I forgot to announce it here, but I finally got my major portfolio model done (and rendered) so I have time to mod again.

So far I have optimized all the textures in F:NV (~22K of them) and have begun porting my F3 HiRes over (diffuse,
specular, and bump maps - even for the DLCs since some of those are in F:NV).

The first thing I am doing is downsizing all the HiRes to Regular Size since this results in a higher quality version (at F:NV
Vanilla sizes). Then I will replace all the textures in F:NV that are identical to those in F:NV (it is not quite as easy as it
sounds, but should not take more than a day). Then I have to upgrade the remaining textures (all unique to F:NV) to the
same standards as the F3 textures. In all it should take about three or four weeks to finish and when done will encompass
all the textures in F:NV.

For those that used my F3 mods, I have a new site that has offered to host my mods at full, unrestricted speed so there
will no longer be multi-part madness (since all the HiRes mods can hit 5+ GB).

I will have more info as it becomes available on https://sites.google.com/site/iam4aces/Home/.
It is a new site so it is fairly bleak compared to my previous ones, but time spent on it means time not spent modding F:NV.
Also note, that I have not played the game (at all - no, not even tried to launch it yet). So please do not drop spoilers when
asking about particular textures or bugs. Thanks!

I will not play until I get the texture mods (regular and HiRes) done. No distractions this time.


Cheers,

4Aces

I don't mean to sound like I'm disrespecting your mods but how do these compare to NMC's Fallout 3 textures?

You could always have a look at them, http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3793 and http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3288.

Know your work good, and can`t wait until this get released

Didn't you do some texture work on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat a bit back. I know I liked what I saw then.

Anyways, can't wait for the release. These somewhat flat, lifeless textures in the vanilla game are really dragging me down.

i believe NMC has said he wouldn't be retexing fallout new vegas.

Any estimated release date?

I hope you will be putting your Fallout 3 texture pack on there as well. I really hate downloading multiple files of that size on the Nexus even though it is a really good site.

Good to see you're at it again. Liked your textures for F3, they didn't change the look and only improved the graphics instead. ^_^

I'm fairly sure your Fallout 3 texture pack would work just as well in New Vegas without any additional hassle. Most of my favourite texture mods that I used in FO3 work just fine when I place the files in the New Vegas folder instead, so to save time it's possible to just use that for all the models that are re-appearing from FO3, that'd only leave the new textures from NV needing work, though that may be what you're going for.

Huh, I didn't know about your FO3 work, it looks nice! I'm beginning the (laborious) process of downloading them now.

Looking forward to the FNV one, 4 weeks don't bother me I doubt I'll be doing any real playing of FNV for a while yet - there's many mods still missing which I find fundamental.

I will not be using the nexus for file hosting (let the cheering commence). I am using my affiliated group's server at Danmangames.com (DMG) and the last time I checked it was working (though that was some time ago). If there are any problems with that one, I have an offer from another professional hosting site for pro modders, which offered me a slot. If anyone has any issues with the DMG server please PM me and let me know.


Smokindan - NMC's are texture replacements, so they are better, For a very few textures (like landscape) this is fairly easy, since you can just use a single texture. But most others in this (and F3) would require many different real world textures to be combined (e.g. imagine power armor with the same metallic texture applied to the whole thing - it would look like crap). Texture replacements always trump (or at least they should) texture upgrades. The difference is that I can get do about 100 texture upgrades in the time it takes to do one complex (e.g. think armor again) texture replacement in photoshop. When I am done the texture upgrading I may use my new skills at 3D modeling to redo some of the complex textures, which should be much faster than just using photoshop (but until I try I cannot know for sure).

Now the good news is that my mods contain much of NMC's texture replacement mods for F3 and it is very simple to install all of his over top of mine (if you want them all).


Soor - Sorry but the Nexus has/had (not sure - been learning how to 3d Model for the last 8 months) a very low filesize cap. You can use the mirror @ danmangame.com to get them faster.

Urge - Yes, the final step you mention is what I am going to do when I am done the down conversion from HiRes to Vanilla size. The problem is that there are many files that would not be used by the game, so I only want to actually put the ones the game needs into the BSA. Unless the available BSA packers have been improved, they start to fail at around 1.8 GB, which resulted in corrupt textures in F3 with all my BSAs (and I tried every compression setting about 10 times). If I just mass copy them then there will be a lot of bloat in my BSAs which means higher compression levels and worse performance on your system (plus longer download times). There is also the possibility that some of the files are actually new, but still named with F3 names. I want to be absolutely sure that I am not copying over F:NV textures with F3 textures. They would be much harder to track down afterward.

Sick - About 5 - 6 weeks total. I might release the F3 ported textures if it looks like it might be delayed.

GreyWolf - I will be updating the TexMesh Textures (that I am currently working on down-converting from HiRes) up. Right now everything that is on the Nexus is also hosted on DMG. If there are any issues with DMG then I will upload them to the new site as well. I want this to be as painless as possible.


