Matth85

Katana didn't turn out exactly as wanted, and I really can't be bothered to re-do parts of it. I might do some color adjustments though. Maybe. Hopefully it's close enough-ish! https://imageshack.com/i/n698k4j

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QinA4qD6hXM Start there, get the basic done.

You do realize there is a difference between a scripter, and a 3d artist, right? You also realize there is a different between making a mod, and a model? You also realize you can learn this yourself, or at least cut modders a break. We don't get paid, you know.

I'll give it a go.

To be fair, those are relatively simple models. 1) A simple .nif edit. 2) A simple greande, with, probably, a few color variations. 3) Got nothing to do with modelling, to be honest. That's all texturing/nifskope 4) I got no idea what that is all about. But you could probably make some sort of soul gem holder which is placed at the belt, and looks like it siphons the power from it. 5) No idea how that is suppose to look, but again - a simple model. But saying "Make X!" does really not work. Either you need to tell the artist "It's going to look kind of like X and with some Y around, then add some Z", and hope the artist either can draw his/her own concept art, or can do it from the description given. If that's not possible, then you need to send over a reference. "I want something like *insertPictureHere*, but maybe with Y part from *Insert other picture here": Best of luck!

You don't use the UVW in the high poly model, so that does not matter. High poly baking simply calculates the details from the surface of the high poly to the low poly, using the low poly UVW map. So that's all good!

An object shinyness is decided by the specularity map. The alpha channel is a grayscaled image. A simple way to make it is to take the difuse map, grayscale it and play with values. Black means it will not shine, white means it will shine. Copy that map over to the alpha channel, and save the texture as a DX5 .dds texture. If you put a flat color in the alpha channel, it will look funny, since it will all whine equaly. If you have no alpha, or save it without alpha channel, it will have a full white alpha channel, making it shine a lot and look like plastic. Other things: 1) Cubemaps. IF the texture set uses a shiny cube map, it gets shinier. 2) Reflection map/Environment. If the texture uses a reflection map (Texture_m/em) it needs to it the model. Black means no reflection, white means full reflection. The reflection is built upon the specularity. 3) .nif setting. In the BSLightingShaderProperty. The Specular Strength, Specular Color and Glossiness decide how much the engine will use your texture maps. Without seeing the texture, I can not really help you any more. Best of luck! Matth

Most 3d softwares are pretty equal. There is only a few things different in all of them, and most of that is stuff you do not need. If you know how to move around, extrude, chamfer, smooth and weld, you can get by with any software.

Purple means no texture is found. Which means 1 out of 2 things: 1) Archive invalidation. 2) The pathing is wrong. 1) Google it. Or use the mod managed and clikc the button. 2) Make sure the texture paths are set to /Textures, and that the texture is visible in nifskope. Otherwise, see if you get any error messages when you try to edit it in the Construction Kit, such as a BSShader error.

All right, a few things, if that's okay! 1) I checked the mesh and noticed that a lot of the polygon are wasted. They are not contributing to the overall silhouette enough to be worth having. 2) You got no normals map or specularity map. 3) The UVW is, well, usable. Some serious stretching going on at certain points. I took the liberty to check out your mesh, and did some 5-minute fixes on it. Just to show how quickly you can get the model up to speed! http://s1.postimg.org/am7cgcgbj/Untitled_1.jpg The polycount ended at 176 polygons. I redid the UVW, all though it was not done very well on my side either. Some stretching around the model itself. The texture is, again, a blue-greyish difuse with some color values, a "frosted glass" looking specularity map. The high poly model was done VERY quick, so the normal map is simply a hard-edged-high-poly version of the low poly one. Note: This is, again, without transparancy. I use Marmorset 2.0 to render, and the transparancy options are... limited. With transparancy, it would look a lot more white/glassy. I hope you can take some of these tips with you!

trust me, texturing become a lot of fun once you get the hang of it! I remember when I learned it. At the start, I would not texture at all, or just give the model to somebody else to texture. Slowly I began to get the hang of texturing, and boy, let me tell you: Besides sculpting, texturing is on the top things I like to do. Hand painting textures, manipulatin photos, playing with values. You can get so many good results in a short amount of time! It's even more fun when you start on the subtle details. The tings the majority never see, but everybody notive it if its not there. as on the model itself: Allthough I can see the overall shape can be a design thing, it just looks very low poly. I am not sure if you utilize a normals map or not, because the light doesn't really flow nicely. It also looks very sharp, to the point you could cut yourself. Though that is me nit-picking! Side note: I'll try my hand at a bottle. Seems like a fun excercise! My take on the bottle. This is without the transparancy it would have in-game! http://postimg.org/image/c7r2t1gcz/ Tip for texture: 1) Don't texture it all white. I chose a slight greyish blue to work with. 2) Don't sweat the details. I spent a good hour on small details you will never, ever, see when this goes transparant. 3) Get some values in it. Some darker spots, some lighter. This is especially important on the specularity, so you get something the eye can see as the light bounce on it. Basically, choose a color slightly greyer than white, and work with values. Then get some good values popping in the specularity. Choose a good cubemap on top of that, and the alpha transparancy will fix the rest! Cheers, Matth

