I fairly confused on how Oblivion uses meshes and textures for characters and NPC’s. Any chance I could get someone to explain or provide some details to me on how they operate exactly?

Here are some of the things I’m confused about:

-How many total files are there for body meshes and what are their names? It appears to me that there might be separate ones for the upper body, lower body, hands, feet, and head. Is that correct?

-Where are the body meshes stored? I know the .bsa’a have the original ones but if I was manually installing a new one such as Robert’s or HGEC which folder should the files be in?

-Does each race share a common body mesh or can you have a different body mesh for each race?

-I thought that I had read somewhere that when you change armor you are not really putting a new mesh (armor) over top of the body mesh that it’s just replacing that section of the body mesh with one that looks like the armor instead of the body. If that is correct why are there so many mods that adapt armor to a specific body type? Is it just so the armor would truly look like it would actually fit a body that has larger proportions or is there a real issue with the vanilla meshes working with a new body mesh?

-I have seen mods that improve or change textures for a specific body mod then I have seen clothes that have a transparency to them that show those specific textures through the clothing.

Example: You have installed a new texture that has a tattoo and you have some clothing on that shows the tattoo through the clothes.

How was this done? If when equipping the clothing replaces that section of the mesh then I would have to assume that the mod for the clothing used the improved textures when they created it. Is that right?

Sorry for all of these questions. I just want to get a clear understanding of how it works but I’m having a hard time making sense of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-There are 4 model files:
foot.nif lowerbody.nif upperbody.nif hands.nif

and 2 (or more, depends on body mod) texture files for each race:
footmale/footfemale.dds
footmale_n/footfemale_n.dds

-models/characters/_male
textures/characters/

-No

-Thats correct, some armors may contain uncovered parts like arms in t-shirts. There are so many adapt mods to fit texture to uncovered parts.

-Game changes directory of textures to fit your race. Changing material name of body part to 'Skin' lets game to choose texture.

I'll see if I can answer some of these, to the best of my ability.

That sounds right, with an additional one for tails for beast races.

Mostly, in "\Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Characters\_male" including the female ones. However, a lot of body mods have specific unique paths for different races, so you should always read the readme and install instructions.

Most of them share the one body mesh. Some body mods repoint specific races to specific body meshes, but the meshes have to work with the animation skeleton, which is pretty much the same for all races. This limits what you can do to reshape the bodies, although some newer mods pull off some really creative changes now.

Yes, armor meshes replace the original body parts. The conversions are done for two reasons, to keep the body proportions the same as the body mesh, and to make sure that the seams between the various body parts match up. Most body mods will change the seams, so without the conversion you can get gaps or overlaps where the converted and unconverted meshes meet.

This one I'm not entirely sure about, however I do know that armor meshes have sections where the "material type" is labelled "skin". Since the skin changes between different races, and the armor is useable by all races, I'd assume that the game knows to replace those "skin" sections with the appropriate texture for the race wearing the armor. Therefore any upgraded skin textures, or tattoos will display correctly.

Thanks a bunch for the replys everyone. It's helping me a lot.



So the default races all share the same body meshes and they will all look similar and we can't change that but it is possible to create a new race and use a different body mesh for the new race by somehow pointing the mod to use a different folder and mesh (probably through the CS?).

Reneer is working on a mod to get around that...I think: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29564. In general, no, there is not a way to get around that for the vanilla races. It is certainly not a simple task, anyway.


Edit: I think the problem with the "new body" thing is that non-creature NPCs all use the same skeleton NIF, so using a different body mesh for a new race...I have not heard of doing that directly.

All races use the same body meshes, but they can use different head and tail meshes. In Fallout 3, there's the ability to use custom body meshes, but not in Oblivion. On the flip side, there's fewer pieces to a Fallout 3 body than there is to an Oblivion body - there's only two or three, the body, the head, and I think one of the hands is separate too (the one covered by the pip-boy glove).

I'm not entirely sure how this works. You can select the animation skeleton for individual NPCs, and some newer mods allow those skeletons to be deformed in interesting ways. The body mesh deforms to match the skeleton when this is done correctly.

There are some tricks that need to be done, I believe, to make anything workable.

That said, people have created NPCs with wings, and a playable Goblin race, and an upcoming Centaur race.

Might be worth investigating those to see how it's done.

Ahh......so let me see if I understand this. When you create the model in Blender or whatever and create materials you can define the material for a portion of the model as "skin" and it will provide a transparency which would show the skin texture that is being used.

Almost, but no. When you define the section as skin (and it has to be modeled as a body mesh....an arm or a chest or a booby or whatever), that tells Oblivion to use the appropriate skin texture for the race wearing the armor. It's not a case of it being transparent (God, I wish it was because it would have made my armor stands so much better), it's a case of it having the texture of skin applied to it. Remember, when you wear an armor piece, there is no "body" under it. The body parts you see are part of the armor mesh itself.

Here, take a look at a creepy image from my mod: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/27683-5-1255615653.jpg

The "skin" portions of this armor are using the default settings (Breton or Imperial) for the skin because the armor isn't being worn by an NPC or player. When an NPC or player wears it, the textures of the "skin" portions are replaced with the appropriate textures from that race.

