Remember:

Please endorse any mods you download, use, and enjoy from the Nexus.

Props to Qolore7, OG of modding guides, and to The Many and Audixas for the excellent Wasteland Survival Guide for TTW, and to VishVadeva for the constant help, knowledge, and excellent work on all the Bethengine games.

Thanks also to RoyBatty and the entire TTW team for years of modding excellence, as well as to karut, lStewieAl, Sweet6Shooter, and all the skilled modders that make New Vegas worth coming back to again and again and again and again.

And some more props to the authors of every mod in this guide. I didn’t create any of them - I’m just pointing people in the right direction.

Note that this guide will not see significant updates in the near future - it’s in what I would call a feature-complete state, and conveniently that aligns well with the release of Cloud’s video guide.

I will push updates if any significant changes are made to packs herein, or in the event of a superior (read: more memory-conscious equivalent of Legacy Reborn) landscape pack is ever released.

On performance - I’ve just done a texture-free install of TTW for the first time in nearly a decade, and while textures aren’t the most performance heavy thing out there, this guide approximately halves my FPS. Take from that what you will - if you have headroom, go for it. If you’re barely holding 60 at your chose resolution, it may be worth keeping things to a minimum.

The Why

None of the major texture packs for FO3/NV cover every texture in the game.

Few have an ideal texture even for every item they cover.

This guide exists, in simple overwrite order (with a couple of basic exceptions) to make it easy to get (subjectively) improved textures.

There is nothing wrong with vanilla textures, or the vanilla art style. But if you’re like me, sometimes you may get bored and refreshing the look of the game can add more interest.

Yes, I know I can be overly verbose. Deal with it. Read every paragraph and every line therein if you want a successful install process.

Follow this flipping awesome performance guide first to get the most out of TTW and NV performance and stability.

The What

Don't think of this as a cohesive guide, more of a list to draw from - it will assume some basic knowledge of overwrite order in MO2 and how to hide files.

While it was written with TTW in mind, it will also work just fine on vanilla New Vegas - you can simply skip the NMC pack combination process and proceed as normal (skipping the FO3 version of NMC entirely). Most of the remaining FO3 texture mods will still apply to New Vegas in some capacity.

For generating LOD - I don't generate terrain LOD, only object LOD. The included terrain LOD for these textures, in overwrite order, should work fine. Always use the latest beta for xLODGen, not the FNVLODGen available on the Nexus. That’s an older version and has a number of issues.

Since NMC/Ojo's landscape textures are being completely overwritten, DO NOT USE any NMC/Ojo-focused LOD files when generating LOD. You will end up with a funky looking game.

Instructions for LOD generation can be found here.

It ends up with what *I* consider to be the best looking, leaving behind a lot of the less ideal textures in the packs.

This is based on *my* system capabilities, and based on you having completely and accurately followed either TBOT or WSG guides (for New Vegas, follow the Viva New Vegas guide), as they get you to where you need to be in terms of stability and memory updates. Anything you have done in addition to those guides is an uncontrolled factor, and may have unforseen consequences.

Generally speaking, it should work on many less capable systems as well. At 1080p, assuming you are using dxvk (it has a higher VRAM overhead), you should be fine with a 4gb GPU. When pushing into 4k, again assuming dxvk, you're going to see this configuration demand 10-11gb of VRAM. Plan accordingly, and use reduced sizes of the texture packs when possible.

You will need to enable bModifyDirectXBehavior in NVTF to use a texture list of this size. If you want to preserve functionality, you will also need either OneTweak (potential FPS loss) or dxvk (potential FPS gain) or both (generally, still a potential gain).

The following lines need to be set in NVTF:

[Main] bModifyDirectXBehavior=1

[DirectX] bUseDefaultPoolForTextures=1

These are presented in overwrite order on the MO2 left pane. ESPs can be ordered logically (though they are rare here).

Overwrite order is a bit more of a pain in Vortex. If you use it, you are on your own but if you are familiar with its UI and systems, you should get a working result.

This doesn't really cover weapon retextures, which are a definitely rabbit hole currently. I do not recommend any WRP variants until a fully patched up TTW version is made. There are just too many issues currently. WTH is fine. Weapon Enhancement Project from Fallout 3 can be used for some weapons, but others will have mesh issues. Since it's a Fallout 3 pack, you will get odd visuals when attached mods to weapons that it retextures (mods obviously didn't exist in FO3).

For clothing and armor, I use the Charge's upscaled 2x packs. Their usefulness is debateable as with all AI upscales, but I think they help a bit. You can also use the creatures a la carte pack if you want as well from Charges, but I have seen that use up massive tons of memory.

Note - if you came here from Audixas/The Many’s excellent Wasteland Survival Guide, please remember that this texture guide is wholly independent. It is not recommended by WSG, it is offered by WSG. Any issues should not (and I say this in the strongest terms) be placed upon them. Nor should troubleshooting of this list be tasked to them - this is an entirely independent entity and is not their responsibility to assist with or update.

Now with 100% more video!

Thanks to the amazing Cloudisms there is now a full video installation guide.

I can’t say enough about how awesome Cloudisms is for putting that together - the time investment astonishes me. It has my full endorsement as a video version of this guide.

Any updates I make not reflected in the video will henceforth be clearly noted.