Halp getting started

[Rangaros]

Yeah at first I figured the mithril thing was because of that, realism, but honestly I kinda prefer consistency over realism.

 

And that's interesting, didn't know the order was what mattered in there, I figured that only mattered for esp's, and that's what BOSS handles anyway. So wait, if I install a mod on top of another, and it's supposed to overwrite stuff, but the load order is lower, will it not do anything? I thought what mattered was install order, but guess not.

 

Now what's been bugging me is... what exactly does Seamless stock replacer do? I mean most clothing and armor hide the neck seam anyway, and from what I saw the neck looked exactly the same with or without it. Maybe the few stuff that actually shows the neck will be seamless, dunno. I don't really know an example to get it and try. In general I just don't get what some of the Seamless mods do. Like, for example, if I get a male and female body mods, then the Seamless will get rid of the neck seams for those, that's fine. But then if I get OCO on top, you also need Seamless for OCO. So why do I need it for the body mods AND for OCO, if the neck seam is only one? Shouldn't Seamless for OCO be enough for everything, given it replaces the head at the end? I don't even know if it's the body or the head that "own" the seam. I'm kinda confused.

 

Edit: Nope, still can see the seam in the neck on clothing that shows it (and no I'm not testing with a Khajiit, lol). Maybe it only works if I also have the base body Seamless for EVE? But if that's the case again I dunno what the Seamless stock replacer does.

 

Edit 2: Oh god the order changes EVERYTHING. I've been moving stuff around to something more logical and everything starts getting fixed or breaking, lol. Now the Seamless stuff works, but my female Khajiit texture exploded or something, lol. Though the male Khajiit body for OCO STILL doesn't work no matter what. I just don't get how it's possible that it does nothing even if I manually install it on top of everything, or put it last in the order.

 

Edit 3: Man this is all so weird. Now I got the Seamless on female working, even though I DON'T have it installed for bodies, only for clothing/armor. Yet it seems to actually make naked bodies seamless, even though the ones I have aren't even part of EVE. This is all witchery, lol. Though I still have the messed up female Khajiit texture so guess I'll keep moving stuff around, and probably break something else when that's fixed.

 

Edit 4: Well, there we go. I tried another mod (Khajiit Female Texture Fix) and now my female Khajiit are fine again, with all the other stuff working. It's weird cause EVE has a Khajiit fix too, but that didn't seem to work, and I had to disable that one for the other one to work. I don't even know how things work anymore, I just try everything, lol. So right now the only missing thing would be Seamless beast-race necks. But honestly, the only one that bugs me is the male Khajiit one, somehow it stands out the most, and I can't get it freaking working x_x And now I don't wanna mess with things too much since everything else is just right.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Rangaros

[Striker879]

Think of the Wrye Installers tab this way ... if you had ten mods already installed using the Installers tab (BAIN wizard or no) and then added an eleventh mod that would overwrite the female fur mesh of mod number 7 on the already installed list, it would overwrite the female fur mesh if it was anywhere from eighth to eleventh on the list, but mod 7's fur would win if the eleventh mod was listed in positions one through six.

 

It works like this. When you install a mod using BAIN it looks at what position the new package is relative to the already installed packages and then assigns a priority to any assets in the new mod vs the installed mods based on it's position relative to each and every installed mod. If the new mod is at the bottom of the list all of it's assets would overwrite any conflicting ones from any mod higher up the list. If it's at the top of the list the only assets that would get installed are those that exist only in the new mod and not in any of the others currently installed.

 

Look at the section BAIN Package Order in the Wrye Bash General Readme.html document for more info.

 

I download every mod I install to a folder, extract to that same folder, examine what it will install and compare to my currently installed mods before I either manually install or BAIN install any mod ... no exceptions.

 

Yes, my micromanaging in the game is merely a reflection of the real me.

[Striker879]

OCO v2 is head meshes and textures ... that's it. The OCO v2 HGEC compatiblity (or Roberts male/female etc) are replacement body textures to match the OCO v2 head textures. The reason you still see neckseams even if you use OCO v2 and the OCO v2 body texture compatibility patches is because the vertices on the head mesh at the neck don't align with the vertices on the body mesh at the neck. Because the vertices don't align none of the textures can properly align.

 

The Seamless series aligns the vertices of the neck, wrist, waist and ankles on all of the meshes it covers. When you install the Seamless Heads Nuska OCOv2 Edition it changes the head meshes that were originally installed with OCO v2 to replacements that have the neck vertices in the position that exactly matches the position of the neck vertices in the Seamless body series (HGEC, Robert male/female TGND2 etc). For some (e.g OCO v2) it also includes replacement textures (body and head) that work to minimize the seam as much as is possible within the constraints of the system Bethesda gave us (as extended by HGEC, Roberts etc). For others (e.g. TGND2) only replacement meshes are included (not necessarily because replacement textures wouldn't help, but you need to draw the line somewhere, else you will need to spend the rest of your life converting stuff for each individual on the planet ... ain't getting me to hold my hand up for that one!!).

