Matth85

We discuss these questions. Not hijacking if it is relevant, I believe.

Yet again, I end up writing a too long post. I will shorten it down yet again. Lore is history. History is what makes the game. If you, personally, do not like it, why do you play the game? If you do like it, why do you dislike the idea of people not liking to hold the lore as pure as possible? Fantasy is a genre, not a reason. Oblivion is medieval themed, so a moon-base-halo-kind-of-thing is not lore friendly in any ways there. Magic is a concept of what we want to do, but can't do. I would love to shoot a fireball, but can't. It is also bound by lore. If Bethesda meant mages are all powerfull and can port light years away, then it would be fine. However, so far mages are simple wise fighters that master simple magics that aid them. If you look in Dragon Age, mages are more powerfull, as seen in the spells. Still not strong enough to dematerialize in a second, a light year away, and materialize. Which means magic is bound by lore. Lore is made up by the writters. They can break it if they want, as they made it up in the first place. The lore tells what have been done, which tells us what can be done. If lore says nobody ever teleported everywhere. Suddently teleporting to a new galaxy is not possible. We are talking about humanid creatures, as told in the lore, not super humans. If we humans suddently learn to throw fireballs and teleport around the world, this stands true. As of now, it is not. Look at the human history from an outside view. Our history is out lore. Could you say "Suddently the allmighty Alfred learned to teleport to another galaxy and shoot lightning from his fingers!"? It is just too far away from what is currently possible. Could you, however, say: "Bob discovered how dematerialize and materialize a few miles away, in a second!"? That would be possible. SInce our lore says we could do it. Not likely, but doable. Of course, I understand the view of non-lorefriendly mods. I do not bash anybody for making or playing them. They can be interesting and fun. It is easy to add custom things to Oblivion, so this further builds on that. However, if a question comes "is this too far away from the lore?" - DON'T come to me and say "It's fantasy and magic can do everything!". It simply does not cut it. A better excuse would be "Aliens did it." As that is more relevant to the lore. I do not mean to sound offensive here, I just defend my point of view and bashing down the most overused excuse in the fantasy genre :) Hope nobody gets offended in any way. Cheers, Matth

It looks good. Very grunged, but good. I must as, though, what is the black spots? and the yellow marks?

Yes, it does. You also need to credit him when you release a mod. Send him a PM and wait for a reply, and it's all good.

How is that relative? ... I am not saying they should not play/make things like it, I say "fantasy and magic" is not an excuse. Dragging in Bethesda in this is also unrelated. They make up the lore, they can break it down. It's like an author of a book, s/he can do whatevrr s/he wants with it. A random Bob on the street can't make it up, however, and find some excuse why it should work. The authors writes it, the author changes it. As said, I am not telling anybody anything, and I don't understand where you took that from, I am just pointing out "It's fantasy" is an overused, bad, excuse for about everything. It is bound by lore. Take away the lore, and what do we really got? This is a poll, by the way. Asking wether you, the individual, would play it, and why. Is it wrong of me to express why it is not lorefriendly and why I would not play it? Cheers, Matth

After a huge rant post, I will cut it short: "Fantasy and magic!" - is not a valid argument. Oblivion is bound by lore, so is magic. In terms of lore, nothing in Oblivion could reach the moon. Barely any mages could teleport short distances, how would they go to the moon? The only entity I can think of, in Oblivion, that can teleport somebody to the moon, would be a Daedric God. Why would any of them make a portal to the moon, for the mortal to use? This idea would suit Fallout a lot better.

First I will need to rig it :) Which body replacers do you want it for? I'll make one for the vanilla body, but you wanted it for Robert's, or something?

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7057/armortry.jpg I swear, this is the last armor set I will try to make >.< It looks okay so far, and I am moving towards low poly and texturing now. Hoping I can make it look better in the texture. Cheers, Matth

Not too comlicated to make. Too unrelated to Oblivion lore for my taste though. The moon.. in Oblivion. How would they even get there? And how would they make space suit, when they are so technologically set back that they still use swords? They barely know anything about anything more than what they'd beed.

