Noob question about replacing item meshes and textures...

[JMGK04]

Hello All,

 

I've mainly just played vanilla Oblivion in the past, but recently I got the GOTY and started a new game with mods. Nothing too drastic, Roberts body mod and that other female body mod, clocks, Gs Loot Mod, etc. It's been fun playing with these new additions and tweaks. And, it got me curious...I don't want to completely change the game. Don't want to have to add a billion new items/weapons/armour, and I don't want to go to the hassle of making new custom eapons and then giving them to me in the game or making a shop or place to pick them up. I just wanted to change how some of the regular "stock" items look. I always felt the Elven weapons just didn't look like the kind of things elves would use, and I've seen some pretty awesome looking swords and shields in other mods.

 

Now, this is only for my own playing experience I'm not gonna be putting together a custom item mod or anything. So, I was wondering if it is possible to just take the meshes and textures from others and just replace the "stock" ones with those? If I see a sword that I think would be PERFECT for the Elven longsword, can I just replace the Elven longsword's mesh and texture with those from this custom weapon? Same with shields, and maybe even armour...if I feel that adventurous, lol.

 

From what I have read, I was thinking just renaming and replacing would do it...but, I have no idea. And, I don't want to screw up the game.

 

If this is easy/stupid/noobish go easy on me, and thanks for the help.

 

-Jon Michael

[alex2avs]

replacing the mesh will do just fine - no need to move the textures related to that item.

 

use a bsa extractor here to extract the meshes to see the folder structure and replace more easily.

Don't forget to do the archive invalidation after replacing meshes/textures.

[JMGK04]

Ok, thank you very much. I thought the mesh was just the virtual shape of the item and the texture was the skin over that. Glad I asked, I was pretty wrong, lol.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Ok, thank you very much. I thought the mesh was just the virtual shape of the item and the texture was the skin over that. Glad I asked, I was pretty wrong, lol.

Basically it is like that. But the textures a mesh uses are assigned in the NIF. So if you changed what NIF an item uses (or replaced the one its item record in the CS is pointing to), it automatically uses the right textures from this NIF.