I'd like to modify one of those house mods that are so popular but quite never satisfy me. how can I check which resources are used by an esp and "copy them" so that I can modify them withou altering the original esp?

The easiest way would be to copy (and rename) the .ESP itself. The renamed copy would have all of the resources set up and any scripts that reference them would continue to work. The only drawback is that you could only use one of the .ESPs, since they would conflict with each other.

thanks, that is true, but I understood that by myself. and I want to know which ones are used in order to extract meshes-textures and recolor them, that's the catch

I'd use TES4Files to package the mod like you would for distribution -- It will examine the .esp and package all nifs and textures that are used in the mod that are not part of vanilla OB - then you have all of the Meshes\Textures used in the mod in one place so you can tell what is being used that is not from the vanilla game.

You can also use TES4Edit to examine the changes (records) that an esp makes. That's not as good a catch-all solution in your case as TES4Files, but it'll show you exactly what a plugin is adding or changing, and not just meshes. I'm no modeler, but I've dabbled a bit elsewhere, and you may still have to use something like nifskope to go in and figure out which textures you want to change. A mesh as complex as a house is bound to have several, maybe even dozens. In that case you might as well just use TES4Edit to see what meshes are being added. You'll probably find your house under the "Static" category.

Hope that helps! I'm new to the modding scene, so go easy if I'm being ignorant :tongue:

i tried that but I could never get it to work, thanks perhaps I should re-install the game?

@Jdfan thanks, can I use it also to pack game resources? and not distributing them, of course, but at least to know.

tes4files is designed to go through the .esp file and pull all resources that are not part of the original game and package them -- this way when you are getting ready to upload a mod you just select the .esp and it does all the work of getting all of those little files that you are using in the mod organized and ready to upload but it does not pull any files that were already included in the original game (since all users already have them so no need to upload them with you mod !!) -- So it probably would not be useable to pull original game resources. -- but it is definitely useful when packaging a mod for release so you do not miss any resources that you forget that you used !