Fluffy Khajiit Project

[Ashnur]

Hello everybody! Welcome to the Fluffy Khajjit Project thread!

(it's more a "dev blog"/"big learning thread" than anything else by the way, but the goal is still to make a full mod here^^)

 

At the bottom of this first message you have now a changelog, roadmap, and a list of persons that helped/contributed to this project.

Another important point, I'll try to edit this first post as often as possible to reflect adjustments on the process.

LATEST UPDATE : 02/25 (see at bottom of this message or on post #71)

(02/21 : 1k view! Thanks everybody!)

VIDEO SHOWCASE HERE (also Here and Here^^)

I published a photoset to show you the progress : HERE.

First, I'm french and don't speak english very well, so please excuse my mistakes! :confused:

I think it's time to start a "real" message instead of polluting others mod threads ^^

Also I'm not sure if I post this in the right section, but since I'm looking for advices and hints, I think it's not totally out of place. :wink:

Foreword :

I called it "Fluffy Khajiit Project", but in fact it's a "Fluffy Mixed-Race Project" since I prefer Ohmes-Rhat and Dagi-Raht looks than full Khajiit. But anyway, if you want to do the same thing for Khajiit, this thread is almost a guide to the method I'll be using with the help of very nice people!

Disclaimer : This project is for now only of personnal use, and I'll discuss later with authors of mods I based my work on for an eventual release. I've contacted these mod authors with the help of Lefftounge, and for now one (MONSTERaider) is ok with this project. Finger crossed for others! (just Grimoa for now, but I'm pretty sure I'll need works from other great modders^^) This mod is no longer a "personnal project only" at all. I contacted mod authors and for now most are ok. More details on Credits part at the bottom of this post.

For examples of how it looks like, there's pictures on my profile, and here's a link to the Fluffy Khajiit Project on my Flickr.

It began almost as a joke with some messages in the "shell texturing tutorial" message board, and now it has evolved quite nicely.

Lefttounge said :"Can I make NPC's fuzzy? :/

I sure would like to be a fuzzy insane high elf."

I answered him "yes" and that was the beginning^^

So here's the plan : make a fluffy Khajiit/Ohmes-Rat/Dagi-Raht with some tricks.

The base for this "mod" is the "shell texturing tutorial" as I mentionned above. The "fusafusa project" is also very helpfull.

I decided to base my fluffy project on the "feminine Khajiit" textures (verrrry cool textures btw).

And also, since I prefer half-Khajiit I began my work with the "Dagi-Raht reborn" race mod.

So how will it work?

We have two options :

- make a full custom race

OR

- make an outfit with a fake/transparent body parts

These two options are the only possible, because for the fur to be in 3D, we need several shells/extrusions of the base mesh, in our case the body/feet/hands/head/tail/ears.

Since I don't know how to create a custom race, I began to work with the second option. Later, I'll maybe adapt it to create my own races variations... but it's too soon for now^^

(EDIT : the first option will be the solution, because to make the fluffyness work on head... to make it short let's say it's working with custom head, but not without it^^)

(EDIT 2 : it's not that simple at all! there's some tricks to make it work for the head part like a beard, as in the very good Elin "Ears'n Tails mod" that I use btw. But it'll depend on several things : like the base head mesh, the compatibility with ECE or Racemenu...)

The main problems I see for now are for the feets. Many mods use high heels, with specific feets ("Luxury collection" use a specific one for example). So to have fluffy feets with heels, I have to create differents fluffy feet types... and modify the shoes using it to use the correct fluffy one?! That's a real pain in the ***! Maybe someone have a better idea here, but I don't see other options. Maybe there's a way to make the heels or the body mod I'm doing to choose correctly the fluffy feets by itself???

(EDIT : Non-sense! if this mod is placed as the bottom of your load order -I mean after the mods using specific feets- there'll be no issue, since the non-fluffy high heel feet versions will be overwritten, but it also means you can't have both at the same time fluffy/non-fluffy high heels... hummm there's maybe a solution here by duplicating mods... I'll think about it later^^)

(Edit 2 : main problem are not about feet, but head part. see previous point ^^)

For the main work, here's the method I use :

- FIRST I assume that you know how to create a mod with CK. (nothing hard at all here, it's like copy-paste something already existing, and saving with the names of your choice) The goal here is to have a clean mod to work with. (if you have question about it, just ask in comments, I'll gladly explain as far as my knowledge of CK is for now^^)

