MacKom

@FakePersonality - Glad I made you laugh. I`ll be performing here regularly, so enjoy the show. And don`t forget to tip your waiter! :biggrin: I never really considered making "wigs" out of these...simply b/c I don`t quite understand what it would mean. Technically, that is. I guess it could be useful to make them with ***_0.nif and ***_1.nif files to simulate the weights, but then you`d have to craft them...not quite realistic. But then again, hey - dragons. I mean... :rolleyes: And just to clarify a bit - it`s not so much about which is more important (meshes or textures), but how well can you make them work together, IE fixing "flaws" of one with the other. They should both get equal amounts of TLC during the making. If one takes the time to make a really, really good mesh, then one should also take the time to make a texture to match. Just my personal opinion. and you know what they say about opinions :whistling: Ok, first wip of #2. Since the first one is kinda fitting for a mage, maybe this one could be more of a "ranger" style. I am worried about the "kamehameha" effect it has going, tho...hm... :confused:

@Werne - Thanks. The thing with hairs from The Sims is that they don`t use normal maps, so in order to look smooth and add some surface details they have to have a higher poly count. I myself am a minimalist, especially with meshes (I really do believe that less is more), so I try to bring out the most with textures. A good texture on a very simple, but nicely UVMapped mesh makes wonders. Where as, you can have an intricate high poly mesh, but if your UVs are bad and you don`t pay attention to textures - it all turns out mediocre at best. And we (I) just can`t have that! ^_^ Textures are an art form for themselves. Also, never underestimate the power of a tablet (I have a pretty cheap one, but it`s serving me well. I will get my greedy little hands on a Wacom some day, I swear by my life. Cintiq...*_________________* <3 ) and custom brushes. A lot can be done with a simple hard edged one, but some things are better left to custom ones. As to a daily update - I`m calling this one done. For now, anyways. I`m kinda sick of it, so I think it would be best to move on to another one. It` still a replacer (not touching CK yet :psyduck: ), so,,,yea. Coffee time! ;D

@jet4571 - Yea, I know. From what I could figure out, I saw that default hairstyles use .tri files which make them scale with body weight (I think), but I have no idea how to make or assign one. Still, I`m not being discouraged, I`ll make it work somehow! ^_^ And thanks for posting where to find something about floating hair issue, so Auriel, have a look at this wall of text - And maybe this...?

@Rabbit - Thanks for the comment. I`m actually using "Game of thrones" TV show as an inspiration for designs. So, yea, there will be lots of long hair and braids. It`s a medieval thing. I will however try to stay away from the "glamour" trap by making hair textures coarser and not so shiny (kinda like vanilla ones), unless I specifically go on and create something for a "queen" or "king" or "noble" character. We`ll see. The problem with Skyrim tho (and most games, to be honest) is that most of hairstyles are relatively short (say, shoulder length) to avoid clipping. As you can see from my first image, there`s lots of clipping going on (and since all Witcher imported armors have big and wide collars, long hairstyles will look bad on them...:C ), so I have to make everything wider and bulkier...sad, really, but oh well. At the current state my mesh is, it looks really nice on tight clothing. The moment you put on an armor - wham. -_____-` @Aurel Tristen - TBH, I haven`t even started fiddling with CK. I hate it with the intensity of 1000 burning desert suns. Does that count? :P It`s nice to see what kind of a problem I could be facing tho. Thanks for the spoiler XD I did notice that, when importing an .obj file into 3DSM for skinning along with an original hair file, they are miss-matched. So, I had to extract the femalehead.nif from Skyrim-meshes.bsa, delete the bones and rigging and save that as my new template. The one I had (downloaded from Nexus) was a bit off position wise. So, sorry, I really can`t help you with this one, but perhaps someone else more experienced will. What I would like you to do is to post a solution for your problem once you get it right, just so that valuable piece of information dosen`t get lost. I (and everybody else) could use all the help we can get. And, since I promised it in my last post, I`ll upload a picture of my mesh revision. I made it bulkier now (I had to,b/c of that darn clipping >.<), and I also realized that I can get a bit more comfortable with the poly budget. Thanks to SF_Double_sided setting (r is it...node? No idea how to call those things) I don`t have to duplicate and invert faces just to get visible back side. Very cool! So, I`ll up the poly count a bit (it`s at 1156 tris ATM...and normal maps can only do so much), and re-arrange them. It would be much easier to start over, tho. The first one was just a test to see if I can do it, and apparently - I can. So, yay for me, and let`s move on!

