Taking the plunge into FO4 modding

[Madcat221]

After a long while, I finally got myself Fallout 4, and am considering my first mod: "Plasma Carbine Barrel".

 

Basically, it's gonna be somewhat like the Laser Rifle Long Barrel is a midway between the Laser's Short Barrel and Sniper Barrel. I'm doing it mainly because I just want a "service rifle" type plasma gun, but not have that squirrelly little excuse of a short "barrel".

 

I'm aiming to chop up the Sniper Barrel a bit to serve the purpose of the "Carbine Barrel"'s visuals, but am running into some snags. I finally updated from Dev5 to Dev6 of NIFSkope 2.0, and am wondering... how does one get WYSIWIG rendering for it? I tried extracting all the relevant textures and these newfangled BGSM material files mentioned in the plasma sniper barrel NIF to a test folder that is pathed to in my NIFSkope resource list, but I am still getting just a diffuse rendering; no normals, specs, or any other more advanced rendering.

 

Also, I have 3DS Max 2010... is there a FO4-compatible import/export plugin out there for it?

 

And lastly... why is there a SniperBarrel.nif and a slightly larger SniperBarrel_1.nif file?

[BlahBlahDEEBlahBlah]

I can answer the sniperbarrel.nif and _1.nif question at least.

First one is 3rd person model, _1 is 1st person.

...or the other way round...but you get the point.

[Perraine]

In the Nifskope Settings, you can turn on or off the various settings for things like shaders and stuff, my guess would be something in their is not checked (or is checked) and that's why it's only showing the diffuse.

 

Also remember that whatever files are specified in the .bgsm file will ALWAYS override what's in the "textures" field under the BSLightingShaderProperty. So if only have a diffuse is specified in the .bgsm, then that is all that will show in Nifskope,

 

Try deleting any entries for textures Under BSLightingShaderProperty and if your .nif turns white, then the .bgsm file is somehow incorrect. Check all paths and filenames.**

 

**Couple things I've noticed is that when specifying texture paths in the .bgsm file:

 

a) you should NOT put the "textures" part of the file path in, just any following subfolders, as the game will only look for textures that are in subdirectories that are under Fallout4/data/textures/ so it can't be like "Desktop/mysuperleetplasmacarbine" or anything like that.

 

b) when putting in the file paths for the textures, all vanilla .bgsm files use forward slashes NOT backslashes in the paths, there is probably some technical reason for this that I'm not aware of, and I haven't tested to see if using backslashes still works, but I always replace them with forward slashes just to be safe

[Madcat221]

I have done much of this rodeo before in Skyrim, FONV, FO3, and Oblivion. I am only unfamiliar with the novelties in FO4 modding.

 

All typical rendering options are enabled. Oldrim NIFs properly WYSIWYG for me (I just checked again to make absolutely sure).

 

I opened the unaltered vanilla BGSM for the sniper barrel with the material editor by Ousnius and all textures appear properly pathed.

 

I deleted all texture paths in the BSShaderTextureSet in the NIF, for both the regular and copper parts so the BGSM is the only texture info source.

 

I even plopped all of those material and texture files in as loose files into the Fallout4/Data folder.

 

Still no WYSIWYG, just the diffuse.

 

Could something left over from Dev 5 be interfering? Could it just be something wrong with this mesh? I think a few other FO4 mod mesh files that were put in loose appear to be WYSIWYGing for FO4

[chucksteel]

For me some meshes just never render in Nifscope and are completely invisible. They are fully load and can be edited and saved but, I can't see them. (I think it may be just that Nifscope is still in Beta but, I don't know)

 

An example would be the Gnome meshes they open everything is there and i can edit them.

 

I did find a workaround after editing the mesh itself in 3D Max 2012. If a take a block from a mesh "Beer Bottle in this case" and paste it into any mesh that doesn't render the mesh will then magically appear.

 

I know this is not the issue your having and I'm only bringing it up so say that Nifscope has it's quarks and it seems they can be different for people.

 

There is a Max plugin for nif import/export and I'll try to find the link. When I installed it for my 2012 it listed a lot of different Max versions to install I'm fairly sure 2010 was in the list.

 

Edit: This is the Max Plugin I use

[VIitS]

I added the vanilla archives (texture and material, though just texture is probably fine) under the Options -> Resources tab, and it's rendering specular, normal and even environment maps no problem.

Nothing wrong with the mesh (assuming you are talking about the weapons\Plasma\Sniperbarrel.nif)

Using 2.0.dev6 (revision 1d9d0d6) version of nifskope, and since I installed it by just extracting the archive into a folder and setting nifskope as the default for .nif files (I recently updated my OS so there was definitely no leftovers it might have seen), I'd find it strange if any leftovers from an old verison would interfere.
Direct link, in case you maybe have the older dev6 revision:https://github.com/jonwd7/nifskope/releases/download/v2.0.dev6/NifSkope_2_0_2016-11-07.7z

[Madcat221]

I found the issue: I had not in fact extracted all the textures; it was unable to find the envirocube maps. Once those were pulled out, all was WYSIWYGy with it.

 

I progressed rather well in figuring out the weapon mod system, and got it implemented and functional in-game... mostly. What governs the order in which weapmods are listed? And also, what governs what a generic named weapon will be called with the mod attached?

[VIitS]

The naming is governed by which Instance Naming Rules (INNR) record is attached in the "Instance Naming" field.

 

One thing I did find* (if you want to add new mods but not potentially interfere with the naming of other mods) is that you can add new naming rules with a second INNR record and a quest, which is what they did in the NukaWorld DLC.

 

 

I'm having trouble figuring out the order they are listed. I thought it was based on the modcol OMODs (mod collections, used for generating random versions of the gun), but it's not. Then I checked to see if it was related to the order they were mentioned in the INNR record. Nope. It sometimes seems to be alphabetical, but not always. It sometimes seems to be based on the perks it requires, but not always.

 

I am going to guess, based on what I have seen when looking around, that, if there is no other order specified, it sorts it alphabetically. Don't have a clue how or where you might specify, so hopefully someone who has spent more time on weapon mods will be able to help you. It can't be something that references the FormIDs directly, at least not in a way xEdit can see.

 

*While futilely trying to figure out how they set the order they are listed in for crafting