Elleh

If you decide to keep it, I would suggest adding some gold trim elsewhere on the armor as acidzebra mentioned. Maybe on the belt or on the edges of the plates over the midsection? I think that would balance it out and add a more uniform look. Or perhaps tone it down - but that's more personal taste. Clean gold is very bright and shinyshiny, but it might look nice if it were a bit grungy. Otherwise, it's looking good. :)

Hmm, perhaps this is the infamous "gray face bug"? Although your NPC's face does not look gray, exactly..... Try exporting the face gen data from the Creation Kit: select your actor in the object window and then hit CTRL+F4, and select "yes" to confirm. Hopefully that will fix it. I'm afraid I don't know what else it might be...

Well, okay. I tried using the rough outline you gave me, kromey. The closest I got was...... teleporting and resurrecting myself. Ha! I was mostly excited that I could get it to do anything at all. As I said, I'm pretty clueless with this stuff. How do I go about making this script (taken directly from the Creation Kit wiki), when attacted to my NPC instead of a Magic Effect, teleport said NPC back to his holding cell rather than to the player? I'm currently just using the COCMarkerHeading as my marker. Scriptname SummonDremoraThrallScript extends activemagiceffect {Summons Dremora Thrall in front of player.} Actor Property DremoraThrallRef Auto ; An ObjectReference will also work with the summon function Event OnEffectStart(Actor akTarget, Actor akCaster) Summon(akCaster, DremoraThrallRef) EndEvent ; GetFormFromFile below to enable 'Global' flag Function Summon(ObjectReference akSummoner = None, ObjectReference akSummon = None, Float afDistance = 150.0, Float afZOffset = 0.0, ObjectReference arPortal = None, Int aiStage = 0) Global While aiStage < 6 aiStage += 1 If aiStage == 1 ; Shroud summon with portal arPortal = akSummon.PlaceAtMe(Game.GetFormFromFile(0x0007CD55, "Skyrim.ESM")) ; SummonTargetFXActivator disables and deletes itself shortly after stage 5 ElseIf aiStage == 2 ; Disable Summon akSummon.Disable() ElseIf aiStage == 3 ; Move portal in front of summoner arPortal.MoveTo(akSummoner, Math.Sin(akSummoner.GetAngleZ()) * afDistance, Math.Cos(akSummoner.GetAngleZ()) * afDistance, afZOffset) ElseIf aiStage == 4 ; Move summon to portal akSummon.MoveTo(arPortal) ElseIf aiStage == 5 ; Enable summon as the portal dissipates akSummon.Enable() EndIf Utility.Wait(0.6) EndWhile EndFunction It could be even simpler than that. I don't need an effect when he gets moved to the marker (since I won't see it), only when he disappears from the spot where he died. I first just tried using MoveTo without any of that fancy portal business. But as I mentioned, it resulted in me being teleported to his holding cell rather than his corpse. (As punishment for murdering my faithful follower I suppose?) So what would a really simple teleport script for that look like? Barring the effects? I just. Guh. My head hurts......

Thanks a ton, kromey! I'm going to take this info and poke around at it a bit to see if I can get it working. I'd most definitely like to use the shinyshiny teleport spell in reverse, considering it allready looks the way I want it to. And the Utility.Wait is a good idea too! Hadn't thought of that! I'll come back to report my success (or failure. But one must remain optimistic!).

Disclaimer: I am really, really clueless when It comes to scripting. So you might have to talk slowly. Very sorry for being a nusiance. ^^; I've made a custom follower, and have successfully used the example script from the creationkit.com to teleport him from his holding cell to myself. Works a charm - shiny visuals and all. What I want to do now is - upon his death - teleport his corpse back to his holding cell, and then resurrect him with his current inventory intact, so that he may be summoned again along with anything I might have given him to carry. I could just mark him as essential, or some such.... but that wouldn't be any fun. I saw this basic , and it seems pretty simple. It could be made to work with an NPC, not the player right? And I'm supposing I could just make a markerREF back in his cell for him to teleport to? But how do I make the event trigger on his death, and then resurrect him only after he has teleported? It seems like it should be pretty simple, but I am quite hopeless at scripting. I followed the Creation Kit tutorials, but...... didn't learn much from them. Sadly. Any help would be much appreciated. Edit: Huh. Misspelled the topic. My life.... OTL

Hi Carimya! To answer your question - you can change the texture path with nifskope very easily. Just look under NiTriShape > BSLightingShaderProperty > BSShaderTextureSet in the Block List window, and chose your textures in the Block Details window. Just remember to rename your mesh to match your standalone. Hope that helps!

