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The Anti-Google-Eye Initiative


deadweight

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Hi all.

 

 

There've been a number of extremely talented people putting out consistently noteworthy work in the field of prettying up your Oblivion characters, however all of us have felt, on more than one occasion, the sinking, lead-stomach feeling when you launch the game and you're confronted with your character staring at you with some sort of freaky, disturbing googly-eyed gaze.

 

Cue hours (if not days when you use a lot of mods) of screwing around trying to locate the particular error leading to this pandemic of a problem.

 

 

This week I've been juggling dozens of individual cosmetic improvement mods and trying out multiple other peoples' attempts to do the same thing, however invariably the same thing ends up happening: Stuff's going great and then BAM, either googly eyes, or invisible eyeballs.

 

 

My suggested solution:

A sitewide effort amongst the Nexus' mod-crafting community to improve interoperability and compatibility between mods that is so fundamentally simple I'm surprised that nobody caught on and started doing it already. It's also indicative of the OCD streak I have.

 

The idea: Different paths for different eye types.

 

 

How?:

A number of ways this could be implemented include the adoption of a community-agreed-upon standard naming convention for eye types that is not only obvious to a cursory glance, but also goes beyond that, by describing individual, distinct eye mesh/texture paths for each eyeball type.

 

 

An example:

Say I somehow turned into a mouse-wielding Michaelangelo and came up with a huge compilation of new eye textures. The current state of the modding community essentially leaves me divided. Do I target the people who are sticking with the stock vanilla races and the default Bethesda meshes? Or do I target the custom-race crowd and design my textures around Nequam's Elaborate Eyes mesh?

 

Well, with the system I'm suggesting, would it not be better to release both versions? Why should target group 1 suffer because of a personal preference for a particular mesh?

 

 

Solutions:

 

1: Double-save your textures and glowmaps. Save the main one, then save a copy in a separate folder.

While I'm only just getting into eye-modding myself, surely the nature of outputting the end result can't be like chalk and cheese.

 

 

 

2: A specific prefix orsuffix, and a strict directory structure for each version, e.g.

Vanilla Eye Project (VEP):

Meshes\Characters-VEP\Eyes\filename-VEP.whatever

 

 

Ren's & Elaborate Eyes (REE):

Meshes\Characters-REE\Eyes\filename-REE.whatever

 

 

The reason I suggest such a specific filestructure-based solution is because for one, the filestructure for the average cosmetic compilation or merger attempt is a total shambles. From my experiences over this past week with the fudgy, shambolic installation instructions, installation sequence and lack of specifics on what each .ESP does, whether it's needed and what exactly it does, your average attempt ends up with unnecessarily labyrinthine filestructures and half a dozen different "eyes" folders weighing in at about 300MB each, and a high chance of the dreaded googly-moogly.

 

 

The way I'm talking about setting things up is so that you adhere rigorously to a filestructure that looks a little like this

 

Characters-VEP\ - which is clearly distinct from \Characters-REE\ and unlikely to end up in mistakes.

Characters-VEP\Eyes\ - thus putting the actual content right at your fingertips

Characters-VEP\Meshes\ - preferably with you having made a zip file backup of the entire set of vanilla eye .egms, .nifs, and .tris and stored it elsewhere.

Characters-VEP\Hair\ - because if you're installing eye mods you're probably installing hair mods too and might as well follow the same principle.

Characters-VEP\Textures\ - along with the eyes and the hair, the most modified element of your game, so why not afford it the same consideration?

Characters-VEP\Other Filetypes\ - where you stick the folders for things like DistantLOD, Trees, Shaders, etc

 

ultimately using additional prefixes to make it easier to categorise specific themes and elements within a long list of files.