Ok, so...long story short - the topic title says it all. I could put a flashy and funny intro here, but surprisingly, nothing comes to mind. Spite the fact I`m pouring in massive amounts of coffee in me while we speak. *twitch twitch* O______o To clarify a bit more - I`m not exactly a complete noob. I do know my way around textures (being that I`ve been painting digitally for 3 years now and hope to land a job as a concept artist some day...as if 9___9), vertices and polygons I are terms I understand (triangles are meh, quads are yummy and everything else is OMGWTFRUDoin?!!!) and I absolutely LOVE to brush away inside ZBrush (<3). However...3DSMax is evil (you know it is), nifscope is EVIL (yea, I know it isn`t) and CK is master evil mega mind (yup, I said it), so tackling these will be quite a challenge. Luckily, I have no social life. *awkward pause* So, moving on, here`s what I`ve been doing for the past 3 days...a new hair. That will, hopefully, evolve into a new hair set. http://i1182.photobucket.com/albums/x443/PxelSlayer/WIP.jpg I realized that there aren`t many lore friendly hairstyles out there (tho there are many nice ones), with the exception of "Lovely hairstyles" (which are, go figure - quite lovely!), and since there are NO hair importing tutorials...well, we better do something about that, eh? Now, the one in the picture is OK, but there`s lots of things that need to be improved, so I will re-examine the mesh, textures and everything else and post the process, issues and problem salvation as I go along. What I do hope is that I don`t end up lonely in this thread, so any comments, suggestions and brain storming are very welcome. I actually see this as a bit of a group project, even tho I`ll do the hands-on side of the job. Ok, for starters, this pretty much covers it. In next post I`ll go over the mesh, re-examine it, see what can and can`t be done etc...but first - coffee time! :D

I`d love to pitch in here and create some for Skyrim (as I too think there`s a lot that can be done), but the thing is - there are no hair importing tutorials. There are hair mods, but it would seem that those who are creating them might be a bit too busy to write something down. So, until that happens - we`ll just have to wait. :)

Ah, this is the information I was looking for. So, there is no way of changing the properties of a .nif file in nifscope so that it displays backside vertices? I have to shell meshes?

Hm....well, in any case, I believe your best bet would be to go to official ENB forum and post your problems there. Boris is "floating" about, so you just might get some advice directly from him. Also, ATI users (like myself) lucked out - ENB was created with nVidia graphic cards in mind so...sucks to be us. 9____9

Ok, let`s try this... First, go have a look here - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4192 This is THE best way to ensure you don`t get CTDs . Period. Then, there is the matter of different ENB settings. Which config are you using? If you are using one that uses SSAO/SSIL method, that might be it. Also, make sure to open your computer every now and then and clean it from dust and other dirt. You would be surprised how much good it actually does. I`m no computer expert (far from that) but it could be an overheating issue. So, update your drivers, clean your computer and try lowering your graphic settings. Start from there ;)

Yes! Exactly! Thank you! I knew we`d find a common ground somewhere :D Thing is - I have no problem in opening up ZBrush, sculpting the hair, exporting it to TopoGun, doing the retopology, export the low res mesh into 3DSMax, doing the UVMap, importing it back into TG, baking AO and normal map, and compiling it all in Photoshop to recreate the texture and give it more detailing. No biggie. That`s the fun part! What I`m terrified of is figuring out which tools to use to import it into Skyrim (I mean, we have the CK, and tessnip and nifscope and Sky Edit and...on and on), making sure I don`t miss out that one comma in one shader property file (or what you call it) etc. And when something goes wrong (and it always does. Well, at least in my case ^_^` ), you have to drag your mod through all of these programs to see where that one mistake (or that one comma) is...I mean, phew! Yea, I know, there I am, sounding all whiny again...AND I managed to completely change the subject of this topic. Me so sorry, OP. Actually...I just got an idea. All this rabble was not in vain after all. :D

