[FYI] Fixing The Neck Seam

[RGMage2]

To make a long story short, I’ve got a fix and I’m going to share it with you.

 

I’ve been back in the waste land for about a month and after a couple of weeks of playing vanilla I started modding my character, and that’s when the neck seam became intolerable.

 

I tried everything I could think of with textures and failed. But it wasn’t a total loss because it got me thinking. If I couldn’t fix it maybe I could move it so it wouldn’t be so visible. Higher up on the neck and under the chin might work so that’s what I set out to do.

 

Here is what I did in pictures - easier to explain and understand :smile:

 

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I also created an egm file for the new body mesh in the hope that the new neck area would morph with the head mesh in chargen but that was a failure. I know the egm works because I tested it in blender but the game will not use it. To compensate for that I added an alpha channel to the body texture and feathered the area around the top of the neck and that worked nicely to conceal the join.

 

The problem here is compatibility. which I will be trying to improve. This is essentially a new body mod (derivative of the Type3-Slim, I call it the T3-Eliminator) and is not compatible with any other clothing or armor mod. Also, because of the alpha channel on the texture, using the texture on any other body part nif that does not have alpha properties causes shadowing problems, so this will not play nicely with other armor or clothing mods at this time unless they are converted.

 

None of this is a problem for me in my game, currently playing a custom race that has exclusive use of the new texture and mesh and some mashup outfits of my own doing , and anything I want to make work I can make work. Obviously this would not be the case for most other people who might want to use this.

 

 

It still has a seam as you can see, but you have to look for it to find it, so not so immersion breaking.

 

I never wanted to release a body mod and I still don’t. And I know that at this time with so few people still here this really makes no sense. However, I will be converting all the vanilla clothing and armor for my own use, and when I’ve got it done I may as well release it all, and I could provide a modder’s resource pac with a selection of body parts for easy conversions in nifskope, and I could do a tutorial explaining how to do that.

 

For now what I am going to do in the next few days is put together and release a demo version of this for anyone who wants to test it out. I’ll set it up as a custom race so it won’t overwrite any other files. I will include all meshes and textures I’m currently using so you can see exactly how it works.

 

Of course if you know your way around the Geck and have any skills with Nifskope or blender or 3dmax you will be able to use the meshes and textures I give you and maybe do a few of your own conversions and make your version of the demo more playable. That will be up to you… it will be posted as a resource.

 

If you've got any thoughts on this I'm listening.

 

 

I wonder if anyone will read this... it's so quiet in here.

[blackrat99]

The neck seam has always annoyed me. It's just a pity someone didn't do something like this years ago and it looks great. I use type 5 myself. I won't change now but I wanted to reply to show that there are still people interested in playing/modding this game.

[RGMage2]

@blackrat99 thanks replying. I was beginning to wonder if anyone even cared about this anymore.

[blackrat99]

Most modders have moved on and it doesn't help that the old Bethsoft forum was killed off. There are still some players and a few modders, but not much of a community unfortunately.

[IdentityZero]

I have a very "all or nothing" attitude as well as being a perfectionist when it comes to modding different aspects of the game. I flat out refuse to use most mods that break immersion. If the model/textures aren't right, why put HD eyes, lashes, teeth, etc on it? I can't even bring myself to use FOOK for many reasons (nothing against the authors, many props to the time and energy put into it). The concealer chains are rather immersion breaking too since they're randomized from cell load to cell load, then you have to edit some of them to fit to the neck.

 

THIS THOUGH. Absolutely renews my faith in modding character/npcs for FO3/FNV. If you do end up making a replacer I'm sure you'd make a lot of people happy. I'd do it but my mod making skills are limited, working on it though!

 

Thanks for sharing. 110%. You can have all of my internets, take dem.

 

In 5 pictures I love your attention to detail. May I ask what character/npc mods you use?

[BoayGamingYT]

I dunno about Fallout 3 Body meshes, But Know quite much in Skyrim body meshes.

 

I can only use my experience in Skyrim and also with 3Dmax.

However the connected vertex between body and neck is not enough, this is because the skinning use by some bones even a small affected which cause the seam, so I always use the maximum vertex weight in between that seams, linked just to a single bone, so i have to check all other bone which may joining the skin/rig such as clavile, spine1,etc.

[CluelessHeros]

Is this mod still available?

[M48A5]

Is this mod still available?

 

I could not find any evidence that the idea was ever put into a mod and published.

[CluelessHeros]

 

Is this mod still available?

 

I could not find any evidence that the idea was ever put into a mod and published.

Thanks for replying. It’s a shame how this concept never became a mod. This would’ve been great for us enthusiasts who still play and adore Fallout 3.

[TVPR]

This thread is the #1 Google result for "Fallout 3 neck seam fix" – which, incidentally, is how I found it ;)

 

At any rate, as there are now plenty of fixes to make the game work with Windows 7 and later, maybe the community will get a small revival? I choose hope, seeing how F3 is vastly superior to F4.