 

 

Which is far more tidy and easy to deal with than

 

Characters-REE\Meshes\_male

Characters-REE\Meshes\_male\Head\

Characters-REE\Meshes\Imperial\babe\1\

Characters-REE\Meshes\Imperial\babe\2\

Characters-REE\Meshes\Imperial\cor

Characters-REE\Meshes\Imperial\KD

Characters-REE\Meshes\Imperial\x

Characters-REE\Meshes\Malo\

Characters-REE\Meshes\weapons\

Characters-REE\Meshes\Optional Files\

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\as

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\Crimson

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\HGECchain\

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\BSS\

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\JB\

Characters-REE\Textures\armor\Hentai\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Effects\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Menus\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Trees

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Beautifulpeople\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Beautifulpeople\bp\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Nequam\ainmhi\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Nequam\Argonian\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Nequam\eyes\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\khajiit\

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\MyElf

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\Flonne

Characters-REE\Textures\Imperial\Eyes\rvgeyes

 

and so on, and so forth, with dozens of redundant duplicate directories.

 

 

 

ok so maybe I kinda segued off into more of a lecture than I intended, but hey, discourse is good.

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No..... Not REE. Ren's eye meshes and Elaborate Eye meshes are totally different, and idkrrr's Sulhwa eye meshes are another different ones(Ren's: R-L vertical stack, EE: diagonal stack, Sulhwa eyes: R-L horizontal). And what about vampire eyes?
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You are aware that the google eye problem is ENTIRELY because of this kind of thing right?

 

Nequam's eyes, which were one of the first to use new meshes, has these eyes in a form which does not overwrite any of the default eyes. Instead it uses changes to the races to direct the eye meshes and textures to that non-default location, breaking any mod which has eyes which use the default location. Other eyes have the same exact problem. They are non-replacing, so any difference between how they're being referenced by the races causes a problem.

 

The real solution, is to settle on one type of eye mesh which is replacing, create replacing textures for that mesh for all the vanilla eyes. Then use that mesh for any new eye textures. It's not like you really need more than any one eye mesh. The difference between Nequam's eye mesh and some others is that the texturing has been changed so that each eye can be colored differently. The texture mapping is different, so the textures don't get used properly. I've already, for myself, made nequam's meshes replace the standard eye mesh, and the only issues I have are in the CS because I have not made replacements for the default eye texture which are configured right for this mesh.

 

If these eye mods just replaced the related files, instead of trying to change around the file paths within .esps, there wouldn't be nearly as many conflict issues.

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You are aware that the google eye problem is ENTIRELY because of this kind of thing right?

 

Nequam's eyes, which were one of the first to use new meshes, has these eyes in a form which does not overwrite any of the default eyes. Instead it uses changes to the races to direct the eye meshes and textures to that non-default location, breaking any mod which has eyes which use the default location. Other eyes have the same exact problem. They are non-replacing, so any difference between how they're being referenced by the races causes a problem.

 

The real solution, is to settle on one type of eye mesh which is replacing, create replacing textures for that mesh for all the vanilla eyes. Then use that mesh for any new eye textures. It's not like you really need more than any one eye mesh. The difference between Nequam's eye mesh and some others is that the texturing has been changed so that each eye can be colored differently. The texture mapping is different, so the textures don't get used properly. I've already, for myself, made nequam's meshes replace the standard eye mesh, and the only issues I have are in the CS because I have not made replacements for the default eye texture which are configured right for this mesh.

 

If these eye mods just replaced the related files, instead of trying to change around the file paths within .esps, there wouldn't be nearly as many conflict issues.

 

Beautiful People, at least after 2.5, used 'replacing eye meshes' method. It works well for some cases, but it also causes problems for some(espacially if you're trying with several cosmetic mods).

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Beautiful People, at least after 2.5, used 'replacing eye meshes' method. It works well for some cases, but it also causes problems for some(espacially if you're trying with several cosmetic mods).

Yes, if those mods use different replacements, or link to different directories. If everyone settled on a single pair of eye meshes, and worked off that, there wouldn't be any problems, which was my point.

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