- NVNL -

Introduction

Well then, let's get started: For a while now I've been closely lurking and watching as the modding community does their thing, and ports various "must-have" modifications to an otherwise dreary game that is pretty much a bore fest unless you mod it in someway, at least in my opinion it is. So the modifications are released, the tides are flowing, wonderful little modification overhauls to the game make it playable once more, a truly fantastic game. The one thing I'm stumped by though, is why I see no "New Vegas Redesigned" or "Project Beauty New Vegas", something along those lines. The characters look like plastic freaks that were all covered in vats and will soon become super mutants at any given time. The raiders look like friendly care bears ready to hug you after they scraqe off all the topsoil they somehow got onto themselves. It's truly aggravating to see such a wonderfully modded game's atmosphere go to crap just because of the default and quickly designed characters the game had.

Here's the premise, since apparently I read http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1136179-is-anybody-making-nv-project-beauty-mod/page__view__findpost__p__16621553 that Dracomie's isn't making a New Vegas version of his mod, and I'm impatient as hell, I'm going to do it myself. I have immense amounts of free time on my hands at the moment despite some minor workings I have to do in reality.

TL;DR - I'm making a mod along the same lines as Dracomie's line of mods to change the facial aspects, and aesthetics of this game, and make the horrid faces look bearable to look at.

Keep in mind, I'm not good at modding, my programming knowledge is limited, and I'll bumble around with this for a while, the only reason I'm making a thread is because I want community input on what they want changed, on resources they want used, suggestions how to go about this in a faster paced (It's slow, I'll explain why later), etc. Also if Dracomie's does decide to magically do a New Vegas mod for aesthetics then I'm out, and will drop this mod faster than you can drop a [Insert Clever Remark Here], I'm not competing with anyone, this is because I hate the way the faces look, if he can make his own textures, he can do this way better than I can, end of story.

Process

So I've pretty much started what I can already, but what I'm essentially doing is going through EVERY NPC in the game and remodeling and adjusting their faces to look bearable to look at, also I'm adjusting each facial tone/aethestics of all NPC's to fit their lore, I'm not making a barbie doll wonderland where everyone can parade their clan of Great Khan females in tiny swimsuits, if I could change the bodies, I would make half the wasteland fat, and most of the shop keepers fat as hell. I'm still getting used to the GECK, I did fiddle with it a little, and did a lot of my own aesthetics changes personally in Dragon Age: Origins, as most of the models there looked like poo also.

I'm using the http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35878 as a resource to redesign most of the NPC's though, because I'm not a fan of the eyes I might quickly change to something else. We'll see from here, the process is going to be long, but I plan to have my first release of some of the main NPC's redesigned released sometime this week (Hopefully), and then go from there. Technically I have a blog, an Let's Play list, and a pile of work I have to finish before I undertake big tasks, but hey: the smartest minds were multi-taskers! (/Sarcasm).

Suggestions

I need them, give me them, now.

Contact

Should you need to contact me either post here, send me a PM, or contact me on SA since my username is the same, if you don't know what SA is, then don't worry about it.


UPDATES
11/3/2010 - Decided it would be easy to keep track of what I did, and what I didn't via spreadsheet for each race. You can track the current stuff https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AuxYtVMfdWzgdDktMXktelJXRzhlX2E3WHZQYmV5dnc&authkey=CKTxhNUB&hl=en#gid=0! This is just the African American race, I know it looks small, and it's going to take time to get big, deal with it.

I suggest you not use beauty packs, that way everyone can use it.

While I appreciate the sentiment, this is a post-apocalyptic wasteland: it's much more likely people would be wiry and underfed. Fat used to be a sign of wealth and stature. It would fit some merchants to be the old roly-poly type, but not likely any of the ones that do their own scavenging/hunting.

Had to mention it

[censored] you. I won't use your mod now.

This.

There no real need to use them unless you're planning on giving NPCs horrible anime hair, in which case I'm out already.

Dracomies didn't use any beauty packs IIRC, just face textures, right?

@Nekhanimal: I read it as the vanilla game was a bore, not other people's "must-have" mods

@Hellknight: As far as I remember it all started with some edits to faces in the GECK and went from there. (Or was that TNR for Oblivion?) Even though I stuck with an old version of Project Beauty (the one without the esm) I'm pretty sure his mod didn't rely on any other cosmetic mods.
Personally, I wouldn't want that, anyway. My version of Hair Pack (for FO3) was so customised that it would've conflicted pretty bad with PB if it had any dependencies. Plus I also use my own eyes as I don't like any on Nexus, and if I want to change or add anything else I'd do it myself.

If it's going to be like Project Beauty it shouldn't depend on anything else. That way everyone can use, as evercharmer kindly pointed out

@Mystyk
Me too, it's his predicament I don't get. If he thinks the game is boring, why does he bother with making beauty packs for it?

Just a question, planning a version without the Beauty Pack mod? You know, for us who prefer the vanilla stuff over those flashy, shiny, weird, whatever anime hair. :celebration:

I am in agreement some of those look like anime hair. Can you repackage the Project Beauty resources so that they can work fine with New Vegas?

I use Dracomies' textures just fine in NV. It's the same texture/meshes folder override like in F3.

Project Beauty got around needing dependency on other things by fully integrating the pertinent parts into the mod.

