New modder need help trying to make custom race

[wolfmoon312]

I am pretty much new to modding and 3D modeling and I have been trying to make a playable lizard person race mod for New Vegas. I have been working on the head model and doing what the guide states. The guide I have been using isn't exactly beginner friendly or up to date and I have gotten up to adding the race to the game with GECK but the head model I was using was invisible. The guide I have been using is the "How to Make a Freakish Custom Race (Tutorial)" https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/62328

Help will be appreciated.

[M48A5]

Try this one. How to Make a Custom Race PDF at Fallout New Vegas - mods and community (nexusmods.com)

 

If you have seen any of his screen images or read any of his comics, you can tell he knows what he is doing.

[wolfmoon312]

Try this one. How to Make a Custom Race PDF at Fallout New Vegas - mods and community (nexusmods.com)

 

If you have seen any of his screen images or read any of his comics, you can tell he knows what he is doing.

Is there anything for making custom heads in blender and porting them into New Vegas?

[M48A5]

I am not aware of any, just the blender instruction manual. However, you will need more than just blender to make custom anything.

 

Everything you need should be here: Blender at Oblivion Nexus - mods and community (nexusmods.com) It's in the Oblivion mods, but it is the same game engine. You will need Blender Version 2.49 to mod for FNV. With the newer ones, you cannot export working models for FNV. You would have to export as a .blend file, then import that file into Blender 2.49 and then export it as a .nif file.

[madmongo]

Body parts, armor, clothing, and creature skins are all pretty much the same thing in FNV. When you export a model for these in Blender, the best way to get the export settings right is to click on Fallout 3, then click on Restore Default Settings For Selected Game (lower left) then click Creature and then Skin under collision options (top center). Then make sure that Use BSFadeNodeRoot (top right) is de-selected.

 

Blender also never seems to export the shader flags correctly, so you'll have to go into NifSkope afterwards and fix those. For human (or human-ish) body parts you'll want the shader type to be SHADER_SKIN and you'll want to check both SF_ShadowMap and SF_FaceGen. For things that don't use facegen (clothing, armor, creatures, etc), you will want the shader type to SHADER_DEFAULT and you'll want to check SF_ShadowMap and SF_Remappable_Textures instead.

 

If your mesh is invisible in-game, that is most often a sign that you have the shader type and/or shader flags set wrong, or you have the export options set wrong.

 

The facegen system that FNV uses is designed for human heads. You'll need to create EGM and EGT files, which that tutorial says it gives you instructions for. Even with those though, I'm not sure if the facegen system will end up with heads that look wonky in-game or not. I guess you'll have to play with it and see. All of the custom heads that I have created have been robotic, so they used the SHADER_DEFAULT flags and didn't use any real facegen.

 

As M48A5 said, make sure you are using Blender 2.49b with the appropriate tools installed. The version of Blender he linked to is the correct version and has all of the correct tools packaged with it, so as long as you install it correctly it should work fine. Don't use newer versions of Blender.

[wolfmoon312]

Body parts, armor, clothing, and creature skins are all pretty much the same thing in FNV. When you export a model for these in Blender, the best way to get the export settings right is to click on Fallout 3, then click on Restore Default Settings For Selected Game (lower left) then click Creature and then Skin under collision options (top center). Then make sure that Use BSFadeNodeRoot (top right) is de-selected.

 

Blender also never seems to export the shader flags correctly, so you'll have to go into NifSkope afterwards and fix those. For human (or human-ish) body parts you'll want the shader type to be SHADER_SKIN and you'll want to check both SF_ShadowMap and SF_FaceGen. For things that don't use facegen (clothing, armor, creatures, etc), you will want the shader type to SHADER_DEFAULT and you'll want to check SF_ShadowMap and SF_Remappable_Textures instead.

 

If your mesh is invisible in-game, that is most often a sign that you have the shader type and/or shader flags set wrong, or you have the export options set wrong.

 

The facegen system that FNV uses is designed for human heads. You'll need to create EGM and EGT files, which that tutorial says it gives you instructions for. Even with those though, I'm not sure if the facegen system will end up with heads that look wonky in-game or not. I guess you'll have to play with it and see. All of the custom heads that I have created have been robotic, so they used the SHADER_DEFAULT flags and didn't use any real facegen.

 

As M48A5 said, make sure you are using Blender 2.49b with the appropriate tools installed. The version of Blender he linked to is the correct version and has all of the correct tools packaged with it, so as long as you install it correctly it should work fine. Don't use newer versions of Blender.

I made a new test head in blender 2.49b and tried exporting the model as .nif with the settings you stated, but whenever I try and do that I just get an error saying ZeroDivisionError: float division and nothing happens.