BSA Problem

[Zombieguy]

i've tried 40 odd bsa extracting things and none of them work does anyone know how to use them well they don't work.

 

if you have another way to make custom weapons and such from the normal ones, weapons that is, i think that's it

[ingraved]

My apologies if English is not your primary language, but your post makes no sense at all.

[pkleiss]

Using FOMM's BSA extraction utility has two things to note:

 

1)If you extract a single object, then you need to specify the correct folder to extract to yourself. With some experience, this can be a difficult thing to accomplish.

 

2)If your slect 2 or more objects to extract, FOMM's BSA extraction utility will automatically extract them to the correct folders for you.

 

For simplicity's sake, I always extract two or more objects when using the BSA extractor even if I only need one.

 

If your problem involves something more than this, please be more specific with what you are trying to do and what is occuring instead.

[Zombieguy]

thank you it was really starting to annoy me, and english is my first language, no offence taken though.

 

also now that i've extracted it what do i need to make it able to be modded in blender

[mechine]

Well, er, um, ... I never really extract inside the actual data folder I use to play fallout. Whatever I'm working on I'll just extract it to the desktop. When it's ready to be created inside the GECK, then I move what I need into the real data folder. Now I pick two items from time to time so that the data path is extracted as well, but that's only if it's going to be vanilla content used in a vanilla way in order to fix things.

 

If a new item is going to be created in geck, then you can put the item where ever you want. When it's created in the geck that sets where it should be in order to work. So most of the time I'm actually only extracting one item. Anything you do based off the original vanilla data paths as part of a new mod is going to get overwriten by other mods (from noobs that did the same thing an auto installers)

 

I don't use blender, it's just too complex. The stuff you need in order to use it is on the GECK main page, under "creating a custom weapon" http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Creating_A_Custom_Weapon Which is pretty much where I started.

 

 

Only I never got blender to even work, much less figure out how to do anything with it. What I ended up doing is just fooling my way thru Nifscope. No tutorial just get in there an mess stuff up until I figured out how to work it. Blender might take 6 months to a year to figure out while Nifscope would only take a month or so. But I wasn't up for following a super long tutorial of boredom Which would be required if you jumpped into blender. Nifscope is pretty easy an you could figure out what you need just from messing with it. Blender would be more easy to use, if say, you were going to create a brand new weapon from scratch. Nifscope would do this as well to an extent, but it would be a lot more work.

 

Now the kind of stuff I use Nifscope to do

 

1. Take already created weapons which have poor performance (fire rate, animation, ect) Then piece by piece copy an paste the shapes into known good vanilla meshes. Say someone creates a pistol, but it's created with blender, or they create it from a SMG mesh. It's not going to have a good fire rate, and may even cause crashes. So I get a 10mm pistol vanilla mesh, then copy an paste the shapes in where they need to be to make it clean as possible, then instead of deleting the extra parts I'll hide them inside the main shape, so the animation still works (you just don't see what you don't need to see) You can either copy the whole branch or just copy the actual shape (the actual shape you should use (paste over) though) Which it takes some practice to be able to do it very clean.

 

2. Add or remove parts to weapons. Like extra parts, or maybe add in a different clip, maybe a drum clip, Add a silencer, add a scope. Which most of the time if it's not an animated part, it's just added on to the main shape, 10mmpistol:0, 10mmpistol:1, 10mmpistol:2 and so on, rather than actually name the shape silencer:0, which fallout 3 has no idea what that block list sub tree even means. Fallout 3 does know that if it's named 10mmpistol:1 that it's just an add on part to the main weapon shape. Just to get good performance you know.

