You May Think You Know the Answer to This

[Swinetower]

I'm a total beginner here, but that much should be obvious. I've been making some decent headway in fumbling my way through an armor mod, but I don't really consider this any sort of triumph as modeling is the only aspect of modding that I'm fairly well-versed in. All this talk of ".nifs" & ".dds" is totally Greek to me, but I'm beating my way through it and making a decent show - I think.

 

However, I need some help in accomplishing what would typically be considered be a novice task. Nifskope doesn't like me and doesn't want to display textures. Right, another one of those guys.

 

I'd like to think that I'm not an utter dunce, believing that nifskope's proper texture path setting is within the fallout 3\data folder and not some delusion that I've inflicted upon myself just to make the whole process more difficult. I've also tried setting my mesh directory within the data folder, and also unpacking both the .nif and the concordant .dds in a remote directory (way the hell away from the game's folder) and then pointing nifskope to that directory - just to get the damn thing to work for at least one file. No dice, thank you come again.

 

I'm convinced it's a structure issue (a notion to which most of you reading this are dolefully shaking your heads at, no doubt), but I can't define it. I'm going to continue working on the model itself right now, but this will become crucial info at some point.

 

"Pleeaaiiiisssss haalllpp."

[pkleiss]

In Nifskope, from the toolbar, go to Render -->Settings --> Render tab. Then click on the "Auto Detect Game Paths" button. That should do it for you. Then all you need to do is extract the NIF(s) you want to work on and the textures (.dds) into the proper Fallout folders using a tool like FOMM's (Fallout Mod Manager) BSA extracting utility.

[Swinetower]

In Nifskope, from the toolbar, go to Render -->Settings --> Render tab. Then click on the "Auto Detect Game Paths" button. That should do it for you. Then all you need to do is extract the NIF(s) you want to work on and the textures (.dds) into the proper Fallout folders using a tool like FOMM's (Fallout Mod Manager) BSA extracting utility.

 

I should have mentioned that I went the "Auto detect" route as well.

 

Oh, wait... so you do have to extract the .dds to the "data/textures" folder? I assume that meshes must go in the mesh folder also? Let's see how that works out, then.

[Swinetower]

Nope, no good.

[Dyadya_Fedor]

Check registry key HKCU\Software\NifTools\NifScope\fsengine\archives - you can add your Fallout - Textures.bsa (with full path) here. Also, NifScope can read from .bsa, no need to exstract from it.

[Swinetower]

Gave this a try, but my Registry seems to be lacking a "fsengine\archives" branch. It only goes as far as "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\NifTools\NifSkope", also listing a bunch of versions (which don't contain those keys, either.)

 

Also, I have tried to read from the FO .bsa files, but my NifSkope doesn't seem to "see" them. This is beginning to sound more like I'm missing an integral part of the program itself. Is there some sort of library that I should be aware of (aside from niflib, that is?)

[Dyadya_Fedor]

Dunno. Downloaded it from niftools.sourceforge.net, installed an thats it.

I exported whole branch from my registry

 

 

 

Import it and replace pathes (in key described above) with your own.

[Swinetower]

Dunno. Downloaded it from niftools.sourceforge.net, installed an thats it.

I exported whole branch from my registry

 

 

 

Import it and replace pathes (in key described above) with your own.

 

Thanks! I did give it a try, but still no joy.

 

However, it's become pretty apparent that my NifSkope just doesn't want to read the .bsa files - not one of them. So this is my next task, to find out why. Again, thanks for helping me try to figure this out.

[Swinetower]

And all of a sudden, it works.

 

I cajoled it into behaving by *ban* around with stuff that I thought might have been beyond my experience (in a bit of a desperation bid.)

 

There's something called "Resource" under the file submenu. Y'open this up, and it should have a box called "Automatic Selection" with a check next to it. Mine wasn't checked, which is why it was being all high-maintenance. Done and done.

 

Again, thanks!