MrDave

I'll add 'em to Bob's... http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/481379-bobs-armory-skyrim/ I've been busy the past couple of days at work rebuilding a few game levels for one of our current titles, but I'll have the weekend to make a few more items. I'll put yours in the line up right after the sword staff. :)

Howdy, not sure if your problem still persists, but here is a cure. First, the masks should be saved as DXT1RGB (no alpha). The issue you are having very well could be from the alpha channel that's being created. Sometimes it gets made with black dots along high contrast edges. Mimmaps don't really matter, but for a good crisp image even a few feet from your character, try it with two Mipmaps and set their sharpening option to unsharpen mask. Works great. Also, hit your Start menu, in the search type in msconfig and hit enter. Now click the startup tab and uncheck Adobe gamma Loader if it is in the list. Hit apply and reboot, saying OK to any popups. Gamma loader is notorious for showing you one thing in Photoshop and a completely different thing to the rest of your PC world. If you still get the issue, please send me a PM so I can send you my email address and I'll see what's going on with the tint mask.

Well... I couldn't resist... besides, my boss wants to see this one done too lol. He is a Lightwave guy and laughs every time he hears me swearing at Max's bugs.

Yeah, I have at least 3 different kinds of scimitars. :D I'll make sure to get a blade that looks like that in there too. I'm expecting a flood of bug fixes at work tomorrow, so it may be a few more days before any kind of update...

*Rubs hands together* Yeah... I can't wait to do one of my dynamic glow maps on them so they glow red or green in the dark....

Howdy Ghogiel! Man! You had to post another mace just as I was contemplating sleep lol... good to see these guys have a resident expert who knows what he is doing to keep them in line. :D So I guess I should call Bob's Armory, Bob's yataghan yard sale! Free mace with every purchase! :P After I get the grunge and specular done on Sauron's mace and get the sword staff going, I'll do that mace. Then it's back to the yataghan knife.. then that dragon staff Draco just linked. That's a cool staff. The knife looks pretty cool too... but I don't think the trigger will be going on it. It will clip something fierce with the hands... I just know it lol. Our current title went up on XBox for beta testing today, so I have the weekend to work on this stuff. I'm sure I'll have a long list of alterations to make come Monday though lol.

The question I'm asking is how did I never see that thing before today?!?

Oh yeah! Couldn't pass that one up lol, it's too hot! Thank you for the suggestion! :D

That and everything is named incorrectly in Maya. If forced to make a choice, I'd work in Blender over Maya... but if it came to that, I'd just reinstall Milkshape lol. I need to work on the grunge and the specular map a bit. Just now got the normal map looking decent. In the mean time, I'm gona take a closer look around the towns for any more of my commercial work. :D

Meh... sleep is for the dead. The key to good texturing is the same as good house painting. You need a quality UVW map first, just like you need a good drywall job first. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be within the grasp of Blender yet. All I ever see out of that program is tiny flat planed UVW maps that use 1/10 the texture size, on HUGE textures. So either there is no documentation for unwrapping, or there are no tools for it. In max it is too easy using pelt mapping. Point to point seams. Place 'em where ya want 'em and bam, UVW is laid out. Hit with relax and it's pixel perfect... most of the time. :) Anyway, here are a couple of quick progress shots. The guys left early to go play some modern war game on their xboxes.... except for one of the interns who is still sitting, astonished, in front of his computer because his female Eve character spawned in station totally nude lol. I apologize for the blackspeech around the handle not being accurate. Apparently I don't have that particular font, and I cannot find documentation on what it says, so I used Tengwar cursive as a replacement. NEVER EVER EVER.... EVAAARRR ... compare your skills to someone elses. As Merlin said, "Just remember, there is always someone cleverer than yourself!". I've been doing this professionally for a long time. I've even taught instructors, done lecturing circuits, written curriculums, tutored, etc... and I still know I am mediocre. I look at my stuff as rudimentary at best, because I don't heed my own words lol. :) Oh, also, for ease of texturing, you may want to grab these. :D http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2324 EDIT: Good grief. I just looked at the poly count. 1,106 verts, and I was as sparing as humanly possible. :(

