How Do I Make Body Seams As Unnoticeable As Possible? : IV - Oblivion

» Tue May 03, 2011 10:21 am

Couple of minor changes to your procedure, and separated 4) and 5) for anyone just wanting to mess with the showracemenu

1) Open the console, type showracemenu, then hit Face, then Reset. (Don't touch sliders if using a custom race which is best with its default reset values).
2) Don't close console, or type closeallmenus, and dont hit Done, - Otherwise all your stats will be reset
3) Press Esc, then make a new save. (this will not work if you started this procedure with your inventory open, save will be ghosted)

4) Use Wrye Bash to reimport your old PC's face settings into the new save game
5) Reload new save game

Also note...

After 1) you can make further adjustments - For anyone wanting to change hair/eyes

After 3) you can Load the save you just made to see the changes in-game straight away. If you dont like the changes you can hit Esc again, load the save before the one you just made, and start at 1) again, when you get to 3) this time overwrite the new save you made first time round. Rinse and repeat until happy.

I dont think it will do the game new start re-calc for the benefit of OFF - So I dont think it can circumvent the need for a new game. The_Philanthropy might have a better idea of the technicalities, but I think using showracemmenu in-game just benefits resetting your player character (and messing with the hair etc), at the most maybe the same race as you, but not all NPC's throughout the game.

This procedure might be ok with Oblivion XP. As long as the character's stats are not reset, Ob XP won't have a problem. So Nash, if you still want to try this, follow Alt's steps and it should be fine.

» Tue May 03, 2011 8:52 am

Which version of Robert's Male Body are you using? I tried installing RMB v5 ONLY and nothing else (vanilla base) and even that screws up the neck seems a lot and my NPCs look NOTHING like in your screens!

I use version 4, but I also added the optional head mesh that was included in the archive. If you read the readme, it explains that the head mesh helps with seams a lot.

» Mon May 02, 2011 6:44 pm

Ah, I've been using version 5. I'll try version 4 soon.

What about the female version? Does it have a similar head mesh too? I've never tried Robert's Female Body ever.

EDIT: andalay and alter: well I went ahead and tried it yesterday and a face Reset didn't really do anything to the NPC faces (IOW, no changes). So maybe a pure new game is required after all. Oh well.

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:00 am

What about the female version? Does it have a similar head mesh too? I've never tried Robert's Female Body ever.

Yes, it comes with its own head mesh that supposedly does the same thing. However, the mesh is more recent than the one included in Robert's Male Replacer, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

» Tue May 03, 2011 9:43 am

Tried installing some of IFT's age maps on top of OFF - all but the orc's, I thought OFF's deeper wrinkles suited them, IFT's missing one map, and I obsess over consistency - and I don't think skintones can get any more even now. Even the high elves and redguards' are even now, thanks to OFF's EGTs.

Without IFT's age maps
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7967/oblivion201103020033349.jpg

With IFT's age maps
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5524/oblivion201103021823472.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6281/oblivion201103021936348.jpg

Not the best comparison, but you can see the red around her eyes got much fainter. Her skin is practically spotless now.

Older people look fine too.
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/536/oblivion201103022003142.jpg
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/1217/oblivion201103022014147.jpg
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3617/oblivion201103022012050.jpg

It doesn't get much better than this, imho.

» Tue May 03, 2011 8:38 am

Tried installing some of IFT's age maps on top of OFF - all but the orc's, I thought OFF's deeper wrinkles suited them, IFT's missing one map, and I obsess over consistency - and I don't think skintones can get any more even now. Even the high elves and redguards' are even now, thanks to OFF's EGTs.

Without IFT's age maps
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7967/oblivion201103020033349.jpg

With IFT's age maps
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5524/oblivion201103021823472.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6281/oblivion201103021936348.jpg

Not the best comparison, but you can see the red around her eyes got much fainter. Her skin is practically spotless now.

Older people look fine too.
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/536/oblivion201103022003142.jpg
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/1217/oblivion201103022014147.jpg
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3617/oblivion201103022012050.jpg

It doesn't get much better than this, imho.

Would you mind posting your exact install order for those mods?