- I take the body part I want to be fluffy from Bodyslide base shapes directory (UNP special body and feets for now, the tail is a base skyrim shape, later : hands -if I choose UNP hands, otherwise it'll be from the skyrim-meshes.bsa- and head will be from the mod I'll choose to work with^^)

- In 3dS Max I make the shells this way :

I clone the base mesh, then convert it to an editable mesh. Then I use the shell modifier, 0,1 extra step, with edge+inner face selection checked. Then convert it again to editable mesh, select the "face selection" option, this way edges and inner faces are already selected, then delete it. Now I have a shell like a sheet upon the base mesh. Sometimes (feet for example), the extrusion won't work right away. You'll have to manually edit vertices positions to respect the shell output. (edges can also appear out of nowhere, so you have to delete it)

When you are satisfied with your base shell, clone it again and repeat the process 4 more times to have 5 shells. In my case, after the first shell-mesh corrections, I don't have any issue with the shell modifier.

Then, like for any outfit, skin wrap + BDismemberskin Modifier on each shell with the right body parts/mesh selection. (EDIT : in fact BDismemberskin Modifier is not needed here. Because you'll copy it from somewhere else.)

Now we can finally export the Nif!

(EDIT : for the head, since it doesn't work at all like other body parts, for now take a look on posts 30 to 35)

(EDIT : for hands and feets you can have an issue -in my case hands were a real pain, with messy edges and fingers like "broken", impossible to work with it in outfit studio and so on-, you have to untick/tick again an option in the skin modifier advanced option on the part you're working with : "always deform". this way, it'll correct the problems. do it on your base body part mesh before cloning it to make a shell.)

- now in Nifskope, we need to edit the Nif datas :

I use the preset of BSLightningShaderProperty from fusafusa project (I took the sabercat^^) and replace mines on each shell with it. I change the specular value to 0, because It doesn't fit my fur very well (maybe 0.1? I'm not sure here^^).

Each shell should have a NiAlphaProperty (if not, add it) with a value from 40 to 120 (steps of 20). 40 for the closest layer to the body, 120 for the farthest. I also add a duplicate base body with transparency set to 255 (I called it "shellbase"), because without it I have strange transparency problems on the main body (nothing wrong on feet or tail). Now we need to place the textures for each shell. So in ShaderTextureSet, I remove everything, and I set the diffuse (1st one) to my shell texture. if you want "denser" fur, do not check the "enable blending" box in NiAlphaProperty flags. Last step, I'll make the fur layers/shells match the hair color, so : in BSLightingProprety choose the shader type (1st entry) to Hair Tint, then in Shader Flags 1 : check the Hair Soft Lighting option on. End of NifSkope phase 1! :smile:

- then we can proceed to shell texturing (even better : you can do if before^^) :

In Gimp, I open my main texture (for example the feminine khajiit body texture), and I use a filter : Noise -> RGB Noise. All colors set to 0 and Alpha to max. This way, we will have a kind of transparency randomly (but equally distributed^^) added everywhere. I repeat the process several times, until I have a quite transparent texture. Save it to dds format DTX5. This will be our fur! The idea here is to have noise AND transparency. With different base textures there are other options. But since for the base body the resolution is quite high, it's a simple way to have something really nice here! After this base edit, you'll come back here to edit yur textures for different body parts, and will edit it to match the textures/meshes it's connected. It'll be time for some creative work with different brushes, transparency and so on! :smile:

(EDIT : The hard part here, is to make a soft transition with no gaps/seams between the different textures/body parts. You'll probably have to edit the base texture if it comes from different sources.)

- time to create the "real" outfit, thanks to sliders in Bodyslide Outfit studio : (THIS PART IS ONLY NEEDED FOR MESHES THAT NEEDS SLIDERS! I mean nifs files like XXX_0 and XXX_1. For example, the head don't have this problem... but many others!)

In Outfit Studio create a new project with UUNP Body Special as reference (in my case) and the outfit you have made. Conform the sliders, remove the base body from the outfit, load again the correct reference. Conform again, then save. Select all parts of the outfit (without the body!), then right-click and "copy weight". It's almost the same process as described here : conversion tutorial. Depending on how you are working and your configuration (Mod Organizer or not for example^^), the shapedata and slidersets may be in different places. Gather these babies under your mod folder with correct hierarchy and directories. Now open Bodyslide, and convert your outfit. The result will be three files as usual : XXX_0.nif, XXX_1.nif, XXX.tri. Copy these files back in your mod directory. Done for this part!

