Halp getting started

[IkeCoast]

Not exactly, the neck, wrist, waist and ankle seams are not caused by the UV-Mapping, but by the very edges of the meshes, where they join with the adjacent mesh. If the vertices of the neck on the torso are not exactly aligned with the vertices on the neck on the head, bam, neck seam.

 

However, a low quality texture (like the original vanilla textures) can cause a seam in the place where the UV-map was created, yes. You remember the seams at the shoulders? There are no edges there, but you can see where the UV map was cut because the diffuse map is really poor. With high quality textures, you will not see the "cut" on the UV map.

 

Compare the female textures of the Abysmer (or Aquamer, since I took these textures from the Aquamer race) for RobFem (absolutely seamless in the body) and for HGEC (impressive seams along the arms and legs). Capucine, as hard as she tried, could not align the UV-"scar" on the HGEC UV-map because the original texture was created for the RobFem UV-map.

 

Cheers!

[Rangaros]

Hm, yeah with base HGEC body replacer I notice seams on the side of the arms and a little bit on the inside of the legs, on Khajiit at least, I suppose that's the texture itself then.

 

 

Regarding my previous questions about combining mods and Seamless install order, so far I checked all the Seamless patches (EVE HGEC, Robert Male and OCO) and none have any overlapping files with each other, so I'd assume it's safe to install those in any order, right?

 

Now I just need to figure out if it's safe to combine body + equipment + BBB + Seamless, for a single replacer (HGEC or Robert's or OCO), all together in single "mod" and install it, and then move onto the next replacer and do the same. Basically I'd like to manually pre-apply the Seamless and BBB patches onto the "raw" replacer mods, so then I'd only have one mod for HGEC, one for Robert's and one for OCO, and no need to overwrite mod installations with other mod installations.

 

Edit: Oh, but I don't really know just what the OCO compatibility patches do, so I dunno how that'd affect the install order... Agh this is all so complicated.

 

Edit 2: Meh I think I'm just overcomplicating things by trying to combine stuff. Forget it if it's too complicated. That's probably something I should do once I finally know exactly what everything does.

 

 

Also, I was thinking. The SetBody meshes are seamless, right? But the HGEC textures I'm using aren't, so it'd be kinda wasted I think. Now what I was wondering is if I can combine the SetBody HGEC meshes, with EVE textures, which both have seamless versions. The problem is that EVE doesn't have H-Cup, but then I realized, do textures even have cup size? Or does any texture for HGEC work with any body from HGEC?

I noticed that the SetBody mod just adapts whatever texture you're using to the new body when you cast the spell, but dunno if that's a special feature that the SetBody mod has or what.

 

Edit 3: Alright never freaking mind, I just realized some Seamless patches don't even have textures, while some do. How the heck do they make things seamless without textures?

Edited March 29, 2015 by Rangaros

[Striker879]

DMRA is one of the HGEC compatible body meshes (i.e. to use it you need HGEC body textures installed). The HGEC textures don't care what sized HGEC body they are applied to. Some HGEC textures may look better on some body choices, but you can use the same texture from AA cup to J cup and larger. That isn't a feature of SetBody Reloaded, it's a feature of HGEC.

 

Seamless is primarily meshes with vertices that align at the different body seams. That still left some texture induced seams, so Junkacc11 developed some HGEC body textures to further reduce the seams. Feel free to continue the work if you wish/are able. Read the description on the Seamless Equipment page for a complete description of the problem and all of the steps that have been taken to fix it.

 

Yes there is a lot of reading if you want to learn how to mod and troubleshoot your own problems. None of us were born with this as innate knowledge ... we have all had to learn it. Fortunately people like Junkacc11 and Movomo who discovered the roots of the problem and developed solutions were also kind enough to document it ... otherwise we'd all still be in the dark ages using stone knives and sharp sticks to do stuff.

 

Seamless Heads Nuska OCOv2 edition includes replacement body textures for HGEC as well as replacement head textures. It doesn't include the beast races ... install the textures that came with your HGEC base package.

