Hi all

I've been fiddling with a mod which places a handful of custom NPC loitering outside the Megaton house just to make it feel more alive. I noticed that when I copy and paste an existing NPC's head like a raider to use their looks, my npc has the exact same face as the raider including the skin colour, but the body remains pale and caucasian. This is in both the GECK and the game itself. I've googled and found the following advice:

Setting bUseFaceGenHeads=1 - although this seems to be aimed more at solving the white face problem rather than the white body problem.
Changing the esp to an esm - I did that with FOMM, but the problem is still there. Do I need to change anything other than just saving the esp as an esm? GECK still shows it as a plugin and not a master, but if I try to open it in GECK and save GECK crashes, perhaps because it thinks I'm opening an esp and shouldn't be saving an esm.
Applying Archive invalidation - I did that via FOMM, and the problem is still there.

Here's a pic of how my raider guests look. It looks really scary actually.

[img]http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h353/Charsiupao/ScreenShot9.jpg[/img]

Appreciate any other advice on this, thanks!


C

This problem occurs when using an .esp file. If you convert your mod to a master, it should go away.

Yep, a known issue.

Just like the interior cell navmesh/NPC bug, the only way to fix it is ignore it till just before you release your mod, then convert it to an .esm and the problem vanishes.

Kind of like driving a nail with a sledgehammer, but both bugs have been thoroughly investigated and making the file a master is the only known solution.

Thanks for the quick replies! I have already converted it to an esm via FOMM - selected the esp and saved it as an esm, but the problem is still there. I noticed, however, that if I open it in GECK it's still listed as "plugin" rather than "master". Is there another step I need to take to make it a full esm? Opening and saving (as esm) in GECK crashes GECK.

You also have to browse to where the file is located, i.e.-Fallout 3/Data, and change the file extension from .esp to .esm.

The extension is already .esm, but when I open it in GECK it says "plugin file" rather than "master file", and when I load it in FOMM it comes at the bottom, unbolded, like a normal esp, while the esms are all bolded and load first at the top. File Manager is probably the only thing which calls it esm rather than esp.

Can I check if I converted it properly? I opened up FOMM, right clicked on my guests.esp, selected "open in TESsnip" then clicked File, Save, and selected "esm" ("Master file" as opposed to "Fallout 3 Plugin") at the bottom (and gave it a new name "chilling raiders" just in case). I now have "Guests.esp" and "Chilling Raiders.esm" both in the data directory, and I've unchecked Guests.esp and checked Chilling Raiders.esm (which loads like an esp in FOMM) and the raiders still have Caucasian bodies when I load.

You are doing it the hard way, indeed.
Try using Fo3plugin instead of FOMM. You convert it to master and save it under the name you want, but type yourname.esm or it will be saved as a master but with the .esp extension or do as Malaclypse suggests and change the extension afterwards in the data directory

If the problem persists it is because the settings in your texture file are wrong. Try the .esm conversion ans see what happens first.

I always use Fo3Edit, it is much easier.( I'm not sure if that is what you're refering to Octarina)

Load your mod up in FO3Edit, click on the + sign next to your mod in the left window and select the file header right below the name of your mod. In the right window at the very top under 'Record Header' you'll see 'Record Flags'. Right click in the area to the right of that, select edit, and in the window that appears place check in the esm box, select OK at the bottom. Exit FO3Edit saving your mod. Browse to the folder where your mod resides in windows and change the file extension from .esp to .esm. That easy.

Good luck

Thanks everyone! It worked - must be something dodgy with the FOMM esm conversion process. Here are my squatters outside my house in their proper skin colours!

[img]http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h353/Charsiupao/ScreenShot10.jpg[/img]

While the bodies aren't pale anymore there is still a noticeable seam at the neck in the pic. Disabling Archive Invalidation (which gave them pale heads) and adding the bLoadFaceGenHeadsEGTFiles=1 line in Fallout.ini (which gave them back their normal heads) seems to have made that line less obvious, although it still exists if you look hard enough. Does that line ever really go away completely?


C

There is always a small seam visible where the head mesh joins the body mesh. Depending of he tone of the skin it is more or less visible. With the raiders he blotched body makes the difference more visible.

@Malaclypse : I meanthttp://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5104 I am used to this small utility to merge plugins or to convert from .esm to .esp. It has less functions but is simpler and much faster than FOMM or FO3edit

@Octarina
Ah, I've always used FO3Edit and never run across that plug-in. Gguess I like doing things the hard way.
-Cheers

FO3Edit conversion was really easy, though. I downloaded FO3PLugin but had trouble installing it - it needed some command line parameters during installation which I couldn't get right.

The parameter to enter in the command line is probably
javaw -Xmx1024m -DFallout.plugin.path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Fallout 3" -jar FO3Plugin.jar

Just find where the Fallout3.exe file is with the file manager (or whatever it is called now) and right click in the adress bar to "copy the address as text", then paste it beween the quotes.

FO3edit is more powerful and I use it a lot but it takes a long time to load the masters when just a quick change is needed. And if it can't find the masters it will not open the plugin at all (It is probably more exact to say I don't know how to open the plugin with FO3edit when a master is missing). The good thing I like with FO3plugin is merging plugins and saving the resulting plugin as a masterfile takes 1 second.