@ResolveThatChord Well I dunno what version of PS you're using, but in CS5 in the brush panel make sure "shape dynamics" is checked and then set "Angle Jitter" to 0% and "Control ->Direction". I'm using a tablet, but it works with a mouse just fine. The brush will also follow the direction of a path. Screen shot below if you need it! @Ghogiel Thank you. I'm going to try that when I get home - will report back. @tjakal Yeah, that's the sort of thing I've been seeing. I suppose I just thought "normal map" and "bump map" could be used interchangeably... now I know better. ;^_^ It looks like Mudbox has a free student license - oh yes! I've always wanted to try something like that! Blender has a sculpting mode, but I've never really had much luck with it.

That I did not know! I was hoping to just create some optical illusions with the diffuse map and then make a normal map directly from that, but as I've been playing around I'm not getting the results I want. Even though I loathe the thought of editing the mesh some more (took forever, OMG. I'm learning as I go...) I might add a subsurf modifier a get that detail in there. Thank you! I'm working in photoshop. The stitches are just a simple custom brush: a narrow oval tilted on its side with very wide spacing. Add a subtle drop shadow for dimension, and voila! Stitches! It also helps that I'm working on a (ridiculously) large scale and then shrinking and sharpening for something useable in-game. Wow, I've never been on TESA before. I'm such a modding n00b. I'll check it out. Thanks again.

Heh. I hope somebody finds this in the deluge of posts after the release of the CK. Anywho... Propress report! And more questions! I've managed to finish my mesh, and I've begun texturing. I decided that it would be a good idea to test the mesh out in-game, though, so I went ahead and gave it a shot. I used 3ds Max to assign bone weights and export a nif (torso only, for now), used nifscope to tweek properties, yada yada yada.... It works! Mostly. I'm getting all kinds of crazy, blocky, jagged shadows all over the place. What is that? Can I do something about it? Here's what I mean (the textures - ignore them. I only have a half-finished difuse map at this point): http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/WIPcrazyshadows-1.jpg It's sunny mid-morning in Whiterun. That definately does not look right. I can also see some things I'd like to change on the mesh itself. Le sigh. Never ending. @ResoveThatChord: Thanks for the encouragement! The torso portion of my armor is around 5k triangles. It seems fine. I think I'll keep my armor as seperate pieces though, just for consistency. But maybe not - I don't really see myself mixing this set with anything else. It'd probubly look silly XD. Wow, that is a pretty nice looking normal map. I've heard about baking normal maps from high-poly versions, but I've never tried it. I't's probubly better that just sort-of 'faking it' in photoshop.

Great! I got my mesh into Max as an OBJ, no problem. I love it when things actually work... I saw Cherry's tutorial. I'll definately try out that file. I suppose hand-painting could still be an option? But that sounds a little scary, so maybe not... Thanks!

Hi there. Hopefully these questions are relatively simple... I'm working on a custom set of rogue armor, and I'm a bit new to the process. The mesh is coming along nicely, but before I get too far I want to make sure I understand everything correctly. First question... the "boots" are rather tall. I've noticed that most (all?) boot models in Skyrim do not extend past the knee. If mine end mid-thigh will I have any problems on down the line? Like... with attaching the skeleton, and so forth? (I have never attempted that portion before, incidentally. So that'll be interesting....) At this point I could probably attach things to the "torso" part of the armor without making a mess, but I'd rather not have to for purely aesthetic reasons. Here's what I have WIP http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/roguearmor_wip.jpg Also, I read that the acceptable poly count for armor is 15k or less. (Don't laugh at me, for this... >.> ) Is that for.... the entire set of armor? Or for each piece of the armor set? Like... under 15k for the torso, ect. What I have looks comparable to vanilla armor, but I'm uncertain. Finally, (and I really should have thought about this before I even began...) I've been working on this thing in Blender 2.6. I sort of... transferred the mesh over to Blender after becoming frustrated with 3dsmax (I used the Max nif importer/exporter). What would be the best way to get my mesh into either Max or Blender 2.49 so I can do the final parts of the process? Like copying weights, and such? Or am I screwed? Or is there a nif exporter for Blender 2.6 that’s been hiding from me? Noobish questions, but I appreciate the help. Thanks in advance :)

Oh you haven't seen the last of me, I'm sure. XD I'm working very slowly, so it may be a bit before I formulate more questions. I do have gmax up and running, and eshme's tools are working nicely. I've yet to try anything with the bones but.... little bits at a time. Seconded! I think I like it here. :) Ah. I'm babbling. Stop that, me. Work now!

