missing body parts and dark faces Help!

[Sallyo]

Hello Everyone!

 

I am back playing Oblivion with a gorgeous companion Mod who is a dark elf type. It took me two days to get him to show up right. Now my character is so ugly. I need better hair and a new skin and body. She even looks big and bulky like a guy. It ruins the game..

 

I tried the eyecandy mod and HGCe bodies. Now I have big chunks missing from peoples bodies and all of our faces are practically black.

 

When I did this before I had plenty of time to dl the Apachee store and fight with it. Man Ohh the crashes. I got a really gorgeous avatar out of it. I still never got the whole store to show up right. Yes the god awful triangles. I was able to get in and out, ... buy my items before my game crashed. Just Barley......

 

I really dont want to have to fight with downloading the apachee store again. Or have to reinstall the whole game again and risk losing my companion mod. Is there a mod that can fix the dark faces and bring the bodies back? I using the nexus mod manager and that helps some. I also have the Tes and it just confuses me.

I want to look like this again only grey to match my new companion.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Could you perhaps also provide a screenshot of how it looks as of right now, that is with all the errors you're describing, and a list of the mods you're currently using, non-ESP ones as well as your current plugin and masterfile load order, as shown in the mod manager of your choice?

 

I'm suspecting a couple things which usually go wrong when people try to use body mods, because some required steps aren't too thoroughly explained or documented in some cases, like missing the mandatory stock replacers to go along with them, Archive Invalidation hassles, especially with Steam, Windows Vista or higher OS and default installation path problems, etc., etc., but with the little information you provided so far I can't really guess much of a thing.

[Sallyo]

Sure,

Its been so long I forgot to give additional info.

 

In my Data Menu when you first start up the game, I have Dair AVari a male companion mod, Hes at the bottom of the load order. Well He was.... he is at the top now!!

Then comes the male body replacer mod by robert, then my master oblivion.esm file. When I go to launce the game and click data files, the load order is opposite with the companion mod at the top . : (

 

I am running this game off my disk so its not a steam download.

I dont know how to fix the load order in the Nexus mod helper. There doesnt seem to be a button or menu for it. and TES Mod manager doesnt look like a mod manager at all. I should probably get rid of it.

When I switch over to the "plugins" tab on the nexus mod manager, everything is in the right load order. with the master oblivion.esm at the top.

 

I am going to try to dl Ren's beautiful bodies. That might fix it.

I read on google that the dark faces at the neck line happen when something called Natural faces is used in a mod. They said to get rid of it inthe CS set. I have no clue how to dig into the construction set.

[Striker879]

The list shown in the vanilla game launcher is just an alphabetical list, not a load order.

 

The best tool for managing load orders in Oblivion is BOSS. I'm not familiar with Nexus Mod manager (NMM) so I can't tell you how to set it up so that BOSS handles the load order while it managed the rest ... perhaps Drake will have some info on how to do that.

 

If your load order is indeed just those mods your problems may be just getting archive invalidation set up correctly. I do know that NMM has a way to do that, but again I'm not familiar with the set by step on how to do that.

[DrakeTheDragon]

In order to manage your load order inside the NMM you go to the "Plugins" tab, select the plugin/masterfile you want to move up or down in load order, and then use the green arrow buttons on the left bar to do so. Or you simply grab an entry with your mouse and drag&drop it around.

 

In order to run BOSS/LOOT from inside the NMM you go to the rightest button on the top left menu bar "Supported Tools". I didn't ever give it any clues as to if I have BOSS or where to find it, so I guess the NMM is capable of automatically detecting it once it's installed. The option for LOOT for example is grayed out in mine, for I never so far installed LOOT on my drive.

 

I for one, however, still prefer running BOSS via its own means and don't even use the "Plugins" tab in NMM. NMM manages my mods, not my load order. I use Wrye Bash for that, because its Bashed Patch constantly being recompiled whenever I add or remove a mod makes it unavoidable anyways.

 

And Archive Invalidation, well, just click the button "Tools" in the same top left buttons bar and find it way down at the bottom "Archive Invalidation", either bearing a check mark on its left side or not, depending on whether it was installed or not.

 

For additional reference, there's also buttons to export or import your load order from or into the NMM to be found on the "Plugins" tab, which might come in handy here, if you need to show someone the entirety of your current load order.