Consensus: No Beauty Pack, vanilla it is.

@Nekhanimal: Honestly, I couldn't care less if you're going to use this or not, I posted in this forum asking for community input while I do it, that's the only reason I'd even release it to the public, because of the input. Fallout 3 did a horrible job at following the lore, used bad mechanics from the TES series and implemented them into an FPS, is still using a bad engine (Havok svcks, no disputing that). The fact that Oscuro might have influenced a couple of things in the making of New Vegas such as Ironsights, Crafting make the game a tad fun, but with a highly un-compelling story, bad mechanics implemented once again the game can turn out to be quite boring down the road. However with modifications to the game, very slight ones, the game can be easily a very fun RPG, so praise the modding community, and praise the PC version, otherwise your playing Vanilla ga-bage! I'm honestly not going to get into an argument of opinions here, I'm just stating mine, download the mod, or don't either way a [censored] won't be given.

To all, I'm looking into expanding the mod, but for now we'll start as one post said: slight facial/texture tweaks to the faces to make them bearable to look at, from their we will advance, simple. Will probably start a "session" of them tonight, doing a giant cluster once I finish cleaning up around the apartment.

Seriously though: Your comments are golden, more, more.

Word of advice: Don't pay any attention to these kind of people like Nekhanimal, it's peps like 'em who made Dracomies quit the modding scene. I am all in for constructive critics, but not trolling.

BUT, I wouldn't call the vanilla game garbage. NV is a VAST improvement over F3 and must say that it's maybe the first RPG I kinda enjoyed playing through the first time without mods or tweaks, eyecandies and stuff.

I like the idea. But as some have said before, I'd rather not see the anime hairs.
Or way too perfect barbie and ken doll faces either.

Christ! Your eye!

I liked Project Beauty for FO3, mainly because everyone was only slightly prettier, and it had no anime hair.

Yeah, you know what? I'm an ass! Sometimes I just post random blurbs like that, and it does no good to anyone. I'd like to apologise for that one, I'm not looking to blow out your candle. When you said the game was a bore fest I was kind of aggravated though, Fallout 2 is my holy grail of gaming, and New Vegas reminds me of it in so many ways. When I heard Bethesda had bought the Fallout franchise I was terrified, because I knew Fallout 3 was going to be just like Oblivion. Fallout 3 came out, and my expectations turned out to be right on the money, I played it until I realised that there is only 1 city in the game, and then quit. That's why I'm enjoying New Vegas so much, and that's why I didn't like it when you said it's boring. I'm still at a loss to see how any graphics changes can improve on the game, but that doesn't matter; they obviously can to you and tons of other people, and I should probably be a bit more mindful to that in the future. Good luck with this thing, and if you ever need any scripting help, send me a message!

What the hell are you even saying?

I think you misread my point: making everyone slightly prettier is not a major game changer for me. Arwen's gameplay tweaks, are, so are mods like MMM, etc. The game uses the GameByro engine, and it's a [censored] engine, it treats the already horrible Havok as a ragdoll and beats it do death. Fallout: New Vegas, was okay, but it could be better, seems like they made a small portion of Oscuro's mod for Oblivion into Fallout 3. Not bad, but not amazing, modding helps and makes it good. But yeah.. Thanks, good on you I guess.

Anyway, as for the people who are watching this, I'm done when I'm done. Also the online spreadsheet I'll "update" it when I'm done. Since my net went out yesterday I decided not to use an online spreadsheet to keep tabs of where I am. So if you view that, and there is nut all there, it's because I'm too lazy to reenter all the edited NPC's into that spreadsheet, though I may in the future.

I have stuff happening right now, and other things to work on, so I'm done when I'm done. If somebody makes a mod along the same lines as me and does a better job, go to them.

I can't believe I have to post this as often as I do.

If a mod contains solely textures or meshes, you can use it for NV without any problems of any sort, except if the item you are trying to alter does not exist in New Vegas, it's fairly obvious when the file structure and the resources used are almost identical.

If the mod in question has an esp. file that alters faces, then yeah, that'll be more complicated. But if this is just a texture mod, no porting is needed, just place it in the NV Data instead of the FO3 Data and you're done. Note that I haven't used the mod you want to emulate, in fact the only beauty mods I've ever used are Type 3/V and some extra hairstyles for female characters, that's pretty much it.

Good idea, hope this mod goes well! IMO, some of the NPCs really don't need touching up though, Cass for example looks fine as it is.

You do know that Oscuro worked on New Vegas, right? As a full employee of Obsidian.

funny... apparently a game is boring or not depending on every npc looking like a barbie doll or not

Jesus Christ, I know it's hard to read the entire post without skimming it but please do so next time before spewing out nonsense, because [censored], the stupidity it hurts.

@mezo6 - Your dumb, read the post carefully, read the followup posts even better than you read the first post.

@Expresate - Same thing as above minus the dumb part, I know he worked on it, I was referencing the fact he worked on it.

Got a good portion of it done, just taking a look a the ghouls and possibility of custom textures, also the companions were well done, Cass for instance was well done like somebody said, so very minor, if any fiddling will be done.

I would leave the companions alone since there are so many companion replacers out there already and there ought to be more. So you could leave those as they are for people to pick and mix as they want from other mods, it'll save you some time as well.
Anyway, any screens you can share?