I will definitely give that a shot. The whole reason I've used blender thus far is that it's free. I'm not comfortable shelling out money for a program that I may or may not end up using frequently. And you've been immensely helpful, really. I truly appreciate your patience. Up until this point, I've tried teach myself and make sense out of the massive amorphous cloud of info called the internets. The major frustration of being a newb is not knowing how to ask the question in the first place, rendering search engines rather useless. (Heh. Bing actually had to check to make sure I wasn't a robot last night. Apparently I was doing an abnormal amount of searching.... gave me a chuckle.) Anyway now that I've got a direction to go on, I'm off to fiddle some more. Hopefully I'll be able to come back with something a little closer to completion. Thanks again!

You are awesome amycus! Sorry, I somehow I missed the blender forum. I'll definitely start lurking around there as well. No, I had absolutely no idea that the game engine rendered the body for robes. That makes my life considerably easier. So I can just, say.... import the robe mesh and then use the body mesh as a reference to get things lined up right, then delete the body mesh all together? The robe mesh actually came with hands and feet, though. And to answer your question about how I got the mesh into Blender: I exported the files with DAtool, then used Tazpn's DAO tool to convert the .MMH file into .3ds, which Blender can import.... and I have this sinking feeling that this is bad, somehow. I should start taking on simpler projects. I actually fiddled with that before I read your post. I'm really happy to know I'm on the right track. I don't think I have the skeleton, actually - or at least, not a version that blender can handle. I haven't looked into it extensively yet, so I can't make any intelligent query's at the moment. (Like I've done so far... dripping sarcasm.) I think my "flipped textures" has something to do with importing the .3ds file. The mesh doesn't show up anywhere near the origin and isn't oriented on the z axis - I have to reorient it myself. I experimented a bit to see what would happen if I imported a mesh without making any modifications and then applying the unaltered texture.... and it was still weird. But as I mentioned, a bit of cut-n-paste/shifting things around in photoshop seems to be a way to work around this, although a little tedious. But I'll deal. Would you really look at the import/export script? That would make me unbearably happy. It's been a bear trying to find other methods... especially when all the tutorials say "using NewByPower's script so on so on". I'd like to use it, but... well. And I'd like to note that I was using blender 2.49b with the script as suggested. I really just think it's an operator error. I'll work on just getting my robe mesh all figured out. I think I need to take a really extensive look at the toolset before I start asking about how to get things working in the game. I've really only used it to do headmorphs. Thank you again. That was immensely helpful!

First of all - greetings Nexus Forums! I know a plea for help isn't much of an introduction, but hopefully I'll be forgiven. I'm a lurker. I lurk. I've done my homework to the best of my ability before posting, but I have a feeling I'm just being incredibly dense. I hope a wonderful person could hold my hand a bit... I'm attempting to make a set of custom mage robes based on the lovely bit of promo art for the mage origin. I've been trying to follow this mesh and texture combining tutorial. I've edited my meshes* and combined each set of DDS files, and now I need to assign the meshes to the texture files. I select the individual mesh I want, switch to UV/Image editor, load my combined d.dds file, and resize/translate the mesh to fit over the portion of texture I need. What I don't understand is how to match up the parts of my mesh to the proper parts of texture (now that I've hacked the original hf_arm_nuda mesh to bits). Here's what I'm looking at: http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/blender_screencap-1.jpg . I feel as though there's a large general concept I'm missing. Do I actually need to reorganize my textures in photoshop somehow? Or is there an issue with how I'm unwrapping the mesh? Also, there's an odd bit of mesh extending to the upper-left-hand hand corner in the UV editor that looks suspiciously like an error, human or otherwise. http://i1107.photobucket.com/albums/h383/EllehBella/blender_screencap2.jpg Or not. I don't know. *I actually want to totally overhaul the robe and create my own texture. I've altered it so much at this point that the original texture wouldn't really look right. The body portion is rather important though, I really want to keep the original nude texture. A few other questions while I'm here: hf_rob_appa_0 has no specular map? When I extract the files using DAtool, there is no 0s.dds file saved. Should I be concerned? I cannot seem to get NewByPower's Blender Import/Export script to work. (I'm not sure if I installed it improperly or if I simply am using it wrong. At any rate...) Is there any other way to do a bonewieghtcopy? (When I get to that point. If I get to that point.) Thanks in advance! I know I'm being especially newbish, but this is all so foreign to me. I'm a 2D girl. :) Eureka! I had some stray quads in there still. Also, I've been playing around with the DDS files in photoshop. Looks like that's the way to go. I'm a bit confused as to why the texture is flipped and rotated, though. Don't you just love it when n00bs answer their own questions? I'm still still curious about how to do boneweights though....