 

All that is needed to figure out what parts of which need to be installed first when making your custom install package is looking at what is included with each download, and thinking through what each does. BBB will normally only include replacement meshes ... obviously you will need the non-BBBed version and then apply the BBBed meshes as a replacement. The non-BBBed version will be the source of the required textures.

 

When dealing with texture replacers you need to know what you are replacing. In the case of HGEC you aren't so much replacing vanilla textures so much as installing compatible textures, but as Ike pointed out footfemale in vanilla has the same name as footfemale in HGEC or Roberts (and handfemale in HGEC as there is no handfemale in Roberts).

 

Many if not most things in the game can only have one version when it comes to replacers. There can be only one female fur cuirass replacer, and it must be at meshes\armor\fur\f\cuirass.nif or the game won't use it (without an ESP to direct it to use alternate non-replacers, so you could have a DMRA fur cuirass while all the bandits etc have E-cup fur cuirass IF you have an mod that uses an ESP to put the DMRA version in the game ... otherwise you can have E-cup or you can have DMRA but not both).

 

Sorry about missing all the details on Khajiit textures. Just checked my own Installed folder for OCO v2 and I see I didn't even transfer any Khajiit textures from the extracted OCO v2 download (probably because I knew that the Khajiit problem needed the textures from HGEC to solve). That situation will remain in the game forever, and so will always require a solution.

 

Using any of the meshes from SetBody Reloaded as a seamless replacer is just copying the files to the correct folder (meshes\characters\_male) and renaming them to replace what's already there. A body mesh is a body mesh is a body mesh ... without using Blockhead overrides there can only be one femaleupperbody.nif, one femalelowerbody.nif, femalehand.nif and femalefoot.nif and those need to be their names.

[Rangaros]

"Seamless is primarily meshes with vertices that align at the different body seams. That still left some texture induced seams, so Junkacc11 developed some HGEC body textures to further reduce the seams."

 

But the Seamless Equipment for EVE HGEC only has meshes, no textures at all :blink: That's my issue, I figured I'd get seamless HGEC textures from there, but nope. Or are those somewhere else in another mod I didn't find yet?

 

 

And yeah I've been checking inside the packages to see what each thing has, but I'm not yet quite sure what everything is supposed to do. Particularly what has me lost are the OCO compatibility patches. I just dunno exactly what they do or how they work. I noticed it shares files both with the base replacers and with the Seamless Equipment patches, so the install order among those three matters. Which probably means I HAVE to go: base replacers > OCO compatibility patches > Seamless patches. So the Seamless one win at the end. Right?

 

 

Also, I was checking exactly what I needed to make a whole female body mesh (cept the head), and I think it's:

 

femalefoot.nif

femalehand.nif

femalelowerbody.nif

femaleupperbody.nif

 

Anything I'm missing? All those files in the Bombshell folder are just different versions of them that I gotta rename, right? Like, "femaleupperbody_HB.nif" I would rename it to just "femaleupperbody.nif".

I'm glad I found that txt file with all the naming codes, although there's a few I can't find there, but honestly I don't even care too much what most of those are.

 

 

Edit: Say, I'm realizing something... I don't really see any textures for clothing and armor among all these. They only change meshes, and sometimes there's a few loose textures here and there but very rarely (EVE has a textures/menus and a textures/grhys folders, which I'm not touching cause I have no idea what they are). Does that mean they simply use vanilla textures on top of the modified meshes?

Edited March 30, 2015 by Rangaros

[IkeCoast]

Hey, Rangaros!

 

Yes, the nif files you need to build a whole female body, like a Doctor Frankenstein at large, are these four.

 

What the OCO compatibility patches do is provide matching body textures for Robert Male, Robert Female, and HGEC, but these latter without beast races, as we discovered.

