Restore Vault 111 Prewar Textures

[aurreth]

I'm trying to de-rust Vault 111 by restoring the prewar textures. It looks like the game does this by using a material swap. In other words the post-war textures are the "stock" ones, and the material swap is applied for the pre-war sequences.

 

I found the MSWP record for post to pre textures, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to use that record. The CK is a freakin' nightmare of bad design, and pretty much every tutorial I can find is a long, meandering video that does everything EXCEPT provide clear, step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish anything. It's frustrating beyond believe that there is no simple, straightforward way to say "use these textures instead of these" (isn't that what material swaps are supposed to be for?)

 

EDIT: Ok, apparently I was trying to do this the hard way. What I came up with was extracting the clean materials files from the BA2 and then renaming them (yay linux grep and rename commands!) Zip up the bunch and install as a mod, and the clean materials overwrite the rusty ones. Once again brute force triumphs over doing things the "right way"!

[RoNin1971]

I've used those a lot. Problem with material swaps is you can't save them outside your mod/esp file (edit: at least, afaik), but they are easy to create and use (imho)

The materialswap is just a collection of 1 or more bgsm files to swap for other bgsm files. You can apply that to every model that has those (original) materials.

 

What exactly do you want to know? How to create them or apply them?

btw: I'm swapping materials inside nifs (the 3D models) nowadays. Saves me the trouble of recreating those swaps each time you start a new mod.

Edited April 4, 2021 by RoNin1971

[aurreth]

I was trying to create a simple material swap that would change the Vault 111 post-war textures back to pre-war, on the head canon that, unlike settlers, I actually know how to use things like sandpaper, paint, and a broom. This MSWP actually already exists in the game, Vault111prewar, I want to apply it postwar.

 

In any sane system this would be easy. I would find the appropriate cell (which would be listed under Worldspace/Sanctuary/Vault111, not whatever strange system is actually used), right click and select Properties, and there would be a field or tab that shows which textures or texture sets it uses, and I'd just change it. The CK is not sane. I mean I created a fast travel marker at one point, and that required the creation and configuration of multiple objects instead of, you know, ONE. Essentially if there is a logical way and an ass-backwards hard way to do something, the CK seems to choose anal at every opportunity.

 

What I finally ended up doing is extracting all the Vault111 BGSM files from the BA2 file, removing all the post-war files, then renaming the pre-war ones by removing NEW from their names. I then zipped the directory structure with the adjusted names, and installed it like any other mod. End result, Vault 111 has clean textures in most places.

 

It worked, but I learned nothing about how to do actual material swaps for future modding.

 

I've used Nifskope for Skyrim, but have no luck with it for Fallout 4. The modded textures don't show up in the game, which tells me I've got some sort of file format incompatibility going on. For example I'd like to either straighten or remove the bent-ass antenna from the Assaultron helmet (yes, my pre-war omniscience also grants me the ability to use pliers!), but if I try and do it the helmet just turns invisible. Invisible item means bad mesh :sad:

[RoNin1971]

It can be a huge frustration at times ;)

Here's how i do it: I extracted all materials, meshes etc. from the .ba2 files to a separate data directory. Take the nifs i need and export them to a .obj using nifskope (with directory set for the data). Import the .obj into blender (which too knows where to find the textures). Edit the mesh, change the UV, whatever is needed (don't forget to separate by material and set the right scale (0.1 mostly) and export back to a .obj again. Import that to OutfitStudio and export is as a .nif file.

 

Remove all shader & texture blocks (all but parent niNode and all trishapes) & convert the shapes to BSTriShapes.

Then i copy and paste the right material from 'source nifs' to my new shapes.

 

With ck just copy the original, and edit the nif file for your own and give it a name.

If you use custom textures/materials, be sure to put them inside the .\data directory of your fallout installation, same as your nifs & use relative paths as do the original bgsm files.

for it all to work in-game, you might need to tell fo4 to accept loose files, or put it inside your own .ba2 file, or it won't load.

[aurreth]

Don't get me started on Blender, I really, really suck at using it. It's one of those things I occasionally install, play with, and then realize I have better things to do with the few years I have remaining (leukemia).

 

Sooo, if'n ya wanna chop off that silly antenna for me I'd be grateful :D

[RoNin1971]

Don't get me started on Blender, I really, really suck at using it. It's one of those things I occasionally install, play with, and then realize I have better things to do with the few years I have remaining (leukemia).

 

Sooo, if'n ya wanna chop off that silly antenna for me I'd be grateful :D

You have my sympathy, but you should realize you are asking a cardio-vascular patient who nearly died from that last summer, to 'waste' some of my time left for you, because you have 'better things to do' (?)

...but ok, as it took me only 5 minutes... just tell me where to send the new nif file (I'm not going as far as a 'complete' mod, you'll have to do the model swapping yourself with CK)

[aurreth]

I wasn't seriously asking you for anything, it was just a tongue-in-cheek request. You have my deepest sympathies, you shouldn't waste time on my, or anyone else's, inane wishes. Spend it doing something you enjoy with the people you love.

 

My email is [email protected]. (The Hell Tour Riding Club. We get together every couple of years to do an extended motorcycle tour, and inevitably it all goes to hell in one way or another lol)

[RoNin1971]

Doing just that :happy:

[bobmarray16]

What exactly do you want to know? How to create them or apply them?

Edited April 7, 2021 by bobmarray16

[RoNin1971]

I wasn't seriously asking you for anything, it was just a tongue-in-cheek request. You have my deepest sympathies, you shouldn't waste time on my, or anyone else's, inane wishes. Spend it doing something you enjoy with the people you love.

 

My email is ***. (The Hell Tour Riding Club. We get together every couple of years to do an extended motorcycle tour, and inevitably it all goes to hell in one way or another lol)

 

Wondering: Did the helmet arrive in good order?

Edited April 8, 2021 by RoNin1971