Amraskuthalion38 Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 Okay. i know this is a really noob question, im really sorry. ive spent the past hour looking for the answer but cant find it so sorry if im reposting a question. haha. anyways, so in the CS, i wanna change the model and icon image of things, but when it pulls up the folders, theres like very few things (and uncommon things too). I'm guessing that everything else is compressed somewhere, either on the game cd or on the web as a file, idk. can someone point me in the right direction please? Thanks in advance for helping :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LFact Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 All vanilla graphic resources are packed in several .BSA files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amraskuthalion38 Posted July 11, 2011 Author Share Posted July 11, 2011 Do you (or anyone else) by chance know where to get those .bsa files? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LFact Posted July 11, 2011 Share Posted July 11, 2011 Do you (or anyone else) by chance know where to get those .bsa files? Thanks! They are in (Where you installed Oblivion)\Data. You need to unpack them(with BSA Commander or something) if you want to work with vanilla meshes and textures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theuseless Posted July 13, 2011 Share Posted July 13, 2011 LFact is correct. All the files are packed in a bsa (Bethesda Software Archive) file. These files are shipped with your game, be it from disk or from steam. You will have these files on your disk. If you use winxp, you will have them at the default install location of: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data. The names of these files are: Oblivion - Meshes.bsaOblivion - Misc.bsaOblivion - Sounds.bsaOblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsaOblivion - Voices1.bsaOblivion - Voices2.bsa There are other .bsa files that are shipped with Shivering Isles. Other mods, like Nascosto Isles and Armamentarium are released as bsa files as well. It is a compressed format that takes up less space on your hard drive. It makes no difference in load times. If your mod has many new textures or meshes, then the bsa format is the one to ship with. It also makes the removal of your mod much easier. The downfall to a bsa archive is that it takes up a slot in the load list (max at 250+ something). The program bsaCommander is very easy to use once you get the hang of it. If you wish to unpack a file, find the file's location and find it in the folder tree for unpack. If you unpack the oblivion meshes bsa, it will take a few minutes, but it will load (regardless of whether task manager says it is unresponsive). Bsacommander has the directory set for your My Documents folder as default. I don't know how to change this, but it works just fine. I personally find it easiest to copy/paste the bsa to your My Documents folder for ease of use. The output is by default C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\out. Look in this folder to find the files. If you don't want it to copy the files there, choose another folder with the little box. Another program you will eventually want to get is DDS Converter. This program will allow you to make a (bmp, psd, jpg, gif, etc) file into the dds file that you need. If you are making icons, remove the setting "build mipmaps" otherwise you want the default. This is a great program that will allow you to turn your image files into the texture files read by the nif files. Photoshop documents (psd) will only process the top layer. This is the most stable type of file to save as for transparencies, but make sure to merge all layers before processing. Gif files are best for large fields of solid color. Jpeg is better for more dynamic, photo type images. NifSkope is the program that you want to be able to change the textures in the meshes, Blender and 3DS Max are the most common 3d rendering programs out there. Check out the tutorials on these for more info. I hope this answers some of your questions about bsa files and how to unpack them. If you want more help, let me know specifically what you are trying to do. theuseless ps - pm me with questions if I don't get back to you within a few days. I am busy now and have little time. I will get back to when I can tho... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amraskuthalion38 Posted July 13, 2011 Author Share Posted July 13, 2011 Haha. Thanks! Once I extract them, where to I place the extracted files? Is there a specific folder or is anywhere okay? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theuseless Posted July 13, 2011 Share Posted July 13, 2011 I use the generic data/out folder. It seems to be the easiest for me. You can extract them wherever you like however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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