Hello,

I have recently made the unwise decision to venture into the depths of 3-D modelling and texture editing (joke). I have, seemingly, successfully adjusted the clip mesh for the 10mm pistol of Fallout 3 thus it hangs out a bit as if its larger (it works in-game, however the player animation for holding the weapon makes the clip go through its hand, but that's another topic) with Blender and NifSkope, and had also (seemingly) successfully adjusted the animation for the clip thus it drops instead of its original twist-and-drop with NifSkope (had trouble doing it with Blender -- worked in Blender, but transferring the data in NifSkope posed problems, but that's lack of knowledge).

Then, I went to change the texture of the clip to have it more battered and used as it no longer resides in its safe home of the weapon. So, I went about installing GIMP with the normal map and .DDS plugin, and opened the texture file for the clip which I extracted from the Fallout 3 texture .BSA with FOMM. (Oddly, either when I opened it or Saved it As... I got an error about something to do with volume data I believe, but when I did the same thing later I didn't receive such notification.) Continuing, I did some drastic changes (scribbled with red paint over it) for testing purposes, Saved it As... (in .DDS) with no advanced setting alterations (didn't know what to do there), and put it into the proper directory in the Fallout 3 Data folder. Then, I went into NifSkope (opening the altered 10mm), selected the clip, when into the BSShaderTextureSet for the clip, and change the clip texture to my new, test one, and leave the normal map one alone (did no modifications there); the new texture showed up in NifSkope, I saved it, and put it into the proper Data directory. After, I went into the GECK, found my form for the altered 10mm, changed the models for it to the mesh with the altered texture, and the clip had the new texture there as well. So, I opened it up in Fallout 3, and the texture for the clip (and only the clip) was an unexpected mess of some texture that shouldn't be there -- I speculate that it took the texture for the 10mm pistol and applied it to the clip for some reason, because that is what it looks like. In summary, what went wrong? (Here, there is no texture set form in the GECK for the altered 10mm, and in checking out the mesh attached to its 1stperson form, all the textures have no paths next to them, which differs from the rest of the weapons in that they do.)

I troubleshooted a bunch, doing things such as making a texture set form, doing that and having no texture for the clip, and probably some other things, but that same result kept happening.

There is something that is confusing me: for Fallout 3 weapons, for example, the 10mm pistol, checking out its 1stperson form, all the textures for the mesh are the 1stperson form texture set, and that only has links to the 1stperson10mm textures. So, how does it get the textures for the clips and such, if it only links to the entire gun model (I don't see the clip there, unless I am missing it)? Also, I tried out the Texture Replacer program, and in looking at the textures associated to the Fallout 3 10mm, it has a lot of repeats, specifically 3 I believe. What's with that?


So, any clarity would be greatly appreciated (I am a newb for Blender, NifSkope and TR)!

Also, now that I think about it, I had a similar problem in that I had changed the texture for some icons for forms that show in the pipboy (ex. the wrench) to a player-made ones, and, like here, the changes showed in the GECK, but I got the error for missing file in Fallout 3. I do not have Archive Invalidation Invalidated installed. Is that the problem to all this nonsense? Oh dear, that would be quiet embarrassing...