@Sunnie - yea, I know I sounded a bit "wahwahwambulance" like back there. I know that creating custom content (and mind you - quality custom content) is not an easy task. I actually used to mod myself back in the day. I used to handle other programs, which actually got me to where I am now, doing what I do. But, from my POV (which is not that of an utter mod noob) - CK IS very complicated. The process IS very complicated. And, ultimately, the question is - how much is it really worth it? All those hours spent learning, failing, learning some more etc. (you know the process ;) ) - just to get , say, one hair mod into game? Yes, modding IS fun. TES modding, tho...hm...:/

Actually, I`m quite curious how to do it as well. All I can say for now is that CK (and the whole import custom content procedure) is VERY unfriendly towards new users. Those who used to mod for Morrowind or Oblivion have it much easier, but we, newbs, regardless of our other skills (such as modelling or creating textures) are at complete loss with this. I don`t even know how to open a file, which file to set as master, which to set as active or plugin, what is the difference at all between them etc...something very easy and natural to experienced modders. And no, wiki is not very helpful either. Now toss in the fact that to some of us english is not our native language and...yea, a mess. Oh well...I guess for some of us it was never meant to be. :[

@Thesapien - please compare the number of anime mods and Portal mod. And please compare the general quality of them as well (meaning, the execution. I`m not saying there aren`t any well executed anime mods, don`t get me wrong). Hm...:/

Ok, with the possibility of being called a troll again, I`d just like to ask 2 questions - 1.) Why import anime inspired content into a game that dosen`t fit the genre, if you can actually go and play an anime themed game? There`s lots of them floating about. Isn`t that something of a cheap substitute? 2.) How come there are no realism inspired mods for anime games, and yet there are many anime mods for non-anime games?

Oh, how I yearn for some lore-friendly clothing options for my mages... I actually did a piece some time ago that *might* fit in... http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/044/9/4/zodiac_warrior___libra_by_markothesketchguy-d39debd.jpg Or something a bit more "warrior" friendly... http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/015/4/7/470cfb10d68f1fe7164f3ad0e83d3717-d37abpi.jpg But, alas, I`m no mesh maker...*sigh*...

+1 on better filtering. That would be...swell. ^_^ And now I`d like to pitch in on the subject, if you don`t mind. I never wrote a bad comment bashing somebody's mod, nor will I do it in the future.Just b/c I don`t like it, it dosen`t mean that everybody won`t. I just keep browsing on. But (since this is kinda a chance to express my thoughts and opinions, as the question has been asked), here is why I don`t like anime mods...nor I ever will. 1). The looks. There is just something creepy (IMO) with characters who have HUGE eyes and tiny noses and lips. It makes them look child-like. (Eyes are, in fact, our only body part which never grows - that`s why kids have "big eyes".). Which brings us to putting said characters in sexual context. For instance, that "Elin" race from Terra...basically, a race that looks like 5 YO girls wearing skimpy outfits. And you can see their underwear. Am I the only one who finds this disturbing? 2). Sex, sex, sex. Practically every outfit that I`ve seen (made for both male and female characters) is sexed-up. Yea, female armors have HUGE shoulder plates...but their b00bs are hanging out there. And their booties. Oh, and don`t forget high heels, b/c...well, they are just SO practical on an armor. And your typical male character will not pass on a chance to show his super ripped upper body. 3). No sex. Ironically - male and female characters...look the same. Pretty, glamorous, shiny, with lipstick, silky (LONG!!!) hair and curly eyelashes. B/c that`s sexy. Well, That considered sexy, anyways. 4). Bigger is better. It dosen`t matter that your super skinny and frail character with huge knockers looks like she can barely pick up a toothpick, she is wielding a 23 foot sword that would actually weigh like a small truck with no problems! Oh, and she never passes a chance to sound like a porn star while wielding it. If she looks the part, why not sound the part as well, right? 5). Hair. There is no amount of hair products on this planet that could make your hair retain that shape. You know what shape I`m talking about. And I could go on and on...but I won`t. What I said already might raise some eyebrows, and I don`t want to upset or insult people here. I`m here to enjoy the game. Anime-free, in my case.

