Moving "Away" from Beautiful People, getting more eyes &

[whismerhill]

hello guys,

I'm not the kind of guy who don't read help files & search forums but here, right now, I'm a bit lost

it's like I'm in the middle of the ocean trying to find the shortest route yet with nothing on the horizon and therefore going a little bit in all directions...

 

The main point of this post is to ask for some directions (like tutorials, links, downloads or any kind of help)

I'm trying to :

-keep my current character unaltered, mostly its face since eyes & hair are easy to setup unlike face ...

-add more eyes and hairs since I'm a bit bored with her current appearance and a bit unsatisfied by the available choices

-my current character is a mystic elf from beautiful people ...

 

my current knowledge on oblivion modding:

-I successfully setup FCOM with & without BOSS

-I successfully updated FCOM

-I installed EVE HGEC for FCOM and fixed myself a missing fran texture borrowing it from a fran armor for exnem conversion mod

-BAIN, OMOD or simple RAR/7ZIP pose no problem to me

-I don't really know how to use TESCS

-I know about Face Exchange Lite should it become necessary

 

The things I tried :

-tried installing corean mod without any success, well in fact it worked as far as the corean race was involved, but could never achieve hair or eyes for other races.

-found BP-Cosmetic Library but was unable to sort out how it should be installed...

-read things on the forum that BP is old and deprecated and incompatible with many mods out there

 

 

so here I am and I'm asking myself questions :

-what mod should I aim for ?

-since BP is so "bad" should I remove it ? but then will installing any other form of REN mod work, or will my char get *banned* up?

-would the best way to deal with this be "learning TESCS" ?

-some mods seem to be all included compilations, yet in the requirements and install procedure they ask for installing mods (which are supposed to be included)

I don't quite understand this point ...

-I found out a few compilation mods like this one : http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=24077 but in most they say custom races are not supported so I believe, I won't get any more eyes & hairs for my mystic elf

-I'm almost wondering I shouldn't change my race but again there's still a problem with the face ...

 

I'm really at a loss on what to do...

I realize I'm asking a lot, perhaps too much. but I just would like someone to point me in the right direction, I could continue from there...

 

Thanks for taking the time to read.

whismerhill, a french gamer.

[LFact]

1. If you don't have any problem with certain mod, you don't need to throw it out. BP does not cause trouble with simply duplicated vanilla races, but will have problem with other cosmetic mods(with incompatible eye meshes/textures) or race mod(though not much likely).

2. BP-Cosmetic Library requires several hair/eye addons, for I did not include them for some reasons, like permission issues. You need to download them and install them as always, except their plugins.

3. If your character is custom race and the said race is included in certain cosmetic mod, changing cosmetic mod will cause your game crash or any other weird issues.

4. 'Hello, I want race A use hair/eyes from cosmetic mod B' - You will need to use Contruction Set. You can add hair/eyes to race A plugin by adding them as new entry, then give the new hair/eyes to the race. Or you can make cosmetic mod B a master of race A to add hair/race records from mod B.

[whismerhill]

ok thanks a lot for the precisions, I guess the solution is the Construction Set and nothing else

 

it's a bother since I don't even know if what I'm doing will work or not, the absence of multi selection renders the process long and tedious

(actually wouldn't be that much of a problem if I was sure it would work ...)

plus I think some headsets were designed for argonians only, so one has to filter out what to put or not

and finally I can't even comfort in the fact that my work would be useful to others

 

ho well, thanks anyway. :thumbsup: (and sorry for ranting ;) )

[whismerhill]

ok one has to know when to stop

I'm not a modder,

I see missing files, I see unsorted files for different races

I see that some files need to be put in the correct folder yet I don't know what I'm doing

:wallbash:

 

BP cosmetic library is not for me

if someone happens to go around here and wants to suggest an easier hair + eyes for mystic elves mod, then by all means be my guest !

[LFact]

1. BP-Cosmetic Library has bundled sample plugin. If you can install the whole resources correctly, I suggest you to use that. Or you can try my older BP-Cosmetic Compilation(still you need to install required resources separately), but I dropped supporting for that.

 

2. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to add hairs/eyes to any custom race. You will have to use Construction Set to modify the plugin itself, although there're several 'customized' BP plugins are floating around. Or, you can ditch BP completely, and change to some other cosmetic mod, but you will have to start new game as well.

[whismerhill]

after a night, my ideas are a bit more clear

I checked your ESP in tes4edit and the records for additional hairs & eyes for mystic elves are there

I'm thinking about 3 possible solutions

- first and foremost I don't see why Race A from Mod A and Race A from Mod B would be any different

after all it should overwrite records since IDs are the same. so this makes me think that it should be possible to either swap or change my install to make your mod replace my current BP install.

- either a program that would allow copy & paste subrecords from one mod to another

- either I change my race, save the game, activate and make your mod working, load the game change the race back & import the face back, either through wrye or face exchange

 

the last one being the one I bet on the most.

In any case I'll try that later on since a friend is coming this afternoon.

[LFact]

1. You can use Wrye Bash to change mod from saved mod list in your save file.

2. I use CorESPReader to quick edit plugins, but if you do something wrong, it can either crashed to desktop or corrupt your plugin.

3. The last one is not bad, especially if you're going to change cosmetic mod with your custom race save file.(and it's the way to avoid game crash when you load your save file with other cosmetic mod)

[whismerhill]

an installation problem arose :confused: :

while trying to rebuild my bashed patch, here's what wrye bash threw at me :

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "F:\GAMES\Oblivion\Mopy\basher.py", line 3979, in Execute
patchFile.buildPatch(log,SubProgress(progress,0.8,0.9))
 File "F:\GAMES\Oblivion\Mopy\bosh.py", line 12771, in buildPatch
patcher.buildPatch(log,SubProgress(subProgress,index))
 File "F:\GAMES\Oblivion\Mopy\bosh.py", line 16973, in buildPatch
raise StateError(_('Mesh undefined for eye %s in race %s') % (strFid(eye),race.eid,))
bolt.StateError: Mesh undefined for eye (BP-CosmeticLibraryBase-Public.esm,0x00491A) in race Argonian

however within TES construction set, the argonian race displays nicely (when "BP-Cosmetic_Compilation-Alternative.esp" is opened)

plus I double checked mesh path of argonian eyes (within the race record) with TES4Edit and everything's just seems ok.

[LFact]

Hmm? I do not have such problem while building bashed patch.

[whismerhill]

If that's possible at all, would you mind posting a listing of your meshes and textures of oblivion ?

 

Here's what I had in mind, in a command prompt go into "oblivion\data" directory

then run the following two commands :

"dir meshes /s >listmesh.txt" (without the quotes)

"dir textures /s >listtextures.txt"

this will create two text files containing a listing of meshes & textures directories and all their subdirectories

 

of course that's if you didn't pack your cosmetic library files into BSA archives ... ;)

that would allow me to double check my content and perhaps see if I missed something outright despite several tries

 

 

as sidenotes I tried changing the meshes to original BP path & also played around with the different ESM & ESP versions, but there was no improvement.

my best success right now is to disable the sampled ESP, build the bashed patch, enable the ESP & then I have extra eyes and hairs but for original races.

(also had to move "Textures\characters\eyes\BP-SIEyes" to "Textures\characters\Nequam\BP-SIEyes", said that just for the record)