I can't find vanilla meshes

[GH108]

So i've been having this problem lately, where I can't find the meshes from the vanilla game in Data>Meshes. All it lists is the meshes for mods. For example, I wanted to use the Leather Armor world object as the world object for the old Fook 2 Road Warrior Armor (which didn't come with a world object, for some reason), but couldn't find anything other than mod meshes in my whole meshes folder. However, given that I don't have huge exclamation boxes floating around when I actually play, I know they are still somewhere where the game can access them, but I don't know where. Have they been moved somewhere? Where have they gone?!

[nivea]

They are in the .bsa

Fallout - Meshes.bsa

[GH108]

Okay, that was more complicated than expected, but thanks :)

[tunaisafish]

Not as complicated as it sounds. See http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/BSA_Files

I use FOMM to extract them.

[bben46]

The only reason you would need to extract them is if you are going to make changes to them. The game uses the textures and meshes from inside of the bsa files without needing to remove them. Be sure not to save any changes you make back to the vanilla BSA files as that can cause problems.

[sagittarius22]

The only reason you would need to extract them is if you are going to make changes to them.

 

Wrong, you may need to extract them if you want to create another item from an existing meshe.

For example, creating an activator from a car.

[davidlallen]

Sorry, what? bben46 said you have to extract the meshes if you want to change them, and you have said that you have to extract them if you want to change them. Perhaps there is a language problem.

[tunaisafish]

I knew what Sag meant, but maybe because it's fresh in my head having done just that :)

 

You need to extract them if you want to use the same nif model in a new object you make. ie. your new activator uses one of the existing car models.

Or in my case I needed new static items using various existing ingame meshes.

The GECK won't allow you to just type in the pathname, and it does not list the meshes from bsa files.

[davidlallen]

The GECK won't allow you to just type in the pathname, and it does not list the meshes from bsa files.

That is true, but you don't have to extract the mesh in order to work around this geck limitation. I find it easier to create a dummy zero length file with the right name, select that in geck, and then delete the zero length file. This way, I don't have to keep around unmodified copies of existing objects.

[tunaisafish]

Yeah smart idea, my HD is full of unneeded meshes among the ones that I've downloaded in custom mods.

 

I'd tried to work around it too. I'd used FNVEdit to edit the filepath field directly.

I later found that this *might* be a bad idea because when the GECK reads the filename it also reads the info from the mesh, and updates the bounding box coordinates and one I edited had an 'override texture' field left over from the previous object. (I only noticed that some of the fields were wrong while looking via FNVEdit)

I'm uessing it probably only matters if you use the bounding-box collision data.

 

 

Ahhh crap.

OK I just looked at my mod again. Was going to tell you about a seemingly great shortcut to creating heaps of new static's in one go by just drag-and-dropping the nif files from program manager into the static pane of the GECK. (All I had to do was rename the EditorID's).

BUT... when you do it that way it *doesn't* read the bounding box data. The objects I did that for all read 0,0,0 0,0,0.

 

The ones I selected manualy through the GECK interface all have correct bounds info.

 

Off to test again now to see if my bulk-made ones work as expected :/

 

Edit: Phew. They work :)

I wasn't using the bounding box option for navmeshing, but wondered if the coordinates were used when activating objects with the crosshairs. Apparently they aren't.

Edited May 26, 2011 by tunaisafish