- we're back in NifSkope to see the result, tweak parameters, and edit a bit more the texture in Gimp if needed. NifSkope will update the texture each time you save it in Gimp. I'm not good at it I have to admit, but the result is for now quite good on my opinion! :smile:

Now the problem I had/still have (^^) : during the shell extrusion, the mesh will sometime be separated in several parts, because the base one is often made of several parts. The solution I have found, is to convert the 1st clone of the base mesh (our 1st shell before the extrusion aka applying the Shell Modifier) into an editable poly, then select all vertices and Wield these boyzs, and only after that convert it to an editable mesh. Sometimes it doesn't work, I don't know why. If holes are still created during the process : edge selection, then bridge tool, to fill the gaps progressively (long process :/).

I have a seam on the hips/buttocks of my main body for now, but I'm quite sure it's because of this extrusion problem. I didn't know that before, just discovered it while doing the Fluffy Tail. It was so obvious (the tail was made of two separate parts : up/down split in the middle horinzontaly^^).

Now I need to do the hands and the head. For the hands I'm not very confident for several reasons.

First the Dagi-Raht use the argonian hands. It looks quite good on this race I have to admit, but I think that classic base hands will be better in my case, because textures from Feminine Khajiit will stick better (I'm maybe wrong here), and moreover gloves from mods will also have more chances to fit better with real uunp hands. I have to admit that I'm a little affraid on this part, because when I tried to do some gloves a few days ago It was horrible. Skeletons problems, impossible to fit the thing correctly, seams with the body... a nightmare! :/

For the head, I haven't even try to modify one so it'll be a discovery, but head doesn't have weight slider, so I'll be more simple. The main problem here will be to have a fur that doesn't mess the hairs! :wink:

EDIT : Working on the head is much more complex than I first though... No sliders 0/1, but instead several TRI files that contains a s***-ton of OBJ files to describe how the base mesh will morph with sliders like Jaw, Expressions, Phonems and so on. Once again take a look at posts 30 to 35.

EDIT : MAJOR IDEA! If, there's a way to bypass some textures/meshes in-game depending on heights.... it would be so cool! :smile:

(even if I don't think it's possible... it's a shame(!!) because otherwise, it would mean that armors/clothes parts not covering furs would let furs be seen on these "empty" parts^^)

I made this post for several reasons : to see if somebody is interested, and more important to see if experienced modders have some advices on my project/method. Because, since I just began learning modding -almost with this mod in fact-, I'm not sure at all the method I use is the good way of doing this...

Phewww that was long!

Thanks for reading it, and have fun!

Roadmap / Things to do :

- fix the Grimoa's feet link to the body (mesh and texture), and maybe change how these feet meshes are made (because its separated left/right...)

- make some fluffy ears! (almost all the body is fluffy now, so why not cat ears! ^_^) (btw there's some animated cat ears here and there... maybe ..maybe...^^ DONE

(- and why not some cat mustache/whiskers? since we already have tail and ears... but with HDT it would be so much better! and for that, I'll need some serious time if i decide to do it!)

-> whiskers can easily be found on nexus

- work on the head now that we have a system to have layers of fur on it (a earless human base head will be the base, thanks to NightroModzz and Blazze69).

- surely a heavy work on the neck part to have a nice and smooth interraction with the body fur.

-> for now, to release this mod quickly, I think I'll first make only a neck.

- fix the seams still here and there (the legs inner face for example still have a "big" one)

- MAKE THE DAMN WHOLE THING WORK TOGETHER NICELY! è_é

- correct everything to have a nice and logic structure/hierarchy (I tend to put files everywhere while working... bad habit! :/ )

...and then...

- make a clean directory mod with dependencies to other mods

- convert all of this to a custom race... or not... depending of choices I'll make^^

- release the mod! :smile:

...and maybe...

- if enough motivation, some more feet variations for High Heel system

- an animation pack (just a repack, or even a fully detailed list... I don't know how and don't have time to make animations on top of this^^)

- (more probably) a sound/voice pack to make the walking cat more real. Because it's not just about visuals! Our ears also needs to be full of fluffy sounds, don't you think?

Changelog :

02/09 : I have the agreement from MONSTERaider, author of Feminine Khajiit Texture mod to use his work on this project. Coool! Thanks a lot!

02/10 : Fur meshes on head are now working ingame AND in racemenu! (thanks Blazze69!). Still need a lot of work, but the base concept for this body part is now alive!

02/10 : Color on body/feet/hands/tail now matches hair color in racemenu! :smile:

02/15 : Agreement from PsychoMachina to use his HDT ears!! Yeaaah!!! :smile: (and btw Ears are done^^)

(PsychoMachina will maybe use what I have done here later on a future release btw, so I strongly engage you to look at his cool work!)

