Need help making oblivion look good

[sidlicious]

I didnt know I had to activate them other than how the readme said, sorry for that.

 

I just finished watching both videos, thank you so much! Incredibly helpful, there is no way I'd have figured that out on my own >.>

 

Going to try out a bunch of mods if I can just to get the hang of things, hopefully I can come up with something that looks good, thanks again all :wub:

[Zella]

It is possible to get satisfactory faces without BOSS and /or WryBash.

 

You do probably need to be very careful and exact about getting all of your files precisely where the file addresses direct, so that the computer has the correct address to find them. Some say to drop all the files into the Oblivion Data file, but for years, I manually placed them in their proper file directories with excellent results. It was easier than trying to install the mods that manage them for you, because their directions were poorly written. I have a very stable game with no problems and just under a hundred mods. There are some mods that I cannot install because they require these other mods to run, and someday I may work out the directions well enough to use them.

 

I think that most people do use these mods to manage their mods and are very happy with them. I have envied them, but I also wonder why they seem to have more difficulties with their mods than I do. Maybe they aren't as good as we think they are, or ;D perhaps they didn't get them installed properly.

 

Obviously, I am no expert here, but it seems odd that I could bumble about and succeed on my own. BTW my install order was 1. Ren Beauty Pack full with Soya's hair, 2. HGEC Fighter Body, 3. HGEC Skin HiRez 1.0, 4. Luchaire's Body Seam Reducer V 1.0 (it helps but is not perfect. There are some other bodies that appear better, or have been touched up for the pictures.), 5. Improved Facial Textures 1.2 - last. This gave the, straight from the game, face posted here. It still is a tiny bit blotchy, especially when seen while using the inventory, but looks about as well as the Epic and Lattemer Elves in 3rd person view. Many of the face painted improvements have greenish splotches or strange lips. Custom races are probably your best bet if you want really smooth looking faces. I just really like my Mystic Elf face better (after spending years to get it the way I wanted). Robert's Bodies may give better skin results also, especially with a high resolution skin mod.

 

If you do decide to manually install your mods, you might want to keep a separate copy of your Oblivion Data folder with the patch and SI installed. That way you can copy it into your Oblivion folder if you mess up and can recover quickly. Make a copy in a desktop folder and add mods and compare files before placing it in your Oblivion game file and keeping the working one in a destop folder in case you want it back. When you get a stable Data set up that you like, keep a copy of it also. Keep them on a thumb drive or CD so your hard drive doesn't fill up. This gives you a back up that works like a saved game and confidence to experiment. Separate Data set ups can be useful for playing conflicting mods such as different Kvatch recoveries. It may help you decide between different body and face mods also. It takes some work to get things the way you like them. Good luck.

[Aurasoma]

Once upon a time there was a forum on the steam pages for Oblivion titled Beautifying or Beautification Oblivion. Thats a little hard to get these days since steam moved to a mod and youtube community.

 

First off I'd like to have you make a save some where of the base game file. This is if you ever change your minds and want to purge the back log of changes you've made. Mines is kept on a flash drive that I keep in a desk draw. Next you should head over to the wiki and read How to install Oblivion mods and look at the simple diagram. Then take two aspirin and call me in the morning. This is because I fear your head may blow up if your not ready for it. I know I wasn't and had files in all the wrong places as well as missing files when I first tried to do it myself.

 

Next down load and install the following programs OBMM, BOSS and Wyre Bash. If you need help there are pages on the wiki for using those and many of them have their own websites with Q&A pages. If your having additional issues you can spam the forums for more help like your currently are doing.

 

Please note that I've been playing a modded oblivion since 2009 and about 80% of the time my installations have been done manually, save for a few where it was got threw OBMM or not have the mod at all. Those times where I did use OBMM its been as simple as save the 7zip file into OBMM's Mod's folder and use OBMM to unpack and convert it over to something OBMM will use. When it comes to using OBMM to add files to Oblivion, its as simple as clicking activate and answering a few pop up windows.

 

Next Patches

Down load the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, If your running the xpacs for Oblivion also download the Unofficial Official Mods Patch and Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch. These will be done with OBMM and are meant to fix some issues with the game that Bethesda never got around to.

Next down load Robert's Male Body Replacer V 5.2, (Your choice of female body mods) and New Face Textures. This will add the better skin packs that should fix your blotchy Fallout face problems.

 

I would go on with more things you can do to change the game, but really I'm not a mind reader and don't know how far you want to go. A good idea after this is to visit the Top 100 most endorsed files or spam here at what others are doing to their games. But watch out thatr you go to far. My current system that I'm using handled Skyrim better with the settings down to low then it did a heavily modded Oblivion. Think of walking from main gates of IC to the bridge and having the game crash one forth of the way down the slope.