistently (Maybe try taking a screenshot in a different game as well just to check if it's Fallout 3 that's acting up).

Personally I think UAC is a load of dung unless you have a bad habit of not running Anti-spyware and Anti-virus software without a Firewall on your system, in which case disabling UAC should be the least of your worries. ;D You can easily re-install the game and resume progress on your saved games as long as you keep the saves in the same place and don't delete them at un-installation (I think the uninstaller will ask you if you want to keep the save games, so don't worry about that). Normally on Vista your savegames should be located in the "Vista_Install_Directory:\Users\profilename\documents\MyGames\Fallout3\Saves" folder and the game points at this location no matter where it's installed on the system. As far as DLC's go, I think the game looks up the Games for Windows Live folders automatically and detects if any are found there, allowing you to play the game using them as normal when you log into GFWL. If you prefer to not use GFWL (as I believe most people using mods do) simply move the DLC resources from the hidden GFWL folders to your Data folder, enable them from the Data List or FOMM and they should work as before without requiring you to log into that abomination. Oh, and remember to update your game to whatever version (or higher) you had prior to re-installing, as saves made from games with later patches probably aren't compatible with earlier versions of the game. ;)

And/Or this.

Remember that if you move the textures a model is supposed to use, you'll have to redirect the BSShaderTextureSet to this new location as it will otherwise search for the texture in the old location, even though it's not actually there. Also remember to keep the file path relative to the textures folder as not doing so will cause problems when distributing the mod due to people using different folder structures (ie. the file paths need to be relative to your textures folder).

Errrrummm... I don't know specifically how to change it, but you could check the mods that do what you want for scripts related to resting and see if the changes happen there. It'll take a bit of work, but maybe you'll learn something new. :)

Just a small note, when you change the file path in the BSShaderTextureSet, make sure it's relative and not system specific as that will cause problems for people with their install in a different folder structure than you - the proper path should be "\textures\whateveryouwant\myawesometexture.dds" rather than "C:\program files\Bethsoft\Fallout3\Data\Textures\etc.dds". :) Edit: Note, the above is just a general statement in case someone who doesn't know searches and finds this topic. OP may very well be aware of this little "quirk" but it's nice to know if you are a first time texture modder for Fallout 3. ;D

Personally I perfer the butterfly sommersault. :P

I think all hit detection is done using model collision boxes depending on the type of the "actor" in question (ie. everything that isn't just the groundplane in the game), and since collision is pretty simplified on most models you encounter situations where you can't shoot through car windows and so on. The reasoning behind using this kind of collision is that it's much less resource demanding compared to making accurate collision - for instance if you wanted completely accurate collision on a model of a car wreck so you can shoot through windows and whatnot, you'd need a quite complex collision box compared to just making a collision box that approximates the shape of the model. It's the same reason you sometimes can't put smaller objects into larger ones in-game, even though the space graphically looks like it's there. As for penetrating bullets I think such a feature has to either be coded as part of the engine, or you'd have to somehow make the bullet projectile ignore collision on certain types of actors. For instance if you could separately disable collision on environment actors but not creature actors, then it'd probably be possible but how you'd do it in Fallout 3 I have no idea. Lastly, due to the way the game engine s programmed, making a mod that allows you to blow holes in people is pretty much out of the question without finding some way of rewriting the entire way hit detection and BSDismembermentInstances work. The reason it's possible in Soldier of Fortune is because that's the way the game is programmed. You might be able to define more dismemberment parts in Fallout 3 than what's actually necessary allowing for more complex decapitation/blow holed'ness, but it'd require utilization of not-so-commonly used extra sets of arms and body decapitation entries than normal. For instance, a normal setup actor body model (armour, clothing, creature, whatever) would use a decap "zone" for each arm, leg and head on the model allowing the game to split that limb in half on a decapitation event, and if I remember correctly, you can basically setup any model to use more than two arms, legs, torso segments and so on, which would allow for more complex decapitation. This would however have certain implications when you use VATS as there would be far more parts to aim at than usual as VATS directly feeds into a model's decapitation information when determining the limbs you can fire at. It is also possible to make custom decapitation models which gets added on decapitation, so if you wanted you could pretty easily add bones sticking out of the decapitated limb or having the spine stick out of the neck at a head decapitation or pretty much whatever you'd like (Turn the end of a limb into a chicken drumstick or whatever), all you'd need to do is model those parts, set them up correctly as decap parts in your 3d editor and then designate them as the decap parts for the model in NifSkope. As for making it look like you are melting people with acid or other grueling "fatalities" I don't see why it shouldn't be possible since you can make people melt into piles of goo with plasma weapons and piles of ash with laser/fire weapons. How you'd go about doing it and getting them to work through the GECK I can't say, but I can't think of anything technical that would make it impossible, except maybe the GECK only supporting a certain amount of animations/models for special deaths. If that is the case, you could probably use FOSE to work around it as think that has been done with re-loading animations.

You have a point. This is a good example to put in the FAQ thread. Yeah... it's just that if you search on the string "+hat +sideways", without even specifying sub-forums, the third search result, which is a tutorial on making headgear, actually deals with the issue, so it's just a matter of using the search engine before making new threads on it. It's nothing personal, just a pet-peeve of mine that the search function seems to be largely ignored. :P

Do you import the model directly from a .nif or export it a an .obj from Nifskope first? If you haven't tried it yet, I'd suggest you try the file format you haven't tried seeing that Oblivion formatted files hypothetically could cause erratic issues on Blender with later version NifTools plugins installed. Personally I don't use Blender but I think it's wort a shot checking it out just to confirm that it happens with both .obj's and .nif's.

