Hey Matt, loving your blog... and good to see that you have a guide on seamless necks. I'm going to try it, hopefully it works...

I might do something similar myself (but for YouTube only!) So far I only make machinimas, but will probably do V-Logging on the side that involves videos of me comparing different mods for Oblivion!

I hope yours does well and good luck!

Very nice blog there. You've prompted me to try out some mods, as many people, I'm sure.


But, but... you're talking body seams and... no mention of Optimized Facegen Files at all? OFF is actually the first thing I'd recommend to even out skintones and a crucial step towards minimizing seams. It removes all the weird blotchy colors that facegen usually produces, most noticeably on redguards, on both face and body - killing seams caused by facegen. Really, try it. It's skintone magic. Sorry, I wouldnt let the topic slip by while you're leaving an important step out. I guess I did a terrible job of emphasizing OFF's importance originally.

Thank you and everyone else for the support!

When I was testing out various combinations, the one I posted on my blog worked out best for both bodies. It may seem odd, but trying to fit OFF somewhere in there always made things worse. Thank you for mentioning that, though! I'm sure it must work for others, just not for me. That being said, I might try it again in the future if I have time. I don't remember whether you contributed to the thread or not, but my final order in this topic was eventually determined based on the various suggests from http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1170609-how-do-i-make-body-seams-as-unnoticeable-as-possible.

Would just like to add my appreciation of this blog.

OFF made a lot of the NPCs look like trannies last time I tried... :S

First time I've spotted this, and had the opportunity to check out the blog

Very much like it. Bookmarked so I can have a better read when I have more time

Excellent :icecream:

Thanks for the continued support, everyone!

My most recent post deals with various mods that add NPCs to the roads of Cyrodiil. Like my previous post, this is more of a listing than anything else, but it does have my own discussion for each mod, and I did include a video. I also added a Read More button so the preview won't take up so much space. Please let me know what you think!

Sorry to double post (as always), but I thought I would update everyone on the blog. My most recent post is about Liquid Water. PLEASE be sure to let me know what you think!

It's generally another good post, but I would suggest you go into a little more detail in describing the mod itself, like right after where you have the video. For example, that it's fully customizable, that it eliminates the long-standing low-res reflection issue, the caustics, distortion/refraction of objects seen underwater from above, underwater effects, and probably a bunch more "features." Just to spell it all out, even though being able to show it with a video is always the best. But it's basically all the various things that make it way beyond any other water mod out there, heh. You can mention more of its drawbacks too, like magic effects and other various things not displaying on top of the water or the height issue, but I wouldn't, hehe. Anyway I'm probably just biased about this particular mod having followed it for so long.

@palidoo: I'm sure you've probably noticed this by now, but I edited the post to note the customizable options. Thanks for the tip!

The most recent post is about Near Miss Magic and Arrows Alert the Target and Actors Can Miss Now.

As always, I hate to double post, but I'm under the assumption that not many will notice an update to my blog unless I say something about it here.

The most recent post is about DarNified UI. Be sure to tell me what you think!

And that was a very good preview of what DarN UI provides, most certainly a mod every PC user should be using.

I swear I must be the only person ever who thought the vanilla interface was just fine. All I ever cared a lick about was getting a bigger map and having the HUD display less prominent. I ended up having to deal with most of Darn in order to get what I wanted and frankly I think it goes a bit too far on the whole smaller print thing. I still ended up with a hybrid of Immersive Interface, Darn, and hackish methods to force the menu fonts back into a readable size.

I actually agree that the text can be a little too small at times, and as I say in the post, there's nothing wrong with the vanilla UI. DarN is just an enhancement for those that like the idea of making things less prominent. If that's not your thing, it's definitely not a must-have mod. And like you mentioned, there are other mods that just affect HUD if that's the only thing you think needs enhancing. I like the original interface, I just thought there was no reason why it couldn't be made smaller.


Thanks for the compliments, Vorians!

Another good post Matthew

By way of suggestion for future posts, I'd be glad to see reviews of some of the great quest mods that are around.

Thank you very much, I'll most definitely take this into consideration, though I won't be doing any of the huge ones like Integration or Death Quest. I might make a post about Nehrim, though, since I plan on having a look at that in the near future.

In other news, I just wrote a post about Really Almost Everything Viewable When Distant, which I'm happy with other than the video that I made for it. It should be easy to see the contrast if you read my discussion first, though. I also added a note to the end of my DarNified UI post regarding how to keep your in-game configuration settings saved after you exit the game. Be sure to share your thoughts!

Good read on RAEVWD

A small niggle though. What RAEVWD has nothing at all to do with distant landscape. It only provides the distant object meshes that allow for the various buildings, ruins, rocks, etc to be displayed. It would also be worth mentioning that the process requires running tes4lodgen before they become visible.

Oblivion's landscape system is a whole other beast that has to be tackled in a much different manner.

Hmm, point taken. I did say they were distant meshes, but I suppose I did seem to imply that it did something to the landscape itself. I'll see what I can do to make that clearer. And you're right, I'll also mention TES4LODGen.

There is actually a http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34792 for Darn UI that allows you to save settings in game, without having to edit outside files. Pretty handy.

If you were to look at my blog, you would find that that's exactly what I referred to.

I'm kind of in the same boat, to a certain degree; I never saw a need for any major overhaul. I installed BTMod then Immersive Interface to make the HUD more compact and smaller, installed the MiniMap mod and did a quick xml edit to make it work with what Immersive Interface had done, and that was about it. I've got a nice big customized map I can zoom in and out of too (Map Marker Overhaul and Dynamic Map). Everything else has been minor tweaks, like doing xml edits to make the descriptive text show up in the center when focused on an item, which I might have copied from DarN actually (and which caused shadeMe's mod named after Vacuity to not work right for me). Oh, and my totally lazy modifications to make the text in menus a lot smaller, making a custom sized font and editing the xml files. I didn't quite do everything I needed to, as you can see with some of the quirks in http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/8071/arrowmenu1.jpg http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/1262/arrowmenu2.jpg. I should probably fix it at some point but I've since forgotten the details of the xml files so I'm being lazy about it, hehe.

I can totally see other people wanting to majorly overhaul the interface, but I've basically been able to get it exactlywhere I want it through tweaks here and there. Actually I probably took the more difficult route, but I guess there's a certain satisfaction being able to tweak each specific component to your exact preferences manually. But for now the closest I'm getting to using DarN is seeing the same red background texture it uses in menus while using Atmospheric Loading Screens, heh.

Just a little bump to inform everyone that follows this thread of an update.

I've edited my post regarding RAEVWD to be more accurate in its explanation of distant objects and note the required use of TES4LODGen, and my most recent post is about Bomret's Detailed Normal Maps and Really Textured Normal Maps. Any feedback is appreciated!

I'd love to see a comparision of Vibrant textures with Bomret normals and/or Really Textured Normals compared with vanilla textures with Bomret and/or Really Textured Normals.

My apologies; I have little interest in Vibrant textures, so I can't imagine taking the time to do this. However, I believe others have taken screenshots of this comparison, so be sure to look at the thread related to Really Textured Normals.