Since I continue having so many problems with mod packages...

[TheInternal]

Howdy all.

 

I've tried over four full Oblivion installs in the last few days while trying to get the characters in the world to look better, and through the use of the big mod packs (like MBP and Xeo) I've gotten some decent results, but always at the cost of major texturing glitches, and a bit of gibberish from non-English mods making (often silly looking / broken) races.

 

I'm starting to think the best option for modding the game's characters will not be through an easy solution. (I've yet to see a guide that shows how to effectively change a number of NPCs to consistently look and dress to the caliber I can get my character... which would be really nice to have with the lover's mod).

 

That being said, I could really use advice on SPECIFIC mods to grab and that will play nice / not jack up other mods.

 

I'm particularly interested in good hair mods, good meshes (having lots of issues finding clothing meshes that look good for NPCs / don't "hide" the body mesh mods and meshes that aren't broken between the torso and chest), good textures (seems like lots of texure problems exist around the character's necks and sometimes no textures load for feet), and just the race mods that look clean / well done (I'm thinking Moonshadow elves and chocolate elves for me).

 

Any suggestions on how to go about this undertaking would be greatly appreciated. I've seen folks post screen shots of NPCs looking buxom and nicely dresses. I can't even get my NPCs to look cute and not-broken.

 

I'm gonna go re-read some of the beautification guides in the forum again. Just did a fresh install of Windows 7 64-bit. Things to install -and doh... forgot to back up my saves for Rapelay... sigh-

[EvenstarGW]

Personally I tried to avoid MBP for a long time, because I knew it was going to be trouble. Apart from all the mods that require it, I've seen very little use for it in making my own characters. I'm not thrilled about a gazillion more elf races. Biggest convenience to me was that it already has such a ton of hair added to the races, but it does require a good search to get the required meshes or half of them will not work. I've hand edited my MBP copy to stay away from the vanilla eyes because I only installed it because of the mods that required it.

 

I use a combination of COBL races TNR (Tamriel NPC's Revamped) and the Beautiful women/Handsome Gents packages to improve NPC face sliders and give them some more hair diversity. These are old though and don't use any of the much prettier hair meshes that have come out since.

 

The biggest improvement to NPC's will most likely come from getting a good set of textures, not a complete race overhaul. Also keep in mind that these overhauls don't do anything for NPC clothing, so you'll have to make sure you have at least some HGEC/Robert stock equipment replacers. To dress up individual NPC's I personally use either "Active Inventory Spell" or "Mad Companionship Spells".

 

There's a lot of race mods/improvements available, the biggest problem may be to get them all to work at once, unless you figure out how to use Wrye Bash to merge race edits into a bashed patch.

[TheInternal]

thanks for the thoughts. I'd LIKE to add the moonshadow and chocolate elve races (in English), find a DMRA body replacement, and find textures for all the stock and the 2 custom races that actually work.

 

I've seen a number of links for a DMRA stock replacer that makes everything skimpy, but I've found most of the quick edits to standard gear to be rather unappealing.

 

I'm currently trying to get a better grasp of how to mod stuff myself... especially by identifying, downloading, and making good hair styles available to all races.

 

 

[HentaiGnome]

People can disagree with me on this but personally I found converting mods to OMODs first before installing them really helped me out. It not only helps me organize things a bit but it also makes applying/removing mods that much easier. The alternative would be to use WryeBash due to its advanced features but using it (let alone setting it up) is way too complicated for my puny, ignorant brain.

 

MBP isn't as bad as one might think. The important thing is to first get all the installation files necessary and to install them in a "proper" order. It also helps to realize ahead of time that MBP is a vanilla race overhaul mod so expect to see drastic changes to NPCs. (Even more so with XEO mods.) That said, any mod you install after that SHOULD not be a vanilla-race-changing mod, but you can add entirely new races if you wish. Also, the Moonshadow and Chocolate Elf races are installed by default if you use MBP.

 

As for DMRA, remember that even if you get a DMRA body replacer the outfit that your character wears will still "override" the body type to whatever the outfit was designed for. For example, you get a DMRA nude body replacer but you make your character wear an outfit that was made for HGEC C-cup breasts. Your character will now wear the outfit WITH C-cup breast sizes instead of the double-melons that you originally had.

[Dreamer102]

Honestly, I think that the only way that someone is going to get the same exact detail as they've seen in another person's game is if they uploaded their archived/zipped "DATA folder" and "OBMM-Load-Order" to the internet somewhere.

 

That's about the ONLY way to get the EXACT same results.

 

And then that's only partially possible depending on the downloader's hardware.

IE: you may not get the same character detail because your video card or CPU suck eggs.