 

It's just like at McDonalds ... would you like the full meal deal ... in this case there's no super size option.

 

- Edit - ... +1 :ninja: for Striker!! Hi Ike, didn't see you lurking.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Striker879

[IkeCoast]

Rangaros, about the neck seam:

 

What causes it is the line where the body and the head meshes join. That is, the seam is composed by TWO components, not just one. This is why you need the Seamless for the body and the Seamless for the head. With just one, the seam will still be there.

 

But not only that: the texture (as a whole, meaning not only the diffuse and normal maps, but also the egt file) must be Seamless to be effective. This is why each Seamless package has so many different files (body, head, texture, egt...). You now start to understand why this wasn't done before: it's a monumental task, and Movomo and Junkacc spent more than a year to finish it (and Junkacc hasn't finished yet with the head variants).

 

The Seamless Equipment does the following:

 

it replaces the armor and clothing pieces that show the neck, with the same pieces with the body portion (the neck) seam-mended, so when used with a Seamless Head, the neck seam will disappear.

 

When you equip a piece of clothing and armor that does not cover all the body, i.e. a vertiginous cleavage or a bare chest male piece, you are also equipping the body part it covers, the whole Upperbody or Lowerbody, with a different body mesh. If the body mesh on the clothing and armor is not seam-mended, then the neck seam will be back.

 

(all of this is explained already in the diverse Seamless Thingies Description pages, by the way).

 

Summarizing:

 

Old body mesh + old head mesh = Neck Seam.

Old body mesh + new Seamless Head = Neck Seam.

New Seamless body mesh + old head mesh = Neck Seam.

New Seamless body mesh + new Seamless head mesh = no Neck Seam.

 

Using old, low-res, poor quality textures (like vanilla ones or the low-res RobertMale or Exnem) with the last combination will produce a visible, yet slight, neck seam. Using the textures provided with the Seamless packages will allow the meshes to work as intended.

 

Using old, but high-res, high-quality textures (like Capucine's Aquamer ones I use for my Abysmer race) will produce a very slight, almost unnoticeable, neck seam, and if you use the egt files from Movomo's Seamless Packages, will dissapear also (as occurs with my Abysmers).

 

SO, there are reasons why you need Seamless for the Head, the Body and the Clothing and Armors.

 

And... you should have followed Striker's suggestion of opening the Seamless Packages and look at them: they do not include seam-mended male textures for the Beast Races. This is why your male Khajiit still shows the neck seam no matter what you equip or unequip on him. Movomo and Jukacc are still working on the Seamless Packages.

 

Cheers!

 

 

PS: What did you mead with installing OCO "on top of Seamless"? I gave a strict installation order in the Step-by-step guide I linked. Shall I prepare the firing squad?

[IkeCoast]

I know you love to ninja me, Striker, but that was totally uncalled-for and ridiculous. I'm talking about the time you posted your ninjareply.

 

Because I will simply not believe you if you tell me you didn't do it on purpose.

 

Cheers!

[Striker879]

Honest ... only Rangaros and Striker were listed down at the bottom ... you've gotten some stealth technology during my brief absence.

[Rangaros]

Ike, yeah I know beast races aren't part of the Seamless, we were talking about that a few pages back, but Striker found a couple mods that address that (page 3). My problem is that the first time I tried it, it worked, but now I can't get it to work again.

 

The thing is like this. I have Robert's male bodies, HGEC female bodies, and OCO heads. The I have BBB for those HGEC bodies, EVE stock replacers, and BBB stock replacers for EVE. So far all the bodies and heads are changed fine, and everything is BBB enabled as it should. Then there's Seamless for Robert's, which works fine. Then I DON'T have Seamless for my HGEC bodies, cause I'm not using EVE bodies. What I have is Seamless for EVE stock replacers. And that, somehow, also made the HGEC bodies I use Seamless. Right there I don't get how that's possible.

 

Right so basically, now I have all bodies and heads just fine, BBB just fine, and Seamless working for everything except beast races (because it doesn't exist, I know). Now what I wanna do is install Khajiit Male Body for Oblivion Character Overhaul version 2, which should address the neck seams on male Khajiit, even if not as perfectly as the Seamless pack. Well, there's the problem, installing that mod does literally nothing. I mean, it's not just that I see seams, it's that I still see the old Robert body, even though the one from that mod looks completely different.

 

Then there's the fact that I needed an extra mod to patch up female Khajiit cause at some point they got all messed up, but I'm just giving that one to the fact that I've been mixing stuff up to get exactly what I want, and maybe not everything works fine with everything else. And it doesn't matter anyway since it the end it fixed it just fine with all the features it should have.

 

About the "on top of Seamless" thing, I really don't know what I was talking about when I said that, lol. Maybe if you could point me to the post where I said it I can read it and figure out what it was about.