EDIT

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35262 You probably (almost certainly) need it. You will when you get HiRes.

I need someone with F3 installed to send me a copy of their Fallout_default.ini found in the root (main) directory of the game. I have finished my upgrades of TexMesh and HiRes and am packing them into multiple BSAs for easy installation, but I need to tell the game to use more than just one texture.bsa file. I will also need people to test them out, since I only have FNV installed. They will be uploaded by tomorrow night. I still have to 7Z the BSAs down to a reasonable size for you to DL - and that will take at least 5 hours - whee! If you will send it to me, you can either post it to a file sharing site or just PM me and I will send you my email address.

I am starting the formal work on FNV tomorrow. Since Obsidian did not respond to my requests for info I will have to perform a full anolysis of their game and remove all the unused material myself. I expect that this will take a week (possibly longer). When I am done that phase I will be testing that to make sure that it does improve performance, which I am sure it will. Then I can release that as a separate mod, and then combine it with my F3 work as the basis for my FNV texture mods. This will mean that you get the best performance and my texture upgrades. When I actually have some FPS #s I will post them.

Cheers,

4Aces

This is excellent news 4Aces! Will be keeping an eye on this. :tops:

good stuff, however from what i saw from your f3 stuff (and i'm no texture expert) but it seemed you just added/increased levels oft he effects such as bumpmapping - and while not looking bad some seemed to be kind of excessive, for example your heavily bumped gravel looked good and pretty realistic, but at the same time the nukacola looked kind of too bumpmappy

I did find a number of Bump maps that did not have Alpha channels to tune them down. I am not sure if I saved them as the wrong DXT format or if they were that way originally, and I forgot to return and fix them. With 12K+ textures I am sure that even more will still need work, after all Bethesda did have an entire team doing this and I am just one person. If you let me know what textures you think are overdone I am more than happy to look at them and see if something was missed or if it just needs to be redone. I have a small list (~20) so far that need more work. If you are talking about the super-shiny fridge, then that was fixed over a year ago.

If you go to my https://sites.google.com/site/iam4aces/Home/portfolio and watch the videos that is the best way to see the difference between Vanilla, TexMesh, and HiRes. Just remember that with my latest work on them (see above) they will be even better.

Just make a blank ESP file (for instance, FourAces Textures.esp) and then rename the BSA files to the same name as the ESP file (for multiple files, you can add a "-" after the filename and add extra text there i.e. FourAces Textures - Part 1.bsa).

Personally, I'm not really a fan of texture packs that just sharpen and resize (and in many instances, add unfitting grime to) the textures. As to what you've done, I can't say I agree with you on metal not being shiny. After all, shininess is a property of metal!

The fridge that I mentioned looked like it was dipped in mercury though, due to a bump map with no Alpha to tone it down. As for my general reduction of shininess in the meshes (for TM only - not HiRes since it has no meshes included with it), ask yourself what a car would look like after 200 years of weathering (the answer would be - 4 tires, a few hoses, and a couple belts). I simply wanted to reduce the sheen to make everything appear more weathered and pseudo-realistic. Since most of the metal textures have rust, that means iron content and not some sci-fi metal that last forever. Check out the wrecked vaults and you will see rust on everything including the main door and drive mechanism. Since they were of the best construction possible, very little in the wasteland would look shiny. Then add in all the non-metal that is obviously not plastic, and wonder why many of the surfaces out-shine the metal.

While I realize there should not be much metal left after 200 years, except for sealed locations (e.g. some Vaults) and those with extremely low humidity (deserts of all types), it is necessary for the game to suspend that disbelief. I simply could not suspend it far enough to accept the shiny new look that most things had, especially when they were surround by destruction (as in 5 cm away is a large hole in the wall and debris surrounding the shiny Red leather booth in a diner with no roof - rhyme not intended).

As for only sharpening and resizing, my HiRes does a lot more than just that (and my sharpening uses a personally developed process not the automatic ones in photoshop). No grime or extra dirt was added to any of them, not that you specifically said mine did. I just want to make that clear to everyone reading this. The only appropriately shiny areas are 'fresh' Vaults and the non-cannon Alien ship from Monthership Zeta. They did not have their shininess decreased, and in some instances had it increased (as did some of the metal in TM).

With over 250K downloads (100K TM and over 150K for HiRes) I am satisfied with the results. Especially when I watch the Vanilla video followed by HiRes, That is why I will not play until I get HiRes done for FNV, it is worth the wait to me.