» Tue May 03, 2011 1:08 am

Not at all. :smile:

My setup:

1. Robert's bodies first, with the male v4 head textures for imperials, dark elves and orcs, plus Robert's tweaked human head and orc head,

2. Optimized Facegen Files,

3. Improved Facial Textures's age maps. Not the full thing, since it contains head textures, and I don't want those. I removed headhuman.dds, headhuman_n.dds, headdarkelf.dds, and headdarkelf_n.dds. I also omitted to install the orc folder and the dremora folder, myself.

(Aaand Improved Argonian Facial Textures, if you care. But it really doesn't matter when you install that one.)

Oh, and in Nifskope I renamed the material for the body parts meshes (heads, ears, tails) of all races to 'skin', and made sure the material settings were the same for all parts.

And done.

» Tue May 03, 2011 9:37 am

Thanks for this. I think I see a couple of mistakes I made already.

» Mon May 02, 2011 10:09 pm

Thanks for the info WyndChym. Will give your install procedure a try soon.

I've never used NifSkope before, is this step compulsory? What does this step actually do?

» Tue May 03, 2011 5:48 am

Glad to be of any help. :smile:

Compulsory? I guess not. But it's extremely simple and it does have noticeable effect.

It allows the skin shader of the game to be applied to the mesh, and ensures that all body parts will react the same way to lighting.

Ever noticed how ears looked like plastic compared to the rest of the head? Iirc, ears used the 'iron boots' material. Don't ask me why. All I know is they look far better using 'skin'.

Or ever noticed how the orc heads looked glossy, unlike their bodies? That's another case of material mismatch.

Don't let Nifskope scare you. Tweaking materials this way takes about 10 seconds per mesh. Open mesh, double-click material, rename it to 'skin' if it has a different name, check settings, save. Installing the thing and unpacking meshes from their bsa is easily half the work.

» Mon May 02, 2011 8:36 pm

Ever noticed how ears looked like plastic compared to the rest of the head? Iirc, ears used the 'iron boots' material. Don't ask me why. All I know is they look far better using 'skin'.

:lol: Now I can shout insults at NPC's: your ears look like iron boots!... I've also found some clothing in body mod replacers sometimes is labelled as "skin" (the opposite problem) and it does indeed look like skin in-game.

» Tue May 03, 2011 9:39 am

LOL.

Okay, I'll go through my meshes with NifSkope. Yeah, I have noticed the material mismatches in-game but used to accept them because I thought they were unfixable engine bugs.

» Tue May 03, 2011 8:59 am

@WyndChyme:

omg thanks yous for the nifskope tip. It's really messed up the material mismatch.

Some SS and my install order later.

» Tue May 03, 2011 12:21 am

Also, if I was to add TNR on top of this, does that come with any textures? I always download it in .omod format, so I never see what's inside of the compressed file.

Oops, completely missed this post.

No, TNR is a simple ESP. It only changes facegen settings for NPCs.

To extract OMODs in OBMM, right click the mod an select "extract to folder". That way you can see what you're installing.

I forgot to mention, but I started this game with TNR and OFF already installed, so the vanilla facegen settings were effectively never applied to NPCs. I'm not sure this does much of a difference, but... better safe than sorry.

» Mon May 02, 2011 9:48 pm

To extract OMODs in OBMM, right click the mod an select "extract to folder". That way you can see what you're installing.

You don't even need to extract, if all you want to see is what's contained in the omod, just right-click and select "Info".

The reason being, large omods may take ages to extract and is not worth the wait if all you want is to know the omod's contents.

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:04 am

Oh, I didn't know that. :facepalm: Thanks.

» Tue May 03, 2011 8:53 am

If any of you were interested in seeing what TNR looks like on top of the mod combination I settled with (Robert's Male/Female & IFT's age maps), I made a video for my blog a couple days ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn1M5nqQnoQ Be sure to watch it using the highest quality setting, otherwise it'll be difficult to see the difference. The default section of the video doesn't include the new age maps.

» Tue May 03, 2011 8:58 am

...My setup:

1. Robert's bodies first, with the male v4 head textures for imperials, dark elves and orcs, plus Robert's tweaked human head and orc head...

Where are these textures? Are you referring to textures from some other pack? I don't have any head textures included in my copy of robert's V4, and since your screens look a little better than what I have right now I'd like to duplicate what you did.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found them. Doh.