[Sallyo]

Thank you all,

I dont know if this is even a load order problem or not. According to the NMM My load order is correct. Yet I am still seeing missing bodies and black faces of the towns folk. The orcs seem ok. Here in this photo is an example.

[Striker879]

Looks more like an installation issue to me.

 

Drake will correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like both colour map and normal map missing for the upper body (so neither upperbodymale.dds or upperbodymale_n.dds if that character is indeed shirtless and using the vanilla body ... otherwise it'll be shirt.dds and shirt_n.dds or whatever the file name for the sack cloth shirt textures are) and the face texture is missing the normal map.

 

You may want to re-read the installation instructions again and carefully compare those to what you've been doing.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, that seriously looks like one of the problems I mentioned. You said you're using one of Robert's Male bodies, didn't mention the version or the release though, but you never mentioned anything of the mandatory Stock Clothing and Armor Replacers to go along with these. Without these, wearing Vanilla body stock items on Robert's Male bodies, is known to cause outright disappearing items as well as the bodies they include.

 

The resolution is tiny, but I think I'm also seeing it at the pants, the overall look of the leg parts coming out at the bottom as well as the gap around the ankles, this all looks like Vanilla body meshes to me, thus the pants are still Vanilla.

 

I can't say why some items straight away disappear and some just won't line up perfectly, as far as I recall the true reason for that was never determined, but if I see an entire item completely disappeared, clothing as well as included body parts, and a stock item as well to boot, thus missing textures an impossibility due to it being Vanilla textures we're speaking of, always inside the BSA, my first suspect always is the known incompatibility between Vanilla stock items and Robert's Male bodies, i.e. the absence of the mandatory Stock Replacers.

 

Now, I don't know which version, or release, of Robert's Male bodies you're using, a link to the mod page could help massively here, and not every Stock Replacer package will fit every version, some Robert's Male versions ship with separately installable Stock Replacers included, some will need them to be obtained separately as well, but if you tell us which one, we'll sure be able to link you to the proper Stock Replacers for them.

 

The black faces also look familiar, way familiar actually, but I can't for he life of me remember what it was caused by. Regardless, the version or release of Robert's Male you're using could again give some clues about this one, as at least some of the releases I know also contain head meshes and/or face textures going along with them, and considering that usually everything inside an archive is extracted and installed when using a manager, no matter if it's optional or even choose-only-one, this could very well already be the issue for that as well.

[Sallyo]

Thank you for the reply. I am old yet new again, so all this fancy talk in techy terms is way over my head. I got the roberts male body replacer here at nexus. Male Oblivion Body Replacer Version 4 Final. It s newest update was 2011.

By Robert http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/14942/?

Here is the archive invaladation text in notepad.

meshes/characters/_male/upperbody.nif

meshes/characters/_male/lowerbody.nif

meshes/characters/_male/hand.nif

meshes/characters/_male/foot.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/01/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/02/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/03/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/04/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/05/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/05/m/pants.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/06/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/06/m/pants.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/07/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/07/m/pants.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/08/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/08/m/pants.nif

meshes/clothes/lowerclass/09/m/shirt.nif

meshes/clothes/middleclass/04/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/middleclass/05/m/shoes.nif

meshes/clothes/middleclass/mcpantskungfublk/m/pants.nif

meshes/clothes/upperclass/02/m/shoes.nif

textures/characters/argonian/male/footmale.dds

textures/characters/argonian/male/footmale_n.dds

textures/characters/darkelf/male/footmale.dds

textures/characters/darkelf/male/footmale_n.dds

textures/characters/dremora/male/footmale.dds

textures/characters/dremora/male/footmale_n.dds

textures/characters/imperial/male/footmale.dds

textures/characters/imperial/male/footmale_n.dds

textures/characters/orc/male/footmale.dds

textures/characters/orc/male/footmale_n.dds

textures/characters/darkelf/headdarkelf.dds

textures/characters/darkelf/headdarkelf_n.dds

textures/characters/imperial/headhuman.dds

textures/characters/imperial/headhuman_n.dds

textures/characters/orc/headorc.dds

my load order according to the Nexus mod manager is:

Oblivion.esm

kt custom race fix.esp

Rens beauty pack Full.esp

Rens Beauty Hair only.esp (which I installed this and the Hair After the black face issue)

Male body replacer V4.esp

Dairanath Avari Male companion .esp

The only reason why I even risked downloading Male body replacer was because it was required for Dai the romantic companion. Dled him here: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/35893/?

