Type 3/6/3M/6M/BnB/etc. clothes and armor compatibility

[baloneysammich]

I generally prefer the clothing and armor replacers for Type 3, but like to see some skimpy stuff occasionally. Most of the skimpy stuff is for other body replacers. Ideally, I'd like to make copies of the default clothes/armor (ie. using GECK/FNVEdit) using textures/meshes from the other replacers. But there are a few pieces of vital information I'm missing: To what extent are clothes and armor for one body replacer compatible with other replacers? And is there a "best choice" body replacer if I want to have the largest pool of compatible clothes/armors from all the replacers? Google failed me on this, I only managed to turn up one nexus thread with two opposing answers.

 

Thanks!

[Halstrom]

Stick to T3 till you know better and when you understand it all and the universe please let the rest of us know

[rockitten]

Someone has made a "WIP" all body mod for FO3

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/10235/?

 

that will be an interesting potential as a "mother of all body mods" for FO3/FNV,

[baloneysammich]

@Halstrom

 

With CALI from BoG installed, I tested a few armor meshes from T3M and T6M. The skin tone was off (body much lighter than head) when a raider was wearing a powder ganger armor, but otherwise I didn't notice any issues.

 

P.S. 42, duh.

[Halstrom]

@Halstrom

 

With CALI from BoG installed, I tested a few armor meshes from T3M and T6M. The skin tone was off (body much lighter than head) when a raider was wearing a powder ganger armor, but otherwise I didn't notice any issues.

 

P.S. 42, duh.

Yeah, I use TCali with BOG myself, am a bit colour blind so don't notice the neckseam issue unless I look for it, that was all done by others, I have no idea how to do textures & mesh stuff like that.

[baloneysammich]

I'm not modifying the textures or meshes. I'm just copying armor records and configuring them to use the armor mesh from other body variants. For example, T3M and T6M both have a mesh for the Raider Painspike armor. So I create two copies of the record for that armor, one pointing to T3M mesh and one to T6M mesh. That's a piece of cake. The time consuming part is modifying leveled lists so that Raiders will appear in game with the variants.

[jonas_opines]

Compatibility is a problematic term to use in this case.    Generally, the only thing that is needed for the body types and associated armors to work okay is for them to share the same texture files.   Most of the body types listed here (T3 T3m T6 T6m T5) are all based off the same texture.  To be honest, I'm pretty sure all of them are just resizings and tweaks of the original T3.  So if you're worried about the weird stuff like a set of toes being drawn on the neck or whatever, then you should be fine with everything but exnem, which uses a different texture and UV map.  

 

BnB is a little more complicated.  Basically, in order to use BnB you have to have the skeleton.  So you can't just take an individual BnB outfit and have it work unless you've downloaded the skeleton from the main file.  The reason is because the outfit will have two reference bones (left breast and right breast) that aren't in the normal skeleton, and that causes glitches or crashes.  But you can have the BnB stuff installed and still use other non-bounce outfits, because the outfits don't need the extra bones.  (hope that makes sense, lol)

 

Now, if your idea of compatibility is for your character's body to stay the same size no matter the outfits, then you're out of luck.  For the time you're wearing an outfit, your body will be that size, for most things.  This is because virtually all major outfits include their own body meshes as part of the outfit.  The exception are accessory-type items like individual shirts or shorts or whatever.  Those are usually fitted to a particular body that is NOT included in the mesh file, and in this case if you're not using the right body then the clothing will clip badly.

 

Regarding the neck seam issue and body-color mismatch, it might be that the file did not have it set right.  The skin and armor shaders are different, and if the skin wasn't set to shader-skin, then it would cause bad mismatch.  Easy to tell, because the skin would always be white, no matter what race you are.

 

Hope that helps.  Tl;dr is that as long as you're not using exnem you should be fine as long as you don't mind the body changing in size and shape slightly when you change outfits.  If you need a clarification on any of those points let me know and I can explain a little more fully.   

[Tearoth]

It's a shame that nobody is making custom armor and clothing for T3M. There's also still a few vanilla armors and clothes that needs to be converted to T3M. It needs a BnB conversion aswell!

[prideslayer]

Compatibility is a problematic term to use in this case.    Generally, the only thing that is needed for the body types and associated armors to work okay is for them to share the same texture files.   Most of the body types listed here (T3 T3m T6 T6m T5) are all based off the same texture.  To be honest, I'm pretty sure all of them are just resizings and tweaks of the original T3.  So if you're worried about the weird stuff like a set of toes being drawn on the neck or whatever, then you should be fine with everything but exnem, which uses a different texture and UV map.

The UVmap is all you're talking about here, and yes, all the popular ones are the same. The UV map is what tells the engine how to apply a texture to the model. Any models that share a UV map can also share textures.

 

Now, if your idea of compatibility is for your character's body to stay the same size no matter the outfits, then you're out of luck.

For now. Maybe not forever. Your mad scientists are working feverishly behind the scenes.

[prideslayer]

It's a shame that nobody is making custom armor and clothing for T3M. There's also still a few vanilla armors and clothes that needs to be converted to T3M. It needs a BnB conversion aswell!

You're making a lot of posts lately, seems like you might have some free time.... if you catch my drift.