02/19 : Hands with working sliders (UUNP-unp version)

02/20 : Feet (UUNP) working with fur and sliders.

02/20 : Beta testing with the help of lefttounge and madmatt986 has begin. Thanks to them! :smile:

02/21 : Racemenu sliders for the Ears are now working! So now ECE is not required! Happyness for Racemenu lovers! :wink:

02/21 : I made a fur for the neck. Not perfect at all, but with a bit of texture tweak it'll be nice. It'll be loaded with the aditionnal hairs slider (with ears).

02/21 : I contacted QuinnWinters, author of Whiskers mod here on nexus, but he's not here since a long time, I think you'll have to use his mod. (except if I make something similar of course^^)

02/23 : QuinnWinters give me his agreement to use his Whiskers. Thanks a lot! :smile:

02/25 : v1.0 Released! LINK

Tools used :

- Meshes edit/work -> 3D editing software : 3DS Max (Blender would work also perfectly, but I have issues importing/exporting with it, and its UI is not my cup of tea at all^^)

- Work on textures -> 2D photo editing software : Gimp (Photoshop is of course also perfect, instructions for it are given in the Shell Texturing Tutorial)

- Nif import/export plugins for the 3D soft (3DS Max in my case)

- NifSkope

- a BSA Extractor (BSA Browser in my case. Not required, but very helpfull to take a look at some awesome mods, textures, meshes...)

Thanks a lot to :

- lefftounge for his support since day one! (without him, nothing of this would'nt even have been real!)

- Blazze69 for his explanations on how to make the fur work for the head!

- NightroModzz for his help and advices!

- MONSTERaider for his agreement to use his great texture pack "Feminine Khajiit"

- PsychoMachina for ears and Deadzone45 for adding HDT effect on it

- QuinnWinters for his very nice Whiskers

(I also hope to give a big thank to Grimoa soon for his feet variation^^)

And a wonderfull, marvellous, big thank to all the Fluffy Cat lovers of course!

Edited February 25, 2018 by Ashnur

[Ashnur]

While doing the fluffy work on the tail I loose the HDT effect on it... At first I though it was the classic HDT-PE involved, but it wasn't! Few days ago I installed the HDT-SMP pack to have better physics, and I just noticed (after a few hours looking for the problem) that I blindly was looking for a HDT-PE effect! -_-'' It was because the hdt smp pack does have a SMP Tail!

 

So the better looking HDT-SMP fluffy tail will be corrected right away! :wink:

 

By the way, that means a new "problem"... I need to do three versions of this mod because of this : the vanilla version, one for HDT-PE, one with a patch for SMP. :wink:

(but if it's only a tail problem, it's not a big deal at all! :smile: )

 

EDIT : correction made! A nice fluffy SMP tail is born! :wink:

 

Now what is left to do :

- head ("headS" should I say?)

- hands (still not sure if I'll use UNP or argonian ones..)

- feet variations for High Heels

Edited February 6, 2018 by Ashnur

[Ashnur]

BTW I'm just thinking about something...

 

If anybody is interested in making nice animations for a fluffy cat, it would be very interesting I think. Both mods would compliment each other very well! :smile:

 

I already am trying to mix animations from different modders to have a nice cat-like full build, but it's not so easy!

I'm using animations from "castanic pack" (for idles, magic equip/unequip, and hand-to-hand equip/unequip are duplicates of magic ones), "ninja running" (with the tails and the fluffyness it's a must!), sneak moves and idle from "Khajiit cat sprint and sneak"... OH! I forgot to mention that the claws animations are so nice not to use it (on a custom race^^). I used "Vampires fight with claws" to use it.

 

I'll try to make a video of my animation setup. :wink:

 

SO if you have animation skills, or think of some good animations for the concept : I would be very happy to read your recommandations! :smile:

 

EDIT : I made a mistake, it's not "ninja running" animation that I used, but an animation from MAKI follower from GomaPudding. If I make an animation pack, I'll contact him because it's reaallllllly is an awesome work he has done!