Sharpen the texture with filter inside Photoshop, and it won't be blurry anymore. And the problem with making your request from scratch: Only the author of the armor got the required texture work to make a new piece. We don't got the base texture s/he used, neither the rune/engravings. We also do not know what you look for, mesh-wise. You ask for something to match the armor. It is not our job to find something you want, it's out job to make what you visualize. For that we need a drawing or a picture of something similar. I'd say this retexture is very well done. For anything better, we need a lot more than we are given. Cheers, Matth

It's quite easy, indeed. Curently running solo warrior on nightmare. I barely need to use potions >.> I also seem to oneshot most enemies. On the other hand, I found it night-impossible on my Blood/Spirit Healer mage. If just OE enemy got out of my CC, I was dead. Not to ention every golem/ogre would kick my poor ass over and over again. On topic: I also remember there being a nightmare + mod. Might be worth checking out! Cheers, Math

Yeah. The part where somebody takes a week off their time to do your request, but then can't finish it, is certanily wasting your time. I am sorry, but unless you pay us for doing it, we are not obligated to finish it. So far, nobody have paid me for anything. If a modder says he'll do it, it usually means: "If I get time, I will do it. If I can't finish it, too bad.". Unless we get paid, we don't prioritize modding over anything IRL. This is not work. Sorry, but your post really grinded my gear :/ Don't mean to sound offensive here! Cheers, Matth

Making request is all nice and good, but asking for a big mod, which includes about everything, without giving any information, is really not too good. You should get an idea of what you want yourself, and learn to mod. Then get a team of modders here, or ask people for things you can't get yourself. If you ask for requests, you need an idea of what you want. We can't do all the work :) Your best bet is to get the good mods you can want on Tesnexus. There is plenty of good quest mods with armors and whatnot. Cheers, Matth

Since I am just too awesome, I manage to put some houres into 3d yesterday. Got some work on the lowerbody done, and wrapped up the left arm. Currently I am going to fix the knee-pads, to get a more leaf like shape, then generally fix the annoying shapeof the legs. Then I am moving towards detailing the legs some more. After that I believe the sketching is done, and I will proceed to detail it all with smaller details. I lost my work on the scabard, so I dropped that. Since it wasn't such a big deal, or so I was told. I hope nobody gets upset because of that :) Picture: http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/7057/armortry.jpg Cheers, Matth

You can pick up a greatsword in the chest right after the action happens, when you get attacked. It is in the room your mother came from. In a chest that you do not need to lockpick.

Nothing too complicated, so somebody should be able to do it. I must ask, however. Why is the sword without texture? DId s/he give up midway? And since I love that sword, and it served me well when I played WoW, I might just give it a try. I lack the time now, however. Also, why isn't the model smoothed? And is the handle really that poly-wasted? Frankly, I'd be easier for me to model it from scratch >.< No offense, of course. I might do some of these, when I am done with my 2 other requests. Hopefully not too long. Cheers, Matth

Eh.. It's not a "good step" it is a rule! :P It's what every decent modeller does. They collect reference, or draw their own. Freemodelling is never as good as anything with reference. I'd advice against starting on clothings and armor at start. I'd start on smaller things like, say, the barrels, crates, a house, etc. Then move towards more organic things like armor and clothes. This is because clothing/armor is very complicated. You both ned a good topology for the model itself, but it also needs to folow the anatomy of the human/creature under it. It must also not stretch when animated or clip. A lot of uneccessary problems for a new 3d artist :) Good luck though! Cheers, Matth