 

Edit: LOL, you two and your ninja shenanigans.

 

What I noticed is that the Khajiit Male Body for OCO actually... doesn't replace almost anything. Except footmale.dds and footmale_n.dds, every other file it contains is named similar but different to the ones I already have. All the files I normally have in textures/characters/nuska/khajiit, he adds a version with the same name but with "_m" or "_n" on it. And from what I see, some are actually meant to be the same thing. For example headkhajiit.dds and headkhajiit_m.dds are both the texture of the head, slightly different. So somehow I feel the problem is in the file names.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Rangaros

[Striker879]

Sorry ... family emergency (nothing too dramatic ... somebody plowed into my daughter's parked van, which my granddaughter was using to get to and from work ... I am now a shuttle pilot).

 

EVE is just one of the many "flavours" of HGEC. It's pretty well the only one that comes with a mostly complete clothing/armor replacer, which is why Ike and I push it rather than one of the other flavours. Lick 'em and they all taste like HGEC.

 

The reason the Khajiit male has those extra files with _m appended to the regular file names is because it uses Blockhead to work it's magic. That's how it works for male but doesn't touch the female Khajiits (the vanilla game uses male textures for both male and female Khajiit, which is why they are such a problem race). Those file names and folder locations need to be exactly as they are in the Khajiit for OCO v2 males or they won't work.

 

I think you are suffering a BAIN induced mess, in part due to the subtleties of BAIN's package order deciding what overrides what, and the complexities of the Khajiit race in general. Because I manually install almost everything (and certainly everything body/head mesh/textures related) I'm going to need to really think through this BAIN package order.

 

I'd suggest from top to bottom ...

 

EVE base including armor/clothing subpackages

 

Roberts male including armor/clothing packages

 

OCO v2 base

 

OCO v2 HGEC compatibility patch

 

OCO v2 Roberts male compatibility patch

 

Luna's Khajiit female fix

 

Khajiit male body for OCO v2

 

Seamless Heads Nuska OCO v2

 

Seamless Equipment HGEC (make sure the packages for BBB are lower in the subpackage list than the base packages, and note than only E cup includes both armor and clothes ... so it's base body which is default already BBBed, equipment and then BBBed equipment in that order top to bottom in the subpackage window)

 

Seamless equipment Robert male (the Robert male Khajiit tail is overridden by Blockhead plus the Khajiit male body for OCO v2).

 

I believe you can just reorder the packages and subpackages and then use Refresh Data and then Anneal from the right click Installers tab menu to fix things.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Striker879

[IkeCoast]

Rangaros, the filenames OCO uses for textures and meshes are the correct ones. All the files with the _m suffix are for MALES, and the ones with the _f suffix are for FEMALES. The ones without these suffixes are shared by both genders. Do not touch them nor change their names. Blockhead reads these suffixes to know which file to put on which gender.

 

I do not use BAIN installers, so here I'm even more lost than you, matey. Time for Striker to shine (in addition to shuttle people upstairs and downstairs).

 

Gotta go out a while, see you later!

 

Cheers!

[Rangaros]

Woah, okay, I guess I made a mistake right off the bat, I didn't know I needed OCO - Robert and OCO - HGEC compatibility patches. I think I read somewhere that Seamless made it unnecessary or something, maybe that's why I discarded the idea...

 

So besides that, like I said I'm not using EVE bodies, so I suppose at first I'd need the base body, then the EVE armor/clothing, both at the top. Not sure where in the order I'd have to put BBB for the body I use, but I'll try a couple places.

 

Didn't even know you could reorder subpackages.

 

Also, not sure what Refresh Data is, but I've been using Anneal as taught by the readme, when reordering things and something goes yellow.

 

Edit: Well, on the bright side, nothing new broke. On the other side, nothing got better either. Pretty much everything working except the new textures for male Khajiit body. Don't think I needed those OCO compatibility patches after all since nothing changed, but dunno.

 

I'll clarify exactly what I'm using since I'm not using the normal full EVE, and it might make figuring things out easier. I'm using a normal base HG Eyecandy body and HGEC Better Bouncing Boobs (cause it's the one that supports that body type) for base bodies. Then from EVE I'm using the core file (with KnightsoftheNine, ShiveringIslesEasterEggs and StockEquipmentReplacer esp's enabled), one upper body equipment replacer and one lower body equipment replacer, meaning no actual body files, only clothing/armor. And then from Seamless for EVE, again, only using one upper body equipment replacer and one lower body equipment replacer, so no body files again. And then Seamless BBB just normally since that one only has equipment replacers.

 

So basically I'm just using the parts of EVE and Seamless that don't replace the body I'm using. But like I said, somehow, my female bodies still got seamless, even though I don't even have Seamless installed for HGEC bodies. And I actually noticed the change when I installed the Seamless equipment replacers, really weird. Not complaining, mind you.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Rangaros