FAQ

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, many coming from the Official Bethesda GECK Forums.

For questions with answers that are already present on the Wiki, link to the existing page. Do not answer it again here.
Questions with short answers should be answered here on this page.
Questions with new in-depth answers should have their own page created, and then the question on this page should link to the answer page (see examples below).

General Modding Questions

Many general, though some Oblivion specific, tutorials for Modeling can be found here, including links to the tools themselves.
Here are the Oblivion CS Wiki Texturing Portal and Texturing Tutorials.
A texturing tutorial of paticular interest to Fallout is this Hard Surface Texture Painting tutorial which essentially explains how to give your textures that old, weathered and beat up look.

The GECK must be installed in the correct Fallout 3 directory, see the GECK Setup Tutorial for details.

When the GECK first starts, it doesn't load any information. You need to load Fallout3.esm from the main menu to access those cells. See Creating Your Plugin.

These files are packed in BSA archives. See BSA Files for how to extract and use them.

Changing the EditorID of an item will usually prompt you to ask if you want to create a new form. See the Object Window page for details.

Effects like "+10 to Sneak" on armor are called Object Effects and are located under Game Effects. Notice many have the prefix Ench meaning Enchantment.
You can create a new Effect, giving it an identifiable Editor ID and name. Then select the type: either Apparel for armor or Weapon. Right-click in the Effects list on the right which will bring up a dialog box with a list of available effects. Range is either Self for Apparel or Touch for Weapon. Area is self evident. Duration 0 is used for apparel for a constant effect.
To apply the effect to the armor/weapon, double click on the item and select the effect's Editor ID from the Object Effect dropdown menu.

These cells are in categories beneath the Interiors category in the Cell View World Space dropdown menu.
Megaton has it's own world space called MegatonWorld, while Canterbury Commons is located in the Wasteland world space.
Many nondescript wasteland cells do not have specific names, and can only be found using a grid (reference?).

You can't lock them in place, but you can select certain object types to be not visible/selectable in the View > Show/Hide Window.
You can also toggle whether items are selectable or visible: select the items either in the Render Window or in the Cell View window (you can also use the Filter for this), then with the Render Window active, click "1" once to make your selection not selectable and twice for not visible. You can revert this by selecting the items in light blue in the Cell View window.

Make sure the placed door is a persistent reference, and giving it an identifiable Reference ID can make this easier.
In the Linked Ref tab of the control panel, you can select the door via dropdown menus (first the cell, then the door), or by clicking the Select Reference in Render Window button and then double clicking on the door with the red cross hair.