 

3.Shrink and sanitize player created meshes, which are either way too large of a raw data file size, or just as a way to optimize whatever slack jawed yokel created this P.O.S. mesh. For the most part Nifscope was designed for Oblivion an Fallout 3. So to speak there are spells an tools which allow the meshes to be optimized with it. Like a armor, it might be 1.2Mb in size, then quite messy looking in the block list (therefore messy looking to fallout) I'll update tangent spaces on each of the spaces from right clicking them all an picking batch-UATS (which also will fix it if it crashes the geck when you select it for the model for your newly created item) Then I'll go to spells an stripifiy all nitrishapes. Which is kind of like DXT-3 DXT-5 for normal map textures, sometimes DXT-3 works better, then sometimes DXT-5 (interpolated) works better. Just as sometimes having all the shapes as Nitrishapes is better sometimes, while having them all Nitristrips is better other times. But Nitristrips make smaller file sizes, meaning higher performance in game.

 

4.Do texture swaps encoded inside the actual .nif mesh itself rather than in the geck (which is less work and cleaner) However if say you had one mesh an 30 different textures for it, then the alternate texture method with geck is actually less work. Which Nifscope doesn't look at caps, so you can just type it in lower case.

 

5.Extract UV map templates from the shapes in a mesh in order to create brand new textures, or so I can delete the rest of the texture which isn't being used by the shapes (or fill in with black)

 

6. Skew an stretch the Verts on shapes I.E. make gun parts wider, taller, longer. (Via transform, stretch verts I think)

 

7. Match the size of projectiles to the actual barrel hole on a gun, from pasting in the projectile, then stretching it's verts so that it matches the barrel perfectly, then take how much I stretched it, an do that just in the projectile mesh.

 

8. Change, create, Havok collision maps (you know what keeps the item from falling thru the ground)

 

9.Make edits to where the verts are, meshes are a bunch of triangles, each point on the triangle is a vert point, which can be moved around, therefore changing the shape.

 

10.Movement an adjustment of how the player holds the weapon, up down side to side, angle up by 5 degrees an so forth

 

11. As a 3D preview before I put the item in game while I'm working on the texture (because it loads fast) But The only way to tell how well it will actually look is to go in game.

 

12. Adding or removing material properties, like how glossy it is, or the specular lighting, glow, and so forth.

 

13. Doing wierd stuff like making new meshes of vanilla content which can now be uses as static or havoked items. Props mixing parts of meshes together.

 

14. Adjust projectile nodes, or shellcasenodes, so that the bullet an bullet shell, an muzzle flash, all line up correctly to the weapon. Or more recently rotate the shellcasting node 180 degrees because some noob put the weapon's Breach (chamber) on the wrong side. Which is kind of cool when the shell case flys across the first person view screen to the left instead of to the right. I've also had to rotate the actual shell case so it's comming out of the gun isn't backwards from how it loads into the breach.

 

 

 

 

Nifscope doesn't use a harddrive in the path for textures. So when I extract things from .BSA to the desktop, on the desktop there's also a fake data folder (nifscope only looks for data folders, then searches them for textures an resources) So all I do is point nifscope to look in the data folder on the desktop, and then also inside the actual fallout 3 data folder. After all the previews, as part of the last steps the files get moved out of the fake data folder an into the real one (which is good because they don't always work out as projects, or I get lazy an forget about them)

 

I also use Paintnet because it's free, loads really fast, and doesn't require any plug in's so that it can open .dds type fallout 3 textures. The other programs either need a plug in, or need a .dds converter which is messy, an takes extra time. Also Paintnet will convert any file to .dds in realtime just copy an paste it in.

 

I also use Gimp, but Gimp is like blender, it's complex, pretty much I only use it to create normal maps, but it has lots of tricks an tools, just need lots of time to figure it out, paintnet is so easy just figure it out in a few days, plus it has lots of cool plug in's which you can use as tools, like cut holes in a texture, then use fill gaps to fill in the holes based off the surrounding pixels, or turn something into metal, even the ability to open Photoshop files.