I'm really sorry for the delayed reply... I fell asleep for apparently 3 hours.... I guess I should just eat the espresso beans lol. Okay, gona try an attachment to see if the screenie will show. It's just flat shaded right now. Still messing with what I can do with the smoothing groups. It's UVW mapped... well it's laid out. Haven't put it into the box yet for rendering a template. The texture will only take a couple of hours, but right now it's 10:30 so the guys should be rolling into the office pretty soon. May not be able to get to texturing it for a few hours... As soon as I get this one done, I'll be finishing a yataghan style dagger, then the DA2 staff blade.

I couldn't agree more, Zimnel. I still recall, very vividly, when testing Bob's Oblivion, the first time I encountered a vampire wielding a fist of Groenig. I was sneaking up on him and he turned around... BAM! half my life was gone! Scared the hell out of me lol. Werne..... OMG I don't know what to say... good idea! Damn good idea! I think I'll start that right now instead of sleeping or some other unimportant function... I'll be back in a bit with screenies...

TEXTURE RESOURCE Download link http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2324 Howdy, I just finally got this whole thing uploaded... it's a compilation of textures I created over the past few months for modders to use. These are a separate entity from my commercial work, so there won't be any conflict of interest with companies that use my paid content.

If there are any others of that type you'd like to see, by all means toss up a link to images! Otherwise the first run will be mostly middle eastern late bronze to 19th century. :D I'm trying my best to not make a third of the initial release be Orc weapons again. Got a lot of hate mail on that one for Oblivion lol. So it will be a lot of Ottoman items, with a handful of western European. I'm also thinking of doing some dragon bone body part weapons, like claws done into a mace, etc. ... just finished the assets for one of our games, so back down to 3 which means more time to work on this.

If you open the model in NifSkope, you can select it, right click and mouse over Texture, then select Export to export the UVW map. Save it to your desktop so you can find it easily. Open the original texture and the UVW map you just exported. On the UVW, copy it and paste it on top of the texture. In the layers tab, change the blending mode (says Normal by default) to Multiply. This will make only the black wireframe show. If you prefer, change the blending mode to Screen and then hit CTRL I to invert the colors for a white wireframe. May work better for a dark weapon. Work under this in layers as you normally would.

Did you reassign the texture path in NifSkope? If not, this could be the issue. This link may help. http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/NifSkope_Alchemy

Hehe cool. I haven't used Blender since.... 2004? so I don't know what all new tools are in it. One of our IT guys swore by it, but I found it wonky... of course, he would also sit behind me and rattle off all the mathematical equations I was going through while using Photoshop lol.... rather insane, that one. I just showed my boss the first yataghan. He flipped. He said it's things like that that make him glad I work for him... I replied that it still looks like romper room to me. :D

Werne, if you plan on editing the mesh, would you prefer to have the max file? Much easier to see what you are doing while it's still in quads. :D

Yup! The black background makes sure that no halo is seen... it is still there, but the eye regards it as a shadow, therefore telling the brain "yeah, that's supposed to be there" lol. If you need to do smudging to clean it up (time consuming yes, but it is still, even after a decade in the industry, my favorite method of fine tuning) do so on the texture that is to become the normal map and not on the normal map after the filter has been applied. Get the texture nice and smooth, then when you apply the normal map filter it will come out already fixed. The reason you don't want to smudge the normal map if it can be avoided is due to the alterations of the R and G it does. This can cause the normal map to give false readings, making it work improperly. The blur after applying usually works. Using blur on the before image can cause problems. Keep an eye out if using blur on the texture to be normal mapped if it is in layers still, that you don't get a white halo around your outside edges. It's a bug in PS that's been there forever. If you do end up with any kind of white halo, you can either erase it with a soft brush, or try Layers-> Matting-> Defringe and just leave it at 1 pixel. This cleans up any kind of artifacts around the edges, but hardens them up some.

