making this race mod work for nv

[sycle4]

anyone know how to make this mod

 

http://fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6173

 

work for nv?

 

thought it was damn good

[GrindedStone]

It seems to me that this mod centers around the face texture which is great btw. Everything else seems to deal with making it so it's a unique face an not every NPC in the game, like most idiot modders do.

 

--------------------------------DO GECK WORK SON--------------------------------

 

1. Download an install the NV GECK

 

2. Duplicate the African American & Caucasian race in the GECK

 

3. Change the name of these new races you duplicated

 

4. Duplicate a NPC, make that NPC a facegen preset for the new races

 

5. Then it's only a matter of changing those races to use the new face texture, which might even require the FO3 head an parts in the mod, if not the entire FO3 body, head, hands, plus texture, so it lines up both in the shape an tone. That being said you probalby could just reskin the FNV head inside a new race.

 

--------------------------------DO MESH WORK SON--------------------------------

 

 

1. Create a project folder on the hard-drive named Data

 

2. Drop that mods meshes an textures in this folder

 

3. Download Nifscope, I reckon you need python too

 

4. Once you get Nifscope working you have to point it to a file to look for textures, this is done in the Render tab, Settings, Add folder, then click the folder button below the list, then point it to use your project folder.

 

5. Go to the meshes open the head. Click the view tab, you only need block list an block details checked. Switch to show blocks in list. Now adjust the line between Name & Value, it's a slider to change the column width. What you are looking to do is make it so the BSShaderTextureSet sticks out. Where all other lines end in ... The Set in BSShaderTextureSet sticks out. This is helpful because in many meshes there are 6 or more texture sets, and it's the fastest way to edit all of them. In the head there is only one thankfully.

 

NiNode

BSBound

NiTriShape

BSShaderPPlighti...

BSShaderTextureSet

 

See.. When the mesh is a list of 10,000 things it makes it so you can scan your eyes down the whole list an pick out all the texture sets quickly.

 

6. Click on the BSSTextureSet, this will place it as active in the block details at the bottom of the screen, click the + sign to open it, Then you can either type it in, or click the purple flower, which will allow you to point to the textures you placed in your project folder. Bam now you have a preview of the head that's actually using the awesome face texture which makes up the Hero race.

 

7. Extract the HeadHuman.nif from the FNV Meshes.BSA, FOMM/tools/bsa upacker, place the FNV head on the desktop, it's quicker to leave meshes on the desktop because at this point they don't need to be in a file.

 

8. Open the FNV head with nifscope, do the same thing you did before, as a way to check an see if this texture will even work with the new FNV head because FNV might use a new head or even a new .Nif structure, so open both of them up at the same time an compare the block list, how they look, an such.

 

9. Note you can also reach the texture paths by just clicking on the shape in the render window, which will highlight that part of the block list, open that part of the tree an you'll see a BSSTextureSet in there, click that line an look in block details, I just always found the other method more easy as a habit for when it's a mesh with multiple textures.

 

10. All this was just to see if it will work together. If it did you could just install the meshes an textures in custom folders, then point the race to use those parts in the geck.

 

11. What the heck is a UV. See for yourself. In Nifscope right click a shape in the render window, pick texture, edit UV, an bam you see it's the basic layout of how each shape relates to the texture. These are triangles that can be moved around the texture, and you can even look at the render window so that they line up right. Many times there are multiple parts of a mesh using the same part of a texture. So the select connected becomes handy, also you can click an drag to select whole sections.

 

--------------------------------DO SKIN TONES--------------------------------

 

1. Download Paintnet an install it

 

2. Find a .dds image like the one in your project folder, right click it, pick open with, then set paintnet to always open .dds

 

3. Open the Hero face texture which doesn't match the skin tone of the FNV body tones

 

4. Click the adjustments tab, then Hue / Saturation. In here the lightness is somewhat more the lightness of the color rather than the actual brightness. Start with brightness see if you can match the head to the body. In order to do this you need a hacked preview mesh.

 

5. Fallout textures which don't have any transparent textures (see thru parts) These are called defuse textures, which it's best to save them with Mipmaps checked, which will encode the mipmaps inside them rather than need to have seperate mipmaps (which is more work) Also Since it's Defuse you can compress it in DXT-1 which is the highest compression. It's the same image only it's been encoded into a language built just for grapics cards. Transparent textures (alpha) however get compressed in DXT-5 which is estimated alpha, you can try DXT-3 but it's explicit, an doesn't work as well because we don't actually create hand drawn alpha it's rough estimates so DXT-5 works better just about every time.

 

6. Normal maps, Fallout 3 hid the gloss of the in-game item inside the normal map, this was done inside the Alpha channel of the normal map (how transparent it is) GIMP does have a tool to adjust only the alpha channel, thus you can go from full out gloss to flat, this is located in tools/colortools/curves then pick the alpha channel an move the bottom marker up toward the top on that 45 degree diagonal line. However the face body an hands normal maps are quite touchy, so you can end up turning the skin way bronze just messing with it. So you are probalby better off leaving them alone.

 

--------------------------------DO A HACKED MESH--------------------------------

 

1. Open the Head mesh, click the view tab, switch to show blocks in tree. Click the head in the render window, this will highlight that part of the tree, open that branch with the + sign, You should see a BSDismemberSkinInstance, right click it an pick Block, then remove branch.

 

2. Click the head in the render window, it highlights that branch, right click the highlight (or the head in the render window) pick Block, then Copy branch.

 

3. Don't close the head mesh, you have to have Nifscope open or it will dump what you just copied, so just go open the FNV body mesh.

 

4. Right click whatever is in the top of the block list, pick Block, then paste branch

 

5. Repeat the process for the hands, but don't forget to remove the dismemberment skin or it will crash when you paste

 

6. Save the mesh, it's just a preview mesh an can't be used. But while you are changing the textures so that the tones match it works well as a quick full body preview of the custom content vs the vanilla, or just matching a set.

[Legofingers]

Wow GrindedStone, that is pretty comprehensive, a very good summary condensing the important parts of probably a few tutorials, kudos to you

 

Edit: I'm still looking for any tutorials on what tweaks are needed to get mods from FO3 to work in Vegas, everyone is saying that only a few easy tweaks will be necessary for most mods, but I cant find a thread dedicated to this.