Edited February 19, 2018 by Ashnur

[lefttounge]

hey bud, I sent you a pm,

there was an animation that made it so that you could run like a cat---I have that animation still, let me know if you need it and can't find it on the nexus, i'm not sure what happened to it

post your nekad cat pics on the Supporter's side, or put it on tumblr, dude it only costs like a single buck to be a supporter, that way you can post hot stuffs all night long, and people will look to you for that....err.....Anyhoo thanks again, I can't believe this awesome stuff is happening for real to me ;D

Edited February 6, 2018 by lefttounge

[Ashnur]

there was an animation that made it so that you could run like a cat---I have that animation still, let me know if you need it and can't find it on the nexus, i'm not sure what happened to it

 

Is it the running animation from this mod? "Kiss Khajiit cat sprint and sneak"

For now I only use its sneak animations, I'm not sure how to fit the running/dashing animation in a set.... even if it's quite cool I have to admit! :D

 

If it's another animation, yeah I'll be happy to try it! :smile:

 

post your nekad cat pics on the Supporter's side, or put it on tumblr, dude it only costs like a single buck to be a supporter, that way you can post hot stuffs all night long, and people will look to you for that....err.....Anyhoo thanks again, I can't believe this awesome stuff is happening for real to me :laugh:

 

HAHAHA! :smile: you made my night with this^^

 

I'll just post "regulars" pictures on nexus with "under 18 filter on". With nudity checked it'll work I guess. Otherwise on my Flickr : no problem! gnignigni! ^_^

 

Thank you for your advices and suggestions by the way! :smile:

 

Have fun bud!

 

 

EDIT!!! : Btw I made sometimes ago an "Alice Madness return"-like playthrough, with custom voices... It was so much MORE FUN to hear your character saying stuff, singing creepy stuff, laughting like a witch...

I think this whole Khajiit thing deserves that too! :) Like some "Meow" and other "purr" (not sure of the word, in french it's "ronronner".. when a cat is happy and he sounds like "RrrrRRRrrrrRRRrrrr" ^^) when you kill/sneak/run and so on, thanks to the "custom player voices" mod.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Ashnur

[Pfuscher]

Great mod, this already looks dope.

[Ashnur]

Thanks Pfuscher! :smile:

 

Today I'm working on hands, and as I thought : it's a complete nightmare! T_T

 

First problem I absolutely don't know why, but I always end up using a wrong base mesh. I choose the UNP hands from the bodyslide directory then proceed as always, but when trying to make the weight 0/1 versions, the base reference is always different, so it doen't work... T_T

 

If somebody could explain me what I am doing wrong it would be really cool!

 

So after this problem, I used the argonian hands, like the Dagi-Raht use. SO twice the job because the hands are already in two versions 0/1... This time hands as gloves works fine, but when trying to change the base hands of the body in TESVEdit, it doesn't work... meshes are all messed up.... So, I'll stay with gloves for now^^

 

So the gloves version works quite well, despite a seam between body and hands. :/

And another problem just appear : the texture are different between body shells and gloves/hands shells!

-> I think that I'll have to repeat the whole texturing work of the body and repeat EXACTLY the same thing on the hands... phewwww!

 

Anyway, here's two pictures of the hands for now :

 

 

 

As you can see the seam is really boring :/

 

I'm not sure the reason since I worked on base meshes that work together , but it might be because of the extrusion process. THe seam is maybe just because during this extrusion, the meshes go "down" a little, like gloves sliding from hands/fingers. If this is the reason, I'll try to "tweak" it manually by expanding the shells a bit to begin a bit before the base hands meshes. (not sure if I explained it correctly :wink: )

 

For the texture problem, it won't be too hard, I just have to take time^^

 

After some tests, textures from hands and body are matching. not bad. I'll do it properly later, but for now it's cool.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, as requested from lefttounge I'll try to make the fluffy Grimoas feet! :smile:

 

EDIT : Problem solved! Regular UUNP Hands are now working with sliders (see post #57 or update in the 1st message).

Edited February 19, 2018 by Ashnur

[Ashnur]

A quick update!

 

I manage to make the Grimoa feet work. Not simple and still with problems, but it worked! Here's a preview. :smile:

 

Fluffy! SOOOO Fluffy! (textures colors doesn't match, but you understand the idea^^)

 

 

This second picture is just to show the holes in the feet. Textures/seams issues here are not "real" I think, but only because I took the screenshot under the floor^^

 

The texture is different so it'll need to be adjusted, and my main issue is with weight sliders. Weight 0 and 1 worked, but anything between mess the whole thing badly... :/

 

But Lefttounge was right : these feets are greaaaat! :smile:

Edited February 7, 2018 by Ashnur

[Ashnur]

One of my main concern for now is :

 

WHY the hell, changing body colors doesn't change the fur color! grrrrrrr

 

Nothing big again I guess, since wigs works this way, but still annoying! ^^

[lefttounge]

Im going to see if i can talk with grimoas dude