Howdy, For a mod name, just keep it simple, like Hair, or Hair, Skyrim. People will check it regardless of the name. :) Okay now on to the business of textures... As long as you are keeping them 8x power of 2 you will be fine for size. I haven't looked at them to see what their default sizes are, so if you want to get a good amount of detail, go ahead and just double them. You can leave the DPI at 72. That's how it's gonna get read anyway. Even 1200 DPI will look identical to 72 in game... except for Flash games, where DPI actually changes what you see (i.e. 1200DPI becomes 1 pixel in size). Make sure you are working with a transparent background if you intend to make your own alpha channels. This way after you have the whole thing done you can save it out directly from layered PSD file to DXT5ARGB .dds file. After you save it, open that new file along side your PSD file. Then on the PSD file, slip in a black background under the texture and copy merged (CTRL A, CTRL SHIFT C) and paste that to your .dds file to remove any artifacts. Merge the layer down and re save. The DXT format will automatically make you an alpha channel based on the opacity of your PSD image, so the first .dds you make will have a correct alpha channel, but will most likely have a white background. If it has a black background, disregard the additional steps to making one. For normal maps: bump, normal, AO, glow, specular all work on the same principal of values. The brighter the area is, the higher/shinier the texture will be in game. The darker the area is, the more dull (matte)/lower the texture will be. If you want to just make your normal map from your hair texture using its own contrasts, this is fine. Just remember that the alpha channel of the normal map is your specular map. So if you paste in a copy of the hair texture with a black background into the normal map's alpha channel you will just need to do a contrast/brightness adjustment to get it to where you think it should be in game. This may take some testing to get correct. When you go to apply the nVidia normal map filter, make SURE the texture is flattened first. In the normal map tools, a scale of 4 is usually good for hair, but you can take it up to 6 if needed. Once applied, you may see some noise on it while zoomed in. If so, just hit it with Filter-> Blur-> Blur once. That will clean it up a lot. :) I'll bookmark this thread in case you have any more questions. Oh yeah... and make SURE to save the normal map as DXT5ARGB. You can save it as DXT3 but the size difference doesn't warrant the loss of quality for something so detailed as hair. EDIT: OOPS I forgot to mention... for the normal map, if you use the hair texture, sample the darkest color of the hair and use that for the background color, so the edge of the hair isn't a drastic jump.

Ian, that staff sword is cool! All the guys in the office have played DA and DA2 except for me lol. I'll see if I can get one of them to bring it in so I can see it in game, but those pics should be enough. Fatal, my preferred method is adding to leveled lists. The only issue is one that has arisen before, where someone puts out some kind of overhaul mod that has one or two tweaks the first week of a game's release, then everyone starts using it and gets upset if anything conflicts with it. Of course, the leveled lists are one of the first things to conflict lol. For FONV I just released content as resources. Nivea made a great mod with the content, but there were still a few items that never made it into players' hands. With Oblivion, many people were using OOO, and DEV_AKM ended up making compatibility mods for all of the big mods that were out. A lot of time was spent on those as they needed to be reworked every time one of us did any kind of update. I don't want DEV_AKM to have to go through that again. :D But... most likely the initial release will have the items in the leveled lists. I was just handed a fourth game to make content for here, so getting to finish Bob and do the store/crafting thing may end up on a back burner for a couple more months. Leveled lists are the fastest way to get content into players hands, short of a cheat barrel. I guess I could just make area specific containers too. That way there would be content spread out and placed without being too Monty Hall. :)

