Forgive me if this would be better in another forum; I figure the mod community would be the best people to ask.

I want to extract some of the sign/poster/billboard art from inside the game. Of particular interest are the various Sunset Sarsaparilla ads and the Vault 11 voting bloc posters. It's one thing to be in game and try to get the angle perfect to take screenshots of them; I'd like the original art.

Can anyone give me a novice's step-by-step on how to pull them?

Thanks in advance - Zombra

Step 1: Download http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35726
Step 2: Click the "Package Manager" button.
Step 3: Choose the BSA you want to extract, in this case that would be the textures.bsa
Step 4: Choose a location to store the files you want to extract, if you extract them all it will take quite a bit of space obviously, so be mindfull of that.
Step 5: Enjoy your extracted textures.

OK... First off, you need to familiarize yourself with the file structure of your FalloutNV game. By default it will be in C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data (or whatever hard drive you installed FNV to)

In the data folder you will find the following BSA files;
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Meshes.bsa
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Misc.bsa
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Sound.bsa
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Textures.bsa
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Textures2.bsa
C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Voices1.bsa

For the posters & signs, the file you're interested in is C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Textures.bsa

You'll need a program to extract the information out of the Textures.bsa file. Go to the old Fallout3 Nexus and get the FO3 BSA extractor program, it works for FONV too. Located here: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34

Install and point the utility to your C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\Fallout - Textures.bsa file and extract to someplace where you have a lot of drive space. The Textures.bsa will break down to a whole bunch of subfolders & the graphics files are stored as dds files. DDS files are "direct draw surface" files. You'll need a converter so you can work on these. There is a plugin converter for Photoshop at nVidia: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

Look for the subfolder with the dds files you want to work on - presumptively this will be, *\textures\clutter\billboards or *\textures\clutter\posters ~ open and edit in Photoshop. Save your edits in the original extracted folders. Using only the specific folder (with complete path statement) copy that folder to your *:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\ folder. ~ it should look like this in your game folder: *\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\fallout new vegas\Data\textures\clutter\billboards or posters

Please remember to save your edited images with the full range if MIPs sub-images, Photoshop with the dds converter will do these automatically if you specify. You have to enable "generate MIP Maps when you save out your edited dds files. When you load the dds images into Photoshop, don't worry about this. Just tell PS to "load using default sizes" and don't bother to load the MIP maps because you'll be replacing these. Save your edited files using the exact file names of the files you want to replace.

OK... almost done... now you are gonna need to use the Fallout New Vegas ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated tool or the New Vegas Mod Manager - which includes a nifty ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated tool. Using this will force FalloutNV to look at your extracted textures and load them BEFORE loading the default Texture.bsa stuff you're replacing. Once it loads your stuff, FalloutNV won't overwrite it from the default .bsa folder. You don't have to replace the entire file structure or bsa file with another - ONLY the part you want to change in game. So you can drop in a new folder in to your Data folder called \textures\clutter\posters where the posters folder contains ONLY your edited dds files. FalloutNV will use the default files for everything else and your edited new posters will show up in the game.

Have fun!

Thanks very much Urge - I'll try it when I get home tonight.

And thanks VERY much PerroLoco ... I just wanted to extract the art to look at it, not change it in the game ... though now I may be tempted to thanks to your very informational post :foodndrink: