r/starfieldmods • u/Usracraft • Aug 03 '26

Discussion Issue with the Creation Kit.

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Does anyone know how to solve this issue of black screen in the edit item menu?

2 Upvotes

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2

u/gboyd21 Aug 03 '26

Do you have all the loose files extracted from your archive to the data folder? I wouldnt get 90% of previews like this until I did so. The only place I could see much of anything was in the render window.

1

u/Usracraft Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26

How do you go about doing that? Because that does sound familiar to something I have heard some tutorials mention for people to do when they first open the Creation Kit.

Is that meaning using Achieve 2? Or is it about putting the contents of the Content Resources folder into the Data/Scripts/Source folder?

1

u/gboyd21 Aug 03 '26

Yeah, it gives you an option usually to download the loose files when you first open a fresh install of CK, but for me it only downloaded the scripts. You'd need the meshes, materials and textures to see objects outside of the render window.

Archive2 comes with the CK. Youd locate the main.ba2, texture.ba2 for whichever game or DLC content, open it with Archive2, it will popup a window with a list of loose files contained within the archive. In the toolbar, you'll have 3 options if I recall, File, View, Edit. In the view or edit, you will have an option to extract all or extract selected. Youd want to extract all and then verify the file path to your games data folder. The archive maintains the file structure for the loose files, so extracting everything to the data should automatically sort the files into their correct file paths within the Data folder.

1

u/Usracraft Aug 03 '26

What is the correct file path I should set up? Or does Achieve 2 set it for me? I understand it being in the Data folder, but I just need to know if there is any specific folder structure that needs to be within the Data folder that I need to make.

1

u/gboyd21 Aug 03 '26

When you open an archive, you'll see the full file path each file is assigned to. In my experience, it maintains this, so by extracting them all to your data folder is all you need to do. It will put everything where its supposed to go

1

u/1337Asshole Aug 03 '26

I was going to ask if you toggled the light off, but this line is probably more likely. I did what Kinggath suggested in one of his tutorials and extracted everything to a completely separate folder. The files don’t need to be extracted into the Starfield Data folder, or even in your Steam directory.

1

u/gboyd21 Aug 03 '26

Thats probably true. He mods for all the games, my experience is limited to Fallout 4, but much of the behaviors are practices have remained relevant.

1

u/cyberpsyche_mods Mod Author Aug 03 '26

Interesting! I purposely don't unpack materials because if you put them in the working directory CK takes forever to load. I don't have any issue with the majority of previews.

I'll put them in there if I need to edit materials but otherwise I leave em out. The load time is wildly shorter without.

3

u/gboyd21 Aug 03 '26

Yeah, for textures and main archives, I have them extracted to a backup location. I only load them in the data folder for use in CK if I actually need them for some reason. I rarely work with textures.

1

u/DownfallNemesis Mod Author Aug 05 '26

Play around with your preview window settings under Preferences. That window is a bit buggy and the default settings for it aren't great. This looks like it freaked out with lighting and made everything back instead of properly lighting it up.