High Elf Battlemage. A character started in Arena, and RPed as a single character until Skyrim. Master of 1 handed weapon, 2 handed weapon, illusion and destruction. In a perfect world the playstyle would be: Charge in/blink in, cast illusion spell to give me an edge, aoe destruction to weaken everything, and clean up with sword. Basically, the enemies would not have a chance to understand what is happening before they are dead. Though with the game limitations: Run in, casting some spells on the way, power attack with weapon. From time to time I just use illusion spells, and watch them kill each other.

Sweet! Then that's one step closer. Now I only need to know if: 1) One can make the charge go from A to B, where the camera follows. The animation itself is easy enough, but I seem to struggle with the movement there. How can I make the animation play to the target, as a projectile? How can I make not go further, or stop halway? hm... For example, if using the Whirlwind Sprint shout effect. How could I make that animation dynamic, instead of fixed? How can I get it to go from A to B, instead of ending after Y. 2) Impact. Is it possible to end the animation in a solid way? The benefit of Charge in Bioshock Infinite and Mass Effect 2/3 is that by the end, you are given momentum. Enemies are staggered for a second, and you got a second of invulnerability. The impact itself simply gives the player a momentum to build upon. A simple "s#*! goes BANG and enemies are staggered" is easy enough to do, but it gives no momentum. The player need to start a swing, which can take a long time. A solution here is to make the player do a power attack during the whole animation, and as the impact hit, the attack hits. But how dynamic is the animations? Could one extend/shorten an animation, on the fly, given the animation of the charge itself? Is that even possible? If not, can one cut the animation, and as the impact hits, the player materialize into a smoothed out end-of-power-attack-kind-of-deal? Hm....... If anybody knows, please give some input! I am trying to figure this out myself, but I am not a scripter/coder. Thanks! Matth

By using the Mass Effect model, excusing it lore-wise that it is some highly magical stuff, we could remove the player model, and instead make it a magical projectile. Though that brings another question, can the camera be edited to follow a projectile? As far as I know the camera is linked to the skeleton. It could be avoided by not having the camera follow the path, but that would ruin the whole feel of the effect.

That's one of the things I am pondering about. Skyrim does not seem to have any way to isolate a target, and keep track of it. Not as far as I know. Then again, back in Oblivion, custom spells were impossible as well, until Midas Magic came along, showing a workaround using lots and lots of coding. Was wondering if that sort of coding-magic is possible these days? There's also the whole "I will last until I hit the target!" and a limitation on how far that can be. So instead of going X distance, the spell can only be cast if the target is X distance of you, and you will charge all the way over to the target. But, alas, I have no idea what kind of flexibility is possible, and if it is possible -- how feasible is it. If it requires a hundred scripts, it might not be clean, or it might end up being buggy. It might also require me to spend the next 3 years learning to code. Hm...

Heya everybody! Before anything else: I did a mod search for it, but nothing fit my liking. I might just be bad at searching for mods /shrug So, I am in need of some confirmation here, by any of our code-gurus. Basically, I am looking into the whole "Vanguard charge!"-playstyle, as made famous in Mass Effect 2, and 3 and also playable in Bioshock Infinite. It's the playstyle I love the most, adding a full on "Risk versus reward" aspect to the game. Now, for the people only here to look, the question is: Is it doable or rather -- is it feasible, to code this sort of thing, while keeping the gameplay smooth? For everybody else, here is what I got so far, isolating part from part. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking through the named games, and how charge work, I have tried to work out the effects, individually. - A screen effect from start to finish - FoV changes during the effectt - A "trail" effect, if seen in 3rd person. - An effect on impact, a small explosion of sort, or something similar to make it interesting. Other than that, the key element is also "shield recharge", which is tricky enough in a game without the futuristic "shield". A simple solution is to add invulnerability to damage during the animation, and a second afterwards, or bump up the resistances/armor to max. An harder solution would be to create a shield effect. That might need some UI modding as well, but that's all doable. Reference: Bioshock Infinite "Charge Vigor" for 1st person, Mass Effect 2 "Vanguard Charge" for 3rd person. ALternatively we got the standard charge from World of Warcraft, which would work as well, though it is slighlty bare-boned. So, in essence, the whole effect would be: - Spell cast, either as a spell, or a custom keybind. Script checks if a target is within the currsor, and if it is possible to reach it (-Is this even possible to check?). - The effect starts. In 1st person the effect takes up the majority of the screen, as seen in Bioshock Infinite, limiting side view. The FoV is also set so it seem you are "charging away from the camera". - In 3rd person the FoV changes slightly less. You get a broader vision, your body dissapears and is changed to a particle glow, which makes a "tail". Alternate your character is still there, and you just get some sort of tail/glow on top of you. - The hit adds an explosion, and a stagger to enemies you hit. in 3rds person the explosions materialize you. Alternative it during the last second of the charge, it does the forward power attack animation, so as the animation stops, your character just ended with a power attack. - In 1st person it's seen as a stagger + explosion of some sort. If following the Power Attack theory, the charge simply ends with you landing a power strike. How would this all work out? Coding is something I am not familiar with, and have not done any scripting since good ol' Oblivion days. From what I can see, I need: 1) Detect the enemy is within the crosshair. Possible? If nothing else, it could be changed to a spell that needs to hit to activate. 2) Detect there is a possible path 3) Move the player to the enemy, starting all the effect at right times. Not even sure if this is possible. 4) Change FoV during the charge, and change it back at the impact. 5) Some sort of damage mitigation during that window. If nothing else, a temporary boost to all defensive stats. Perhaps 6) Add a small slow motion during the charge, to give it a real "super fast charge" effect. Perhaps from the shout? The whole visual part is easily done, but I am rather unsure of how far we can script these days. EDIT: for simplicity's sake, the whirlwilwind Sprint shout animation, and effect, could be used. It still needs a "charge to the target" effect, a stagger effect and some sort of enemy detection script. Thanks in advance! Matth