 

I told you: the base or Core OCO package only includes head textures and vanilla body textures. If you want to use RobMale, RobFem or HGEC and have matching body textures, you need the compatibility patches (or if you don't mind the neck seams, other textures for these body types).

 

Of course, with the arrival of Seamless Equipments, there are some seamless textures. THe HGEC body replacer ALREADY has seamless textures, being the most popular body type out here, so Movomo did not find the need to create more than the ones included in the Seamless Heads Nuska Edition (minus the Beast races).

 

ANd yep, the installation order you say is the correct one: when using the Seamless Series, we want it to "win" in the Meshes and textures match.

 

Now I need to go to bed. If you see Striker, kiss him for me and then laugh at the face he will put (be careful though: his beard is a weapon of mass destruction).

 

Cheers!

[Striker879]

Actually Ike, it's a bit bedraggled looking of late, and I'm not too sure what in all is living in there. Must be too many crumbs getting tangled in the fur, causing some sort of population explosion. Soon enough the spring trimming will evict them in any case.

 

The body part renaming is exactly correct. You'll see that the hands and feet don't need renaming in most cases (such as those you'll pair with your HB). There are some that are intended for some particular body variant. If you get a wrong one and see a gap at the wrist or ankle just copy/paste the right one ... it's like having a great big box of Lego, but not all the pieces work well together.

 

Use the Seamless body texture from the Seamless Heads Nuska package for the least seam possible. If you use any other HGEC body textures the seams will be anywhere from a bit more noticeable to just as bad as the bad old days.

[Rangaros]

Hm, so I just realized that even though I didn't use EVE because it didn't have H-Cup, I can actually use the TEXTURES of EVE, right? I was being dumb again and thinking "but my HGEC texture has seams cause it's the old non-EVE one", and then I realized, again, that meshes and textures are separate. So essentially I could use an H-Cup HGEC body mesh, then add EVE HGEC body textures on top, right?

 

 

What I'm still in doubt about, regarding the OCO-HGEC compatibility patch, is that I notice it overwrites textures from the previously installed HGEC body. And the Seamless pack for HGEC, like I said before, doesn't contain any textures. So ultimately, once everything is installed in order, there will be some HGEC texture files from the OCO-HGEC patch, right? Now my question is, are those seamless?

[Striker879]

Yes you can use any HGEC compatible body texture with any of the many different HGEC variants around. Some will just look better than others. Size only matters for us guys ... the textures could care less what size mesh they are applied to.

 

Nuska developed the HGEC compatibility patch to do her best to minimize the neckseam while using her heads on HGEC bodies (and Roberts patches for those bodies). This all predates the Seamless series by over a year. Nuska's textures were an improvement over using the standard HGEC textures but her head meshes didn't address the vertices problem (if anyone knew about it back then they weren't advertising it).

 

So again ... if you want the least neck/waist/wrist/ankle seams possible use the HGEC body textures included in Seamless Heads Nuska. If you don't care about neck/waist/wrist/ankle seams use whichever HGEC texture you like.

 

I use about a half dozen different HGEC textures in my Blockheaderization project, and enable my patented Selective Vision filter.

[Rangaros]

Wait, so the Seamless for Nuska OCO v2 actually has HGEC body textures too, not just head stuff? But I suppose I still need full body textures to use as a base, right? And then the Seamless just overwrites some stuff. Or does the Seamless actually already have all the body textures itself?

[Striker879]

Download Seamless Heads Nuska to a folder and extract it to that same folder. In it you will see a folder named Data\Textures\Characters and in that you will find replacement body textures for HGEC and Robert Male for all of the races that the OCO v2 HGEC compatibility patch covered as well as those the Robert Male compatibility patch covered. The head stuff is in the nuska folder, same as in OCO v2.

 

The races that aren't included in either OCO v2 or the Seamless Nuska will need to get their textures from your HGEC base body textures. Most of the races use the Imperial textures in both the vanilla game and in HGEC (Roberts gave the Redguards their own texture ... vanilla/HGEC Redguards use Imperial).