EARLY WIP Howdy all, I finally started digging out the weapons I've made this past year for Bob's Armory: Skyrim. Been getting them finished up (time permitting) slowly. We are working on 3 games right now, with one going into beta testing any time, so I've been pretty swamped. While I'd like to have around 100 items for the first release, it may be shortened down to around 30-40. Will have to see how it goes. Redguards are going to get some lovin' this time around, as I found a variety of gorgeous yataghan images to use as reference. Some items will be non TES lore, such as the dagger of Set and the Tyr variant. I may go ahead and do some with the divines on the pommels... again, time permitting. I am hoping once the CS comes out, to get a shop set up with an actual Bob (he is still under construction... can't make a head I like lol) who has a store where the items can be purchased and skills to craft them can be learned. If that doesn't work out, I'll go ahead and put the items into leveled lists so they can be found randomly, like Oblivion. Here are a few preview shots of some of the items. Iron Mace http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Mace-248410154?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=2 http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Mace-Detail-248413855?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=1 Bronze Dagger (Set ceremonial) http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Ceremonial-Dagger-242262055?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=3 Bronze Dagger (Tyr/Mars) http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Bronze-Dagger-Variant-271684533?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=0 Silver Yataghan http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Yataghan-3-271682682?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=0 Lucern Hammer http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Lucern-Hammer-3-271683060?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=0 Kajiit Dagger http://mr-dave.deviantart.com/art/Kajiit-Dagger-271683701?q=gallery%3Amr-dave&qo=0 EDIT: I'll be uploading new shots in this post as I get new items done. If anyone has suggestions or requests, feel free to post ideas and if possible, links to references, and I'll see what I can do about including them. Sorry, no Buster swords or FF items.

I purchased FONV from D2D, who had no warning about Steam whatsoever. The only thing mentioned at all was "Required third party download to install...". I am not fond of spyware, and Steam is exactly that. After downloading the game from D2D, I hit their install via DLM and went to make a cup of coffee. When I got back, there were no pop ups, or anything on my screen, so I clicked the install via DLM again, only to have Steam start up and tell me my system specs and ask me if I wanted to search for updated drivers through their browser. I was enraged. Now came the several hours long additional download Steam had to do for the actual install of the game. What the bloody hell was I downloading for the past 12 hours? I contacted D2D and let them know I would never be making another purchase from them again, and that I would be warning others on the multitude of forums to which I belong about their underhanded tactics of no mention of Steam. Below is their response, "Hi David, Thank you for contacting us! I am very sorry you feel that way, but we have provided all the information to you about Steam prior to your purchase. Please have a look at the purchase requirements, which Bethesda requires us to put that on the pages. “This product is not eligible for refunds. This title installs and requires a 3rd party client install to play.” This was noted to you prior to purchase. Bethesda, the publisher, is who decided this. You will not find it without Steam. Steam is the DRM system used to activate the game. Like Games for Windows Live etc... This is not something we’ve done to the game. Regards, " And my response to them, "Howdy, The ONLY statements made on the purchase page were these, as you pointed out: “This product is not eligible for refunds. This title installs and requires a 3rd party client install to play.” I am aware that Steam was not your choosing, but saying, "This title installs and requires a 3rd party client install to play." is a far cry from saying something more accurate, such as, "This title installs and requires Steam to play.". I would have never purchased it with that knowledge, and am currently posting to every online game magazine with which I am associated, so that others may be forewarned." They have subsequently offered to refund my money, but the damage has already been done. The issues, other than Steam spying on my every keystroke, are frequent CTDs (expected when Gamebryo is mentioned somewhere in the production, and not Steam's fault), random minimizing of the game by Steam for pop up ads, Steam taking random times to launch the game (anywhere from 40 seconds to 12 minutes with the average being 3-6 minutes), no access at all to the game manual (I submitted a ticket on this, and Steam responded 5 days later saying update Adobe reader. NOPE. Still get the same thing, the manual is broken and cannot be repaired or accessed), Steam constantly overwriting the .ini file if started in online mode. This will undoubtedly be my last purchase of a Steam game (never again will I buy a 'required third party...' game without knowledge of what that third party is), a Bethesda game, and Obsidian game, or anything from D2D. Already went through this kind of garbage from EA back with BF2142, where they forced spyware upon installation so they could spam players with appropriate in game billboard ads based on web browsing habits. Haven't bought an EA game since, and never will again. So yeah, those of you who do not wish to use Steam, let these companies KNOW and do not buy their games. Contact them and tell them the reason they don't have your money is because of their decision to implement Steam. Side Note: The game has a lot more wicked, twisted humor than FO3, but is horribly unbalanced.