I still need that INI file if anyone has F3 installed. The BSAs are zipped and I am going to make the INI available as a separate DL since four versions need to be created TM & HiRes both with and without the DLCs installed. Thanks!

have to agree with 4Aces on the shiny issue. vanilla looked like every scavenger who came thru did a little buffing or polishing

I have found a copy of the INI file online. The DMG mail server is currently down (no idea) so I cannot get my ftp access right now. I am starting the work on FNV now and will UL the F3 textures as soon as I get that ftp info (it is a new server and I do not have the address or password yet). Cheers!

approx. 11 AM Sat. Oct 30
Since the forum will not let me edit my own post (the edit button is there but it says I do not have permission) - the dreaded double post:

I realized that I can just add as many BSAs as I need for all the files even if they have no compression. So that is what I will do now. I will port my newly-upgraded F3 work and then upgrade the remainder and just pack it into umpteen BSAs with no compression. It will mean longer download times, but after assessing the length of time it would take for me to crawl through the main ESM in the GECK and make a checklist of all the assets that are actually used, I think this is best.

Just to by absolutely clear, I am not adding extra files, the game already has those. I am just replacing all the F3 content that exists in FNV.

I will update when the port portion is over as I will then have the number of FNV textures that need upgrading.



EDIT - (Yes, Edit works again!) 11:30 PM Same day

I managed to get the standard size port of all my F3 textures to FNV done already. Thanks to about 60% of the files in FNV coming from F3 directly (unmodified), it was faster than I thought. After getting a chance to look at some of the FNV textures while I was doing this, I think that this upgrade of the remaining 8K files will also be faster than I had first thought.

So far it looks like about 30% of the 'new' files are just F3 textures that were cropped and renamed or are just hue-shifted that will not require new bump maps at all. If they were cropped I can do the same to my original bump map and not have to generate a new one, saving a lot of time.

Before I can start on this I have to port over the HiRes files, but that will be easier since I can just look at my standard-res folder and see which files get copied. When this is done I will upgrade the ~8K FNV files to HiRes standards (full process and enlarging), and when they are all done I will simply shrink them (which is easier and results in a higher quality image) to standard size.

Something you should be asking on the forums is why the combat knife sledgehammer were cut? They are traditional Fallout weapons, and it seems unbelievable that they would remove them while putting in things like a 9-iron (golf club). At least the ripper and super-sledge are still in it...
[EDIT - It turns out they just cut half the textures for the combat knife and I only noticed the ones that were missing - my bad].

As for the DMG site, it still appears as if it is down and the mail server with it. If it is not back up by dinner time tomorrow I will start making arrangements to host my F3 files on another site. I did discover that my BSA packing of the F3 will not work, as good 'ol Beth changed their BSA standards again. Since I had to use the FNV version of FOMM (Fallout Mod Manger) since the F3 will not work without F3 being installed (it makes sense it would not launch the game - but I thought the BSA packer/unpacker would still work). Since they were packed with FNV-FOMM my BSAs would only work with FNV, which means I have to reinstall F3 just to pack the BSAs with the F3 version. I think I will just release them as loose files as I doubt many people are interested in them anymore. Let me know what you think, if you are planning on getting them.

(In case you were going to suggest using the FO3_Archive_Utility, it will not let you set the level of compression and I want it to be 0%). Thanks anyway.

I forgot to thank you Roxahris for the ESP suggestion, I had not though of doing it that way. However, I do not want to use that method since I want to disable the Vanilla BSA altogether. In F3 I had problems where the game engine would ignore ArchiveInvalidation and just use the originals if they were available (in some cases, it was pretty strange). If the BSAs were renamed, then it was forced into following instructions and used my textures. Instead of asking the users to rename their BSAs I realized that I can just remove the names of the Vanilla BSAs from the Fallout_default.ini and insert mine. This guarantees that all Vanilla files are out of reach of the game and that mine are used. It also makes the users FOMM list a little shorter, though texture mods do not really clash.

It seems that Obsidian likes rusty textures. Most of their new textures are rusty variants of the original textures, especially for the bots and armor. On that note, can someone that has played FNV tell me if there are any overly shiny objects in Vanilla FNV? If so please send me a picture so I can fix them as I process the textures (they are probably bump maps that are missing their Alpha Channel).

A rusted, yet shiny Protectron? Sure, with EverShine even the worst finish can look like a million bucks!
Disclaimer: Do not come into direct contact, inhale while applying, or look directly at EverShine as this product
contains lethal chemicals. Enjoy!
Special Note: Can also be used as weed killer, insecticide, or embalming agent. Other uses are strictly forbidden by law.

Cheers,

4Aces

Just checked out your site and saw that you think you'll be done with these by the end of the month. That's definitely good to hear. I've seen the scripts for rolling over NMCs HD Textures but I couldn't stand to play with 70% hi res and 30% low res so I'm definitely looking forward to your work. Thanks for doing this.

Good to hear that someone is checking https://sites.google.com/site/iam4aces/Home/mods/fallout-new-vegas. :foodndrink:
If you go there now you can see the 18 comparison shots that I just loaded. I am done the Alpha stage, and am at beta testing, so this will likely be out much sooner than I had anticipated. Working full-out and not touching the 'net helped a lot, so I will continue to be here infrequently until I release.

Cheers!

Wow. The work you've done so far is great. The textures actually look like they have texture to them now. :laugh:

Can't wait. :tops:

Woot, looking forward to this.

:)