Although we all understand the word "cheating", in the sense of using the console command, which are not given to use for fun, but used BY the game designers themself to beta test/debug their game. That said, Kleinstaff do got a point. the definition of cheating is to gain advantage in an unfair way. That means a competition of some sort is a given. So under all logic, "cheating" in a single player game, affecting only yourself, is impossible.

A few tip. This tells me 2 things. 1) You are new (d'uh) 2) You got something big planned. Here you skip over any kind of important information, and right to ask for people to help you out. Now, that won't cut it. Everybody got ideas, and we all got limited time on our hands. Here is how you do this: A) You want to learn X. You start by asking what you need to learn, then what software you need, then ask for suggestions around how to do it. Or you can search, since these topics pop up every few days. The community loves to help those who can help themself. If somebody shows me they put effort into what they do, I will gladly move mountains to ensure that person reaches his/her goal. B) You want a mod team for X project. Let me just stop you right here. Not to crush any dreams, but 99.5% of all big mod project barely gets past the planning phase. If you got no experience, just trust me -- start small. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know! Other than that. This is what is minimum required for somebody, if they want to set up a team for a big mod. 1) You yourself know the amount of work it takes. 2) You yourself take the lead. 3) You are the most motivated individual. 4) You responde to messages within half an hour of it being sent. 5) You got everything planned out in one way or another. This means you don't need to have the smallest thing planned, but you got the big picture. Other than that, your post should also contain: Name of mod. How far you have gotten all ready. The idea planned. The people needed. Features the mod might contain. C) You want one or two persons to help with X mod This is simpler than B), but it still requires you to put all the info in the post, and explain who you need for what. "I need help" doesn't work. You need to specify "I need a modeller to make a set of armor", or "I need a scripter to do Y". Now, with all that in mind, try to update your post ever so slightly, to elaborate your idea! Your post does not bring any interest, and remember everybody got ideas, so you won't see people running going "OMG This guy got an idea! Let's run over and help him!". Best of luck! Matth

Once I hit max level lockpicking, I started cheating with unlocking things. I mean, the lockpick minigame was fun the first 400 houres, but after that it became a chore. I also admit to cheating when cornered. Quicksaving mid dungeon, getting insta-gibbed 0.5 second after the save. Happened a lot, really. Oh, and when a difficult enemy is annoying me. Like a dragon flying on roof forever, when on my #dual wield -dadreic -dual daedra -conjuration - warrior-kind-of-a-guy". Uh.. stop cheating? I mean, what else can we say? It's a question of willpower here.

It all comes down to the question: Is it feasible to do? Modders have shown they can do anything, with whatever tools they are given. It's quite interesting to see. I rememeber the period before we got the CK from Bethesda. We had nothing, yet people managed to use older tools, and replace weapons. But, alas, using the fishing mod as an example, the time spent doing it is not worth the reward. By thinking outside the box, and working around the limitations, you spend more time, and resources, than you really should have. The only modders who actually does these kind of mods, are the one who challenge themself. Kudos to them, but then again -- if an individual needs to do personal challenges with such limitations, they might consider going up a notch, and go beyond modding Skyrim. Anyways, I'm signing off now! Matth