As far as I know, Blender is the only free, decent, modeling tool you can get your hands on. If you are a student, or know of anyone, within digital art, chances are you can get a free copy of 3ds max 2010, or Maya. These are more comlplex, but also the softwares used by every game/movie studio out there. For texturing GIMP is the best free. Photoshop is my prefference though, but costs. Most would say TESAlliance. I'd agree partly, it is good for a few things. However, google and more 3d oriented, and less Oblivion oriented, tutorials will help you a lot more! I spent over a year on google, buying Ebooks and watching things on youtube before I grasped 3d. If it is more 3d oriented, and less blender oriented, you can ask me. Game-Artist.net and NextGenHardSurface.com for more proffesional forums. They use Maya and 3ds max mostly. But you'll find people that's worked at AAA titles on these forums. 1) Take photos. Any texture artist should. 2) Photoshop filters are awesome :) If you got that. 3) Cgtextures.com - royaltry free texture library. Make an account and you can download 15mb of pictures per day/week ( I am not sure). So take what you need. Lots of tutorials on that. In short: - Scale the model after another model from Bethesda. This way you know that the scales are right. - Export it as a.nif, and save your textures as texturename.dds. - Fix any errors within nifsope. - Open the Construction Set, go to what you want changed and change the model, or make a new one. - Place it in game and save the plugin as a .esp. - Playtest. You should read some blender-specific tutorials on that point. As I got no idea how you apply textures or anything within blender :) Now, let me quote stuff within your post: Start by learning to model. LEarn to understand 3d, learn to get nice topology and learn to keep it low poly. Then move toward UVW-unwrapping and texturing. After that you should consider getting it into Oblivion. Why not make stuff for Oblivion at start, you ask? Well, you'd spend too much time sitting in nifskope and debugging, and use less time learning. It would also kill your motivation. Because, trust me on this, motivation is one thing you really want to keep up. If you get stuck o something for just a tad too long, you'll scratch it. I got over 20 unfinished projects in my folders, because I hit some kind of problem and lost all motivation. If you do not finish a model, you do not learn all you could learn. Also, this is a huge project. Break it up into smaller pieces and work on. Re-making every piece will take you, alone, over a year to do. A few years if you want to do it well. If you take a too big chunk of work, you'll get frustrated and bored after a while. Start small, and build up :) Cheers, Matth

Thanks! There is still a good portion I'd have to guess. We'll see what I can make up :) EDIT: I am going away for the weekend, to no progress can be made. I'll start up monday. Hopefully done by next Friday :) Cheers, Matth

Allready adjusted :) I am in a phase where I worry about shape, not polygons. So fixes are easy to do. The only time I wont do any changes to the model, is after I've done the baking and started texturing. Prior to that, I can adjust whatver needs adjusting. The better the model becomes, the better it is for everybody :) EDIT: I don't assume somebody got a picture of the sword scabbard? Most pictures only got the to and the bottom shown. That means there is a huge middle part I need to "guess"! I kind od don't want to freemodel something like that, when everything else is strictly after the reference :) Cheers Matth

Sorry guys, but I will not be able to update anything today. I planned to have the Scabbard of the sword done, the right arm and start on the legs. However, I have only been able to finish the arm part. Work, friends, movies and Dragon Age: Origins really eat my time :P I promise by the weekend the Scabbard will be done. Hopefully I'll get something to show on the armor too :) Thanks for all the nice comments guys! It really does motivate me to keep working on it. Cheers, Matth

You would't mind uploading the .nif somewhere, and perhaps the textures, so we/i can check it out? If it is not animated, and the alpha is fine, I see no reason for it not to work. If it is animated, then you should still see something. Cheers, Matth

That is very little information. What should happen? How does the original effect look? What is the core difference between that and this? Is the texture animated? Did you set the animation on in Nifskope? Does the animation loop? Is the alpha fie? Is the UVW fine? Have you done anything in Nifskope? If so, what? Have you done anything else than simply slapping on the texture? If it is not the alpha, I believe you havn't done anything in Nifskope yet. You need to loop the animated texture. Cheers, Matth

Frankly, I got no idea >.< If it's just on a static object that doesnt move, you won't need one. Okay, let's go down a notch: Exactly WHAT is the problem?

I will put my money on the alpha. The alpha is set to a specific value, so it is partly invisible. Then it gets animated, and you get that nifty effects. To make the barrier, you'd need: 1) The Barrier UVWed. 2) The animated texture. 3) The Alpha set right. 4) The script. Other than that, it can be some Nifskope values that are off. I remember dabbling with particle systems, and "magic effects" some years back, and I remember having to spend tons of time inside Nifskope. I can't remember if it was relevant to this, or what I did, but I remember my modding time was testing and sitting i nifskope untill I got it right. Sorry I can't be of more help! Cheers, Matth