When I try to open the Nexus Mod Manager I get an error code for Hgec bodies, which I took that out of the mod manager. The folder is probably still inthe data files folder. Idont see how you can un-merge it once its been downloaded. I doubt that has anything to do with the black faces mainly on the male nords and imperials esp the guards in town.

Any opnions to fix this glitch without having to start all over again would be so so much appreciated.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Don't mention it. We all started with "0" knowledge on this topic once when we started modding this game. You'll learn the important things soon enough while asking around for help. And for the records, not even "we" know "all" there is to it by now, even after 10+ years of modding these games that is.

 

Ah, I see, a rather older version but still adequate and with its own unique flair. Nothing wrong with that, just needed to know.

 

Now, first off, due to it being so old it also still contained one of these so frowned upon antiquated ArchiveInvalidation.txt instruction files, telling you to add its lines into your's. This is a horribly outdated technique by now and is actually causing more issues than it offers solution. So, first things first, let's get your Archive Invalidation up to speed the proper way.

 

 

For reference, in the disc version of Oblivion only textures require Archive Invalidation, in the Steam version it's every kind of resource, actually. By default the game does not use external replacement files over the game's originals found inside the BSAs (Bethesda Softworks Archive, a proprietary format not unlike a ZIP), and in order to make it do so one needs to "invalidate" the entry inside the archive, thus Archive Invalidation.

 

The approach you were following up to now, by following the instructions in Robert's Male Bodies V4, was to enter each and every replacement file and its path into a file called "Archive Invalidation.txt" to be found anywhere inside your game's folders (the data folder is the most likely place, but history has told it's by far not the only one it will work inside either). Needless to say this needs you to manage this file and always add new lines or remove no longer needed ones by hand yourself, or always let the file recreate automatically by one of the mod managers supporting that function.

 

As I said, this approach is fairly outdated by today's standards, and has also already been done away with for the several flaws it was riddled with by design ages ago. Among the most prominent issues with using it are once the number of files reaches a certain threshold, random files will no longer be registered, unless you remove some or add some more, but at this point it pretty much became unreliable in itself already anyways. Thus it was disposed of and is nowadays pretty much frowned upon for that reason.

 

 

As we're already into using the NMM, let's just use that one's approach to it for now. So, like I said, click on the button labeled "Tools" inside the top left button bar and click on the entry "Archive Invalidation" inside there, so there's a check mark left to it. If there already is, it also can't hurt to remove it again once and just check it again, for the unlikely case it didn't work correctly the last time it was set.

 

What this does is called the "BSA Redirection" approach to Archive Invalidation, nowadays the only sane and advisable approach left, in my eyes. It should place an empty dummy BSA, likely with an obvious name like "BSARedirection.bsa" or "ArchiveInvalidation.bsa" or something similar, into your data folder and alter your "Oblivion.ini" so the "sArchiveList" entry contains this BSA at the proper place. It becomes the only BSA requiring invalidation of its contents anymore, and as it's empty like I said, that means invalidation itself won't be needed anymore.

 

This is a one time only, fire and forget, solution to Archive Invalidation and will only ever have to redone when for some reason either the BSA got removed from your data folder or your "Oblivion.ini" got reverted so the "sArchiveList" entry no longer contains it at the proper place.

 

One thing paramount when using it though is to now also get rid of any and all left-over files called "Archive Invalidation.txt" you might have somewhere inside your game's folders, like I said, or else these will keep instructing the game to use external file X over internal file X from inside the "now-empty", mind you, dummy BSA, which is know to lead into multiple random issues all across the board. So make sure you don't have any of these left now, and your Archive Invalidation should be working fine for at least the next years to come.

 

 

Now that that is done, let's get the required Stock Clothing and Armor Replacers to go along with Robert's Male Bodies V4 next. Stock items is what the original items contained within the game are called, as opposed to items added from mods, where you have to take care you only obtain ones fitting your selected body/body mod yourself to begin with.

