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Vorians successfully extracted some clothing meshes from ORe. Just for the heck of it, I applied my new textures to the ORe meshes. They really went nuts with the new Mania Finery. We have the textures too, so I could retexture them, but we're too busy with Black Marsh at the moment.

Yeah it's free for poor sods like us. Once you develop a game that nets you your first million, you have to start paying the licensing fees. You might still need the Epic account for the plugins. I don't know anything about that.

I wasn't aware UE could be installed without Epic Games Launcher.

Yeah I used FModel to export the textures as PNG files. I couldn't figure out how to export the meshes. I got a few PSK/PSA files, but not the ones I wanted. Getting into that stuff would seriously derail the stuff I'm supposed to be working on! Why do you need Epic? We just grabbed UE. We have UE 5. I haven't played with it in a while. I'll have to install it again. It looks like it has an importer/exporter for 3DS Max. I guess that's the ActorX stuff you're referring to.

Watch this youtube tutorial on meshes (it's long, you might want to skip forward sometimes). To edit the meshes, you need to extract them using FModel, set up with the USMAP file. Then install the latest version of Blender and the Unreal PSK/PSA plugin. This will allow you to import the meshes into Blender (I believe they have to be downscaled to 0.01 of their original size as Blender seems to like to gargantuise objects). Edit as desired, then export as FBX files (3DS Max supports FBX files if you prefer to import into Blender then export to FBX to edit in 3DS Max - I couldn't get ActorXImporter and ActorX plugins for 3DS Max to work properly... or was it only the ActorX plugin to convert back to PSKX files which didn't work, and is in fact not needed since UE handles that conversion? Perhaps ActorXImporter did work, I don't remember now). Install Epic Games Launcher which requires registering a free account, then from the Launcher install Unreal Engine v5.3.2. Refer to the previously linked tutorial for settings to adjust. FBX files can be dragged into Unreal Engine's content browser. Then I believe you add the textures into the content browser and link them to the materials (I haven't gotten around to textures yet), and finally there's a process described in the youtube tutorial to package the files up for use in-game. If you aren't replacing existing assets from the original game, then I presently do not know how to make them appear in-game, the tutorial is solely about replacing existing content. Textures extract as PNG, I believe the game uses PNG, so should be straight-forward. Sound files can be extracted as WAV files (double-click the uasset file listed in FModel which opens a preview window and plays the audio, then choose to save the file), but must be converted to WEM files for the game to use them. to convert to WEM, first register a free account on Audiokinetic, then log in to download Wwise. See this youtube tutorial for the conversion process. I have no idea how UE handles lip synch.

I figured out how to extract resources from Oblivion Remastered. At this point, I don't know how to edit them and package them as a mod. I am using some of the textures as source files for patterns that I'll use in my retexturing work in Oblivion. They will be an outline that I'll use to draw the patterns in the textures. I think that to really mod ORe, I'll need to install and learn Unreal Engine. We were looking at it anyway for our game development work.

Uploaded bug fix for previous version. Please grab this one.

A new version of Gecko has been published. See the mod description page for details.

Just install your mods with WB and it will manage everything. That includes texture replacers and anything else. If you uninstall a mod that overrides files from another, it will automatically reinstall the files from the mod that got overridden. If you install a new version of a mod, it will detect the change and highlight the archive. It will tell you to Anneal the mod. That updates the installation to reflect the changes. Have a look at the readme. They explain it better than I can.

Thank you! I will try this! Do I need to do this every time I add a mod to keep it current? Also, how does this work with simple texture replacers that have no esp? I'll likely just have the one WIP which is the Ragdoll Khajiit race I'm working on, but who knows how far the modding urge will take me... I'm using the same Robert's mod with my textures on, as well as Rob's female, also with my textures on.

