Armor invisibility issue

[Striker879]

Is your texture size set to large in the game video options? Also be aware that often armor/clothing mods don't come with a menu icon assigned. No way of knowing without extracting the download and looking for a Textures\menus\icons folder ... if it's not there then the mod author didn't assign any icons.

 

Your missing feet with the boots on is a case of missing textures and/or normal maps. Look through the extracted download for files with names like boot.dds and boots_n.dds (though the mod author could name the boots any name and it would work providing the textures are properly assigned). I always read through mod comments looking for whether other people have reported problems (and also note whether the mod author has any skill in helping resolve them). Not all mods are worth the download (judging by the fact that there two downloads, both mentioning fixed things I'd say that there were issues ... most commonly absolute paths to the textures but I haven't waded through the comments to investigate).

Edited December 7, 2013 by Striker879

[BloodLordian]

Ah, yes it is set to large.

 

May I ask what you mean exactly when you say 'missing textures and/or normal maps'?

[Striker879]

When you look at the extracted download it should have a folder named Textures with subfolders inside (something like Textures\armor\sinblood\maybeotherstuff). Texture files have a file extension .DDS and the normal maps for those textures will end with _n.DDS. Sometimes mod author mash together meshes from different mods to make their mod. As long as they remember to include all the required texture files everything is fine. Sometimes they don't include all the required texture files and there's problems. The mod works fine on their own machine because all the files are there from when they first worked on it. Some user will also have no problem because they just happen to have those same mods that the author used to mash things together, and so they have the missing files already from the other mods. Users that don't happen to have those same other mods are out of luck until the mod author fixes things.

 

Like I said, both downloads for this mod have "fixed" in their names. If you read through the mod comments starting from the oldest one you'll know why they have "fixed" in their names.

[BloodLordian]

I see what you mean by not worth downloading.

 

Thanks again for all the help.

[Striker879]

I'm not suggesting that it's not worth downloading ... it's just that to get the mod working you'll need some experience. Reading through mod comments and problems posted here is how I've learned everything I know. I haven't independently discovered one trick or secret to getting the game running better. All I've done is read what others have found and learned from it.

 

When I started out I'd read mod comments and go "Whoa ... I'm not trying this" when I saw a bunch of problems reported by other users. As I learned more I'd see problems reported with a mod and go "I know to to fix that" or "I understand how the mod author's solution works" and go ahead with the mod. As time goes by I learn more and that opens up wider possibilities. That hasn't taken hours or days ... or even weeks. That's months turning into years.

 

Download this mod and put it away for another day. Lots of people are using it without problems. When you can read through the mod comments and understand how their solutions worked you can apply the same to your own game.

[BloodLordian]

Ok thanks. I will try to be more open minded about modding.

 

I really appreciate how specific and helpful you have been as well.

[BloodLordian]

I don't know what I'm supposed to do about this big yellow transparent hologram with an ! error in-game where a mod chest is supposed to be.

 

What am I doing wrong?

[MadWizard25]

That means your missing meshes for the mod.

 

The usual reasons for this are a corrupt mod download, or a bad mod install. If you know which mod the chest is supposed to be from, I would recommend uninstalling it and reinstalling it. If that does not work, try to download the mod again and reinstall. If you dont know which mod is causing it, then you can use a mod called RefSkope to check the chest and get a report on which mod the textures should be from.

 

May I ask how your are installing mods? Are you opening the .rar/ .zip/ .7zip file and dropping the files into your Oblivion data folder?

 

I ask because that would be a manual install. And unless you really know what you are doing then thats not a good idea. A lot of mods are not packaged well and their file structure does not match Oblivions, and dragging and dropping these mod files wont work.

 

I would recommend using Oblivion Mod Manager or Wrye Bash to install mods. This way you can keep track of mods, see where there are conflicts, and see where mods are badly installed or overriding each other.

Edited December 9, 2013 by MadWizard25

[BloodLordian]

I am using winRAR and extracting the files to the desktop, turning the esp file into an omod with Obmm and placing the texture and mesh folders in the game folder.

[BloodLordian]

Also renaming the folders to something relevant with the mod to keep them all from being put into one Texture/Mesh folder.