 

As for why that is required, in Oblivion your body comes with your clothes. When you install a Body Replacer or mod, you'll have the new unique body only while you're nude, but the new skin textures all the time regardless. When you equip an item, the affected body part of your's gets removed and the body part included inside the item takes its place. So if you installed a body replacer but aren't using a stock item replacer as well, you'll effectively be having the old Vanilla body part back but the new textures will not work on it anymore. That's also the reason why the stock items in your screenshot are now missing, most of the time (though nobody knows exactly as to why).

 

 

In the release of Robert's Male you linked us to there's a bunch of replacers for, most of, the shoes, and a couple pants, for when body parts are shown, included, but as a matter of fact the other original game's items need to be replaced as well. For Robert's Male Bodies V4 said replacers can be found, for example, from either Senchan, for the muscular body type, or from TLBTLBTLB, for the average body type, your choice. But there's others out there as well of course.

 

As you see these usually come for many a selection of Vanilla items, either from the Vanilla game, from the Shivering Isles expansion (SI), or from the big major overhaul mods as well. There's no use in installing ones you don't need, as the files they replace won't be there anyways and thus nothing much will happen but putting unused files and folders into your data folder.

 

It doesn't look like you're using the Shivering Isles expansion, yet, so far, or there'd be the empty autoload-my-bsa-triggering plugin "DLCShiveringIsles.esp" or what's it called, so chances are good you won't need the replacers for these as of right now.

 

 

However, as you're not using the Shivering Isles expansion, I actually have to ask a way more important and not at all unrelated question as well at this point. What version of the game are you currently using? You can read this up both inside the game at the bottom of the main menu title screen where the map scroll plays in the background, or by right-clicking the "Oblivion.exe" in your game's folder and reading it up on the properties page. The only sane version everybody absolutely must be using nowadays is v1.2.0416. Anything below that and issues will rain down on you aplenty, if not already, then later for sure.

 

If you really are using an older version than v1.2.0416 now, then it'd be really advisable to first of everything at all get your game updated to v1.2.0416, as for example certain plugins will just refuse outright to work on a lower game version than the one they were created for (1.2+ for almost all mods known), there'll be no errors and no warnings, just nothing will happen at all and they silently won't load. And that's only the beginning of the issues you will encounter with an older version of the game. Here you'll find the official patch download page by the game's creator, but be sure to choose only the one fitting your install, whether you have Shivering Isles or not, or your language version by all means.

 

 

And last but not least, as you're using the NMM and the NMM always activates every plugin included inside a mod package by default, even in choose-only-1 types of situations, and the release of Robert's Male you linked to also contains a "Beautiful People V22 - Robert's Male Bodies V4.esp" (can't read up the correct name, as the file site's currently in maintenance it appears) which as I said will also be activated by default, and you don't have Beautiful People installed, as far as I know, make sure this one is definitely "not" checked, or you'll run into several issues to do with faces and cosmetics along the way when entries point to resources you don't have. This is a compatibility patch for use with Beautiful People. Only use it when you do have Beautiful People installed! (Or your eyes will disappear, and other things, I'm "not" joking.)

 

 

Sorry for any confusion caused by me mentioning steps out of order. I was writing the points in the order they came to me while walking down my line of thoughts, and for example the possibility that you're still on a pre-1.2.0416 game version as well came to me almost last. Although it's definitely the absolute first thing one has to check and fix these times and days.

 

And no, usually "having to start all over" is not part of my list of suggestions. I haven't yet encountered a problem with modding the game which couldn't have easily been repaired again without such last-resort kinds of steps. Unless, of course, your game for some reason isn't patchable up to v1.2.0416 now and it's not already at v1.2.0416 either. This is like the only situation in which a reinstall might actually be unavoidable. But it'd also be a situation in which your current game install would be pretty much unusable the way it is, so... :mellow:

 

 

edit: Oh, and one more thing (as if this monster of a post wasn't long enough already), but if the NMM says a mod could not be loaded when it starts, it doesn't actually mean a thing in regards to your game. HGEC is an ESP-less replacer package, so there won't be much of any sign of it being installed, unless you dive down into your "data/meshes" folder and search any female type of body, clothing or amor NIFs. You will see it as soon as Archive Invalidation is working and you walk up to a female in your game though pretty sure.