You need to install your mods with WB. Open WB and click on the Installers tab. Drag your archives into the Installers tab. It will ask you if you want to copy or move them. Select copy and tell it to do that every time. I create archives of my WIP mods and drag them into the Installers tab as well. You can drag the packages around to install them in the correct order. So you would have Roberts higher in the list than your mod. Right click on the archive and select Install... It will do the archive invalidation automatically. You'll know it has done it if there's ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa in your Data folder. Have a look at the General Readme in Mopy\Docs. Their documentation is actually quite good. This is the Roberts I use. It has been packaged as a BAIN. When you install it, a wizard will run that will configure it to your liking. Here's my Installers tab showing Robert's and a few other mods. If you're going to be playing, you'll want the Unofficial Patches and the various engine bug fixes mods too. The most popular mod manager at the moment is MO2. You might want to check it out instead. I can't use it because I have several Oblivion installations set up already. Vorians can help you with that if you want to check it out.

Well, put WB on but none of the mods show up still. I haven't used it before, so I have no idea what I'm doing. I should be seeing Robert's bodies withi my textures on, but I'm only seeing defaults. I can't find any reference to archive invalidation or anything else. It's been a long time since I played this plus I've no experience of WB.

And while we're kinda sorta on the topic, LOOT is used to sort your load order now. They've ported the Oblivion master list from BOSS so it works with old mods too now.

Sorry, yes, that's what it's called. Honestly I was really hoping Vorians would jump in because I had a nagging feeling it was called something else. I think WB calls it Archive Invalidation too. It certainly creates a dummy BSA of that name. I think it's just SkyBSA that calls it BSA redirection, which is ironic because I don't use SkyBSA.

Archive Invalidation! Now I remember! I've just downloaded WB so I'll give that a go.

I think OBMM called it Archive Invalidation. I hope you won't return to OBMM again today, there's still new guides pushing new players of Oblivion to use it for mod management.

Wrye Bash it is then! You're right, I did use OBMM for load order and it was probably doing that in the background even though I was installing mods manually.

Yeah, that's a good point. I remember many years ago when I first started using WB, I had read about BSA redirection and was going to set it up, only to find that WB had done it already.

OBMM (awful program) had its own method too, if you were using any mod manager, it probably dealt with it without you even realising.

I'm sure I didn't have to do that before. Pretty sure I just plopped them into data and checked them off in data files on start up then they worked. I will try it though before I just write off the thing altogether.

Don't forget about BSA redirection. If you use Wrye Bash, it will set it up automatically for you. These days, a lot of people prefer to use SkyBSA. I think some other mod managers handle this too, but I prefer to use Wrye Bash. When I went back to Oblivion after being away for a while, I forgot that stuff is invisible in the distance unless you install mods for it and rebuild the LOD!

I went back to the old Oblivion as I had an idea for a mod to honour one of my cats. However, I must be going gaga as no mods show up in game at all. I started by adding Robert's bodies and my texture replacer, but nothing shows up. I enabled them in data files on startup but still nothing shows. Am I losing my mind in my frail dotage or something?

Yikes. Sounds like the prefab/precombines crap that Fallout 4 has. At least you can rebuild them in the CK.

No, neither will Virtuos. The way they've implemented the UE overlay is, in my opinion, too difficult for them to bother. All Gamebryo games were developed using in-studio versions of the Construction Set/GECK/Creation Kit, but Virtuous wouldn't have needed such a tool as they weren't building new content, they were merely replacing what is already placed in the world with higher quality meshes and textures, and merging/baking vast amounts of those meshes together into prefabricated chunks of meshes, each containing the land height and all static objects (excluding those with a parent reference) placed within a grid of e.g. 3x3 or 8x8 cells. A "CS" would need to be able to read those baked meshes, recognise the separate components, allow for moving/removing/adding those components, and then generate a replacement baked mesh. Since no such tool is likely to have been created for Virtuos to create the remaster, I don't see either of them employing programmers to create such a tool now.

As it is written right now, it also requires MenuQue. The menus are event driven, so it requires the scripting extensions of MenuQue. They've had several releases as they figure out what does and doesn't work. Do you think Bethesda will release a CS?