Because it's drawing its texture from the same source as the texture of the nvde body, any tattoos or other changes to the nvde body get copied to the armor model.

So all races use the body meshes located in the /models/characters/_male folder and the four files that make them up are: foot.nif, lowerbody.nif, upperbody.nif, hands.nif.

How do you know which are the male or female files? are they in sub folders male-female maybe?

Since it's not located in these folders and is most likely tied to the facegen stuff, where does the head mesh fit into all of this?

Got it. One mesh..no transparency..picks the texture from the appropriate race to show on that part of the mesh. Thanks Showler! This is really helping me noodle it out!

There's actually a foot.nif and a femalefoot.nif, and a upperbody.nif and a femaleupperbody.nif and so on.

There's a specific checkbox in an NPCs details that designates the NPC as female, and presumably controls which of the two meshes is used. The precise path and name are hardcoded in the game (there's been some discussion about whether OBSE will ever be able to alter the paths, but no confirmation yet).

The head mesh is a bit different because the CS allows you to designate both a model NIF file and a texture file for each individual feature, and for the structure of the entire head itself. So mods can add their own head folders. The default one is located in the Imperial folder, I think.

One extra thing that causes confusion is the fact that the NPC's in the game are of the same races (plus a few more) that can be chosen for the Player character, and share the same outfits (mostly).

The Player has to be able to use all the "playable" clothing and armor, which are equipped by swapping the body part for one with the clothing or armor on it. That means that if you don't have a complete set of those replacements that match up, you'll get the seam errors already mentioned. That's why armor mods will specify which body they're for. Replacement bodies may also have different UV mapping for the skin, so be careful in that area, as a texture for one body may not fit another.

NPCs get a bit of relief from this, because they can be set up with armor or clothing that is not marked "playable", so it can't ever be taken and worn by the player. These only have to match up in the combination used by that specific NPC. So in most cases, the only issue for their bodies is matching up to standard heads, (it's too much effort making customer heads for them, not that it can't be done). It's possible to have one NPC be obese, or have one arm, or whatever quirk you need, as long as the outfit is not playable. I've done that a lot in my Gweden Brothel mod, so the girls can be all different sizes. Of the course, the player wouldn't be seen dead in what they (almost) wear!

Only one body mod can be in use for the Player and generic NPC's, but it's certainly possible to use items for a different body as sets for a specific NPC if you're building a mod. It just means copying them out of the folder where the common ones reside and giving the armor/clothing meshes a unique path for the custom NPC version.

Also, the way that skeletal animation works means that changed proportions applied to the skeleton are reflected in the body mesh (including clothing replacements), so the variations in height and so on between Bosmers and Nords, for example, are applied to the skeleton as part of the race definition. There are opportunities for a bit of adjustment there, but again the player and NPC's will share those settings according to race.

Finally(?) the age settings use a combination of shape morphs and texture blending to achieve their results, and Vampires get a head swap as well.

The only problem with giving someone an "unplayable" fat suit is making sure they don't equip anything else. Otherwise they'll go on a instant diet.

Or making sure anything else they do equip is equally fat. That's possible if you control their inventory properly and don't allow them to pick up anything thin.

While we're at it, let me quickly add a not-so-common knowledge about "how" the game chooses the right textures for those bodyparts in clothing or in general.
The body meshes are hardcoded, one mesh for all, the textures are controlled by ESM/ESP records on a per-race basis, so there must be something telling the game how to treat those bodyparts in clothing items.
For a mesh to act as a bodypart certain conditions need to apply.

I found out the hard way it's the following things:
The material needs to be named "skin" (case doesn't matter afaik) or they will never adapt to skin tint and color as defined during CharGen, nor will there be any different textures for different races (everybody would be Imperial as an example).
When the material is "skin" the game engine needs some further information to choose which "slot" the bodypart is meant for. (There are 4 main texture slots per race, remember?)
Now I found out the "name" of the NiTriStrips/Shapes serves as a "keyword" for the game engine every time the material is "skin".
Following tags tell the engine which slot's texture it should use: "upperbody" or "arms" (it's the same), "lowerbody" (maybe also "legs"?), "hand" and "foot" (ever wondered why almost all body mods' body meshes have that name when they use the foot texture for full-body coverage?)
Again it's more or less case-insensitive and there's one more thing which might come in good to know: A ":" serves as a "remark" sign. Everything coming after it wil be ignored by the game engine.
You might have encountered body meshes from body replacers with a name like "foot:legs" or "foot:chest" already? Even if it's another keyword after the ":", the engine will simply ignore it.

Now this of course has its negative sides as well, so you can quickly mess things up horribly.
When the material is "skin" the name "must" contain a keyword or there will be major texturing issues.
When only the name is a keyword but the material is anything else than "skin" though, it simply won't be a bodypart, not use the individual races' textures and neither take on the tint or coloration of the rest of your skin.

This has been a very informative post for me. Thanks to everyone that has replied. If anyone cares to add more please do. I thought of a couple of other questions on the drive home yesterday but now that I'm at a computer I can't remember them. I'll post them later if they come back to me but again thanks!

Can anyone tell me the location and name of files for the head/face textures?

Should be in "textures\characters\*NameofRace*"

There are textures for "head*", "ears*" and also eyes and teeth, I think.