That I have. You also do realize you don't get motion capture from thin air, right? You either pay for it, or make it yourself. Which one do you prefer? Have you ever animated anything like this before? If you have, then you know the rig we got is not optimal, and any armor with some sort of mass will clip. I want you to try it. Make an animation where the character cast the line, and start reeling in a fish. What will happen, is that the armor will go all out once the character does any sort of strained movement, like hunching, or reeling hard to one side. And yes, I speak of 3rd person. You make it sound simple, but this is also another skill to know for this mod. Kind of proves my point even more, no? Or you dont agree with me, for some reason, or overintrepret what I say. I don't know. I don't put much effort into it, while I do want to teach new people that "why hasn't this simple mob been done?!" that it is not so easy to do. Oh, I am not questioning that you know what you are saying. It does seem like you don't believe I know what i am doing though. Doesn't seem fair, now does it? I know the work required. Heck, I spent most of the modding days in Oblivion doing animations and particle effects. Also, the rod is the easy part, as I alleady stated a few posts back. The problem is the character animation, and to make it all work together with as many armor mods as possible, or whatever popular mods people like to use. That's a problem. The experienced modders are few, and far apart. The question is not if a experienced modder can, it's if a newer modder can. At which I have explained 2 thing throughout the post: It is not as simple as it might seem, and it requires quite a few skillset that a random joe will not have. Scripting, scripting with FNIS, animating character and animating a static objecy, modelling, texturing. Now that it's all been said, I see no reason to keep going on. Everything around this has been discussed, and unless you strongly disagree with me, there is little to be said. Cheers,Matth

A little clipping is rather annoying. And any decent modder will fix that. And why would you release unfinished mods? What would that gain? There is nothing stopping you from uploading unfinished work to the nexus, but it won't be received any well, since.. well.. it's unfinished.

No. The armor would not need to be animated, since it is linked to the body of the character. That said, some armor would need to be tweaked, or the animation would need to be tweaked, to avoid clipping. So you'd have to test every armor set, and as many armor mods, as possible, and find a middle-ground, so you avoid clipping. Basically, the amount of work needed for a solid fishing mod, is insane. I know, it sounds silly, but that's how it is with the tools we got.

No, and no. 1) The video shows a fishing rod as a weapon, using weapon animations. 2) Generate objects randomly? 3) Getting a mesh into the game is easy. Animating it is easy. Animating a fully fishing animation, with your character, is not. You are totally right, except for 2 points: It's not the engine that is mod resistant with respect to animations. With Oblivion we didn't have a modder's paradise, but we were much better off than we are now. It's this Havok tool HBT, which it TOTALLY designed without anything useful for modding. But since this tool is state-of-the-art, and apparently Beth didn't want to implement something themselves, we are put into this misery. When mesh and animation are easy, then something like a fishing mod ios easy as well. With FNIS you can easily define the animation with the rod as an animated object. And you can even put a variety of such animations into a "sequenced animation", controlled and randomized by a script. I'll adress point 2. It's not quite true. A mesh is easy to make, and the animtion for the rod is easy. The problem is that the fishing rod requires multple animations. Then the character requires a fishing animation, and again -- unless somebody here owns a multi-million animation-capture device, we'll have to key-by-key animate it. Animating the human body key by key, is like eating a bowl of rice made for 10 people, 1 corn at a time, with chopsticks. It's plausible, but not feasible. Then add the fact we'd need to combine the animation sequences with the rod. Then connect them. Then script it all together, with some sort of "This water contains fish, so if you equip the pole you can fish!"-scripting magic. Then comes all the additional animations required. Your fishing stance should change when the fish is on the hook, the same goes with the line AND the fish, they should move. In total, we speak of: 2-4 animations for the rod 4-5 animation sets for the character Heavy scripting to seamlessly work them together. Let's not even begin to speak of the debugging needed, and bugs that can happen. Clipping here and there, not fitting with X armor, not fitting with mods that change X or Y. Yes. It is possible. Yes, it can be done. No, it is not easy. No, nobody is going to do it. You require an expert in animation, a superb scripter and a full team of beta testers before this could be done. It's simply not easy. These kind of adition is up to Bethesda to make. We'd need the hard coded area of the engine to be able to do this easy. Let's just hope for a new Game engine, something where Bethesda can give us a few more tools to play around with.

You can not up resolution. You can only reduce it, to improve quality. The golden rule is: Scale down, never scale up. Think of it like this: The texture got a resolution of 512x512. Now, if you want it to be 1024x1024, the software will calculate it, and simply blur/stretch the pixels out, so you got the same amount of pixels, but on a 1024x1024 canvas. You then make it 2048x2048, and it now drags out the pixels again, meaning you now got the same amount of pixels in a 512x512 as in your 2048x2048. Which means it will look like a texture from a PS1 game, pixelated and blurry. The only way to up a texture resolution, is to re-texture the whole thing. This can be rather challenging, since we do not got the source files. But you'd basically grayscale the image, scale it up, then start coloring the pieces, adding the texture.