Well...have you tried Wars in Skyrim? http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6176 It adds quite a bit of action to Skyrim. I personally stopped using it, as I noticed my save games got weird (CTDs mostly), and it started going in a direction I`m not quite fond of, but this dosen`t diminish the value of the mod, and you might actually end up loving it, so - if you haven`t, give it a go. ;)

You know, this is actually quite funny. I was looking for someone to port some of my old works into Skyrim, but with no luck. Making textures is a piece of cake for me, even some basic 3d modeling, but I have no clue about making elaborate 3D models (like weapons and armors)...lol. Hey, maybe we should team up, eh? Tho, one of us should crack the porting bit...^_^

Yes, PLEASE! I really don`t like the DB storyline, so on my new runs I choose the "destroy the DB" quest, and yes, it could be more elaborate. Really do hope this one gets done. ;)

@Sk8on - Link bookmarked, thank you! ;) And... *ahem*...bump. :sweat:

@DeathVest - thanks for the link, m8, appreciate it ;) Thing is, learning about about BSA files is just a tip of the iceberg for me. I have a VERY slow learning curve when it comes to this and it would, literally, take me months to do it. And yes, I will do it, I will learn it all eventually, but ATM I would like to find a "partner in crime" to release these. Yup, you guessed it, I`m quite impatient as well. *sigh* Most tutorials cover creating armor, weapons and stuff like that. I imagine the process for hair is pretty much the same, but there are bound to be some slight differences in steps and things to look out for. And as we all know, it`s those exact small things that end up blowing your vertices, causing CTDs and BSODs and killing puppies...O______________________________________o

I do hope so too. The texture on the first one was made by another mod maker (and she did an awesome job <3), the second one is mine. However, I have picked up quite a bit about making textures myself since then, and I`m quite sure the results won`t be disappointing. I`ll do my best. ;) There is a third one, quite lore-friendly in the works right now (very nord-looking, if I may add), and once it`s done I`ll post some pictures. I`m throwing all the baits I have here. :P Porter, oh porter, where art thou....

Hello, folk of Skyrim Nexus. It is I - Mac Kom. No idea who I am? Yea...was kinda a long shot anyways... So, here`s the thing. A very long, long time ago I myself was a mod maker. Albeit, for another game (The Sims 1 & 2), but those were the good times all the same. So, yesterday I popped in a CD containing some of my old works, and I realized that the stuff might not look that bad ported to Skyrim. Plus, a refreshment is always welcome, no? So, I extracted the files, rearranged the textures a bit and had a second look. Have a look yourselves! http://i1182.photobucket.com/albums/x443/PxelSlayer/hair1.jpg http://i1182.photobucket.com/albums/x443/PxelSlayer/hair2.jpg Neat, huh? Now, this is where I`ve hit the wall and need some help. It`s been years since I`ve opened a 3D moddeling program. And the only one I used was Milk Shape. 3DSMax and Blender are complete strangers to me. Plus, Skyrim is my first TES game I`ve played, so .nif and .esm and .esp files are...well, quite confusing for me. will do my best to get a handle on all of this, but for now - I really could use a help of someone patient, altruistic and dear enough to port these babies in to Skyrim. I`ll fix and rearrange all .obj files, I`ll re-do the textures, the whole shabang - I just need someone who has some idea what he or she is doing to make these stand alone additions to the game. Yes, it`s tech stuff. Yes, I know it`s boring. Yes, I know that eventually I`ll have to learn to do it myself. And yes - I know they`ll look great in game. I`ll use all the magic I have on my end to ensure so. ;) Plus, shared credit, glory and fame sound ok, no? (well, maybe not glory and fame, I doubt we`ll get that, but credit...yup. Definitely). So, long story short - will the right port master please stand up? And please, leave your curved swords at the entry. Thank you.

Oh well, where to begin...Let`s see... 1.) More character customization (lore-friendly hairstyles, new armors, clothes, and maybe even custom sliders, for getting even more freedom in creating your characters appearance. That would be nice) 2.) A mirror. Plain and simple. Lets you change your characters looks w/o using the console. No race changes, tho. 3.) Paintings. Paintings and tapestries for decorating your home and making it feel more home...ish. 4.) More animal follower options that aren`t as annoying as dogs, with their barking and licking noises. Ugh. My Bosmer really could use a fox. Or a sabre cat. Kitty! :3 5.) New adventures, new (hidden) cities and locations. There`s a pretty big coastline in Skyrim, maybe there could be a secret entrance to a sunken underwater city. The location would probably not interfere with upcoming EPs (and we know there will be those). And plenty more, but I can`t remember ATM...^_____^

+1 on a request for a tutorial. Or any relevant information, really. I`d kill for some nice tribal looking long dreadlocks for my bosmer girl...^_____________^