 

 

 

 

When you create stuff in GECK, do yourself a favor, set the form ID name (not the in-game name) To something like ZZZAb10mmpistol234 then in the order you create stuff, like ZZZAcSuperDuperShotgun234. The ZZZ will put it at the bottom of the list in geck so you can always find it easy, which you can even use AAA so that it's at the top of the list. Then the Ab or Ac just put's things in order because it goes A-Z A would be the first group of things going in

Ab

Ac

Ad

 

Second group

Ba

Bb

Bc

Bd

Be

 

The AAA and ZZZ help alot when it comes to picking stuff in a list like say you create a sound for a weapon, it's mixed in with a bunch of vanilla stuff, but I named it WPNZZZAb10mmpistol2D, so now it's always at the very bottom when it comes time to pick the sound in the weapon settings, saves work an time, bam it's set bam it's set, rather than looking around in a list of 450 things.

 

 

 

Then lastly you are better off creating your own folders in the data folder for your mod, not by following how the vanilla files look like from when bethesda created them. An example...

 

 

Data/meshes/weapons/1handpistol/10mmpistol/10mmpistol.nif <---------mesh

 

Data/textures/weapons/1handpistol/10mmpistol/10mmpistol.dds <-------texture

 

Data/sounds/fx/wpn/10mmpistol/fire/10mmpistol.wav <---------Sound

 

 

I change it so that it's easy to install an find it inside my mod.

 

 

Data/meshes/(insert mods name)/new10mmpistol/newpistol.nif

 

Data/textures/(insert mods name)/new10mmpistol/newpistol.dds

 

Data/sound/fx/(insert mods name)/newpistol/newpistol_2D.wav

 

 

Any sound FX has to be put inside the Data/sound/fx folder or geck or fallout won't read it, but that doesn't mean you can't just create one folder inside there an put all of your custom sounds in it, rather than break it up into sub folders based of what it goes to. which is what I've been doing, just dump them all in one folder. The meshes an textures I will create subfolders just to make it easy to find things when I'm working on it. Like the superdupershotgun, goes in folders named superdupershotgun folder where ever it needs to be. It's also helpful to name your textures an meshes all the same, but that doesn't mean you can't have super silly names.

 

Sometimes I name stuff silly just to have fun, or put dirty words here an there to vent some stress of creating things out. Maybe carve a nice big red dirty word into my normal maps, or name a mesh. FixedSomeIdiotsCrappyMesh.nif

 

 

 

There's a lot too it, but say 1-3 months you are well on your way to being able to do anything you want to do with a weapon project. As you make more stuff, you get better at it, an now all the other stuff you made is crap, so you have to start all over. Whoopz, we went an got too good at it, dang more work...

[Zombieguy]

if i were to download the base models of every gun in fallout3 where would be the best place?

[mechine]

uh this thread isn't dead yet? wow...

 

 

 

Depends on what base models you would want. All the base models for vanilla content would be contained inside the Meshes.BSA inside your fallout 3 data folder. Then like if you wanted every base model from the stuff we made, Nexus downloads has just about everything, there's other sites too, but I only use an upload on nexus. http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/

 

 

The stuff in the .BSA has to be extracted/unpacked, like the discription above, with FOMM

[Zombieguy]

yea but when i extract them they're all .nif and i need something that'll run on blender cause the .nif files don't

[mechine]

POOPY POOP POOP! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

 

hahahaha sorry, how are things going?

 

 

Blender will work with .nif but you have to set it up an use a plug in among other things to get it to do so. I never got it to work because I'm not so good with super boring long tutorials, but there's a good one at http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Creating_A_Custom_Weapon Which tells you how to set up blender.

 

I got tired of it not working so I just got nifscope instead an didn't even use a tutorial to learn how to use it. Blender might take a year or more to master, while nifscope would take a few months at most.

 

What are you wanting to do with the mesh?

[Zombieguy]

i want to use parts from one mesh for the other cause i'm making a mod and one of the new weapons is a tommy gun made from the combat shotgun and i want to add in bits from various other guns, these parts show up as more or less the whole model in Nifskope and i have no idea what the hell to do about selecting smaller parts