God, not another one of those threads. :wallbash: ;D

I'm with neok182 here - it's a really, really, really, really bad idea to go around messing with the vanilla .bsa files unless you are prepared to re-install the game every time you want to remove said mods. ArchiveInvalidated and other tools exist for a reason and in my opinion not using them is not taking advantage of the highly modular and adaptive file handling architecture of Fallout 3. Did I mention messing around with the vanilla .bsa files is a bad idea?

Import the model into 3ds max, delete the polygons you want to remove, re-rig if necessary, re-do the UVW if necessary, re-setup dismemberment if necessary, export the model as a .nif for Fallout 3, paste over the NiTriShapes/Strips of the vanilla leather armour model, copy/paste over the BSDimemberSkinInstance from your model to the vanilla model, reference this skin instance from the NiTriShape/Strips data block instead of the old one and lastly remove the old BSDismemberSkinInstance. Voilá, as simple as it gets. Alternatively read the stickied thread on modelling, find the link to the thread on making custom armour and use the information contained in that until your model works.

You can easily designate a Pipboy icon in the GECK itself or using TESnip so that's a pretty easy thing to do. Making a working Pipboy icon is a more tricky as you have to work with the Alpha layers of a .dds file in GIMP or Photoshop. There should be some threads around here on the subject of making new Pipboy icons, so you should try and find those to get a sense of what needs to be done. If I recall correctly, you'll basically need to "paint" the icon with black and white colors on the Alpha layer, which complicates things a bit - if you are not familiar with GIMP or Photoshop it could prove a quite difficult place to start, but anyone interested in modding needs to start from somewhere. :)

Well getting custom models and textures to work is likely impossible unless the Xbox version of Fallout 3 uses the exact same folder structure and way of handling the files, and even then it'd be probably be really difficult considering tools like ArchiveInvalidated simply don't work on the Xbox (resulting in textures not showing up and what have you). GECK made mods (ie. that don't use custom content, just reuses vanilla and expansion content) might work if you in any way are able to designate which .esp data files the game uses on the Xbox, if that version even uses .esp files and not a different, ungodly format packed inside some proprietary archive.

Whether a model is a NiTriStrip or NiTriShape in NifSkope doesn't seem to make much difference, at least I haven't really experienced any complications while working with a model converted from one to the other. It might mean something, but I can't for the love of something nice tell you what, so unless otherwise stated you should just convert between the two as necessary. I prefer using NiTriShapes but I think both will do (Vanilla models are both Stips and Shapes as far as I recall). From what I have experienced with NifSkope, older versions of the NifTools plugin can cause this error though I'm not sure why you get it when importing a .obj file as these files should be entirely independent of NifSkope version. If you are making a new Nif file, importing the .obj into that and then trying to copy/paste into a different Nif file then that might be the cause of the problem, though it shouldn't matter unless you are using an older NifSkope version. At any extent, if you havnen't tried it already, try installing the latest Niftools plugins for Blender and export the model directly as a .Nif file and copy/paste from that rather than import from .obj as that should solve any NifSkope version inconsistencies that you are experiencing.

You'll need to do some 3d modelling to make it happen, but it should be a pretty "simple" task and you can use Blender or 3ds Max or any other 3d editor capable of exporting as .nif or .obj. Basically you'll need to copy and mirror the existing power fist, move it into position to be skinned to the left hand of the Fallout skeleton and skin it to the left lower arm/hand/fingers (depending on how the original powerfist is setup). If you do not do this, the model will use the existing skinning data and move as if it was attached to the right arm, which probably is not the result you are looking for.

You make a model in a 3d editor, skin and UV it, export it as a .nif and follow the instructions here on how to make the armour work in-game.

There's no difference between making clothing and armour. They work exactly the same in-game, so all you'd have to do is make the model of the hat and the outfit (Jeans, T-shirt and white overshirt on the same model) and implement them using the general guidelines for making armour found in this thread. If you are in doubt as to where to start, doing the hat first is a good excercise in getting to know NifSkope as headgear require little to no skinning.

*cough* RTFM *cough* :P

Well there's probably other ways of doing it, but this is the first one that comes to my mind. What you want to do is actually not an easy thing to do despite it seeming relatively simple, but I think I got the procedure right in the above post so following it should yield results... eventually. :D At the very least it should provide anyone else interested in helping out here with some input, so it doesn't hurt having it written down here. ;)

As far as I know you can "unrig" vertices by removing all bone links in the skin modifier on a given object, and then re-linking them or simply deleting the modifier and reapplying it. This should remove all previous skin information and leave a clean slate to work on. I'm at a loss as to what could be wrong if you've already tried the above though. It seems like there is a fundamental linking problem somewhere since the object doesn't move despite being skinned to the correct bones, but I can't really say for sure.

Hmm... try selecting all the vertices of the object and weigh them a 100% to the bip01 forearm.r bone as the object itself doesn't seem to require any articulation beyond following the movement of the forearm - Don't use any weight copying scripts for this as it's not necessary, plus you also want to rule out the script as a potential point of failure. Just focus on getting the part skinned to a bone such that it works and worry about correct weighting later. :)