Sandaron

I think I spent an hour or two banging my head against a wall, but it's something related to skinning when the mesh is exported, and it's specifically the Spine2 bone. When I delete that bone the mesh pops back to how it should look, but that's not useful because the mesh isn't properly rigged anymore at that point. Following the steps of the second post fixes this because the mesh data is now relying on the CK export skin data, which isn't quite as broken. (the CK one looks a bit weird compared to the rest pose of the skeleton as well, but not nearly as messed up) The engine also seems to have ways of placing meshes based on the way it's skinned (so it might look different in-game as it does in nifskope) as far as I can see. I haven't really looked that much into it though, but it seems to behave that way; some modded hair I've seen isn't placed on top of the head and the origin is at the centre, but it still appears correctly in-game, and a lot of the vanilla face data is completely zeroed out; the mesh data of the eyes, inner mouth and eyebrows are at 0,0,0 but so is the origin and it still appears where the face is. I've even messed up some skinning of my own mod and placed the bone data a bit far forward, which caused alignment issues even though the actual mesh was placed in the same position as the rest pose of the skeleton. Bethesda also changed the way mesh data is stored for SE compared to LE; previously the mesh (NiTriShapeData) and skin (BSDismemberSkinInstance) data was separate, but for SE they combined them into one block (BSDismemberSkinInstance) and that probably has some effect on things. It beats me what actually causes it though; it could be almost anything as far as I know. Probably a bit late for a reply, but I hope it enlightens anyone else that might stumble across this thread. It's certainly the best thing I've found so far to get towards fixing my problems, but I'm still not quite there

When I was throwing around ideas while I was initially blocking it out I went to a tangent of an 80s shoulder pad jacket, but with this gladiator/barbarian bikini vibe. It might be cool to make that (or even just a more symmetrical version), but I honestly don't want to add anything else to it; I want to eventually finish the goals I have with it and move onto something else.

I'll leave this here ;) https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/106393

I'm back with another update. I've got a working model and some rough textures, mostly just to test how it works in engine; the models overwrite the amulet of akatosh, ring of hircine and monk boots which isn't really ideal (and I will 100% change later)... but anyway, there was some slight clipping I noticed in 2 places I'll have to fix up and the textures need heavy adjusting for the most part. I also noticed that on the box art, the thing on her chest is an amulet; so I adjusted the bra to have 2 straps and I still need to properly make the amulet. in-game screenshot: :smile:

So I have an update. Who thought it would be this early? I sure as heck didn't. I've blocked out what I think represents the Arena bikini armor, for the most part. At closer inspection, the box art looks to maybe have a right shoulder pad or something, maybe it's a leather mantle thing, but from the hand hidden behind the lady, it definitely looks asymmetric from the arm thing on her left side (the closest I could find in reference is called a segmentata, I don't know what else it could be called). I also did some "research" to guess what the back might look like as well as just mimicking the front part a bit; I'm not sure if it'll stay this way, but I'll see when I work on it again. The boots are a complete shot in the dark, I just thought it might work and maybe it does. If I do the boots the way they are I'll have to implement it with one of those high heels mods; another thought is to try some roman/gladiatorial sandals as a flat footed option, but I haven't thought that far yet. Anyway, I wouldn't mind some feedback in terms of the basic shapes compared to the box art or ideas for the obscured parts, if anyone is willing to share. A render of the "armor": The box art:

and bless the lord, for it is a great bikini. I kinda like it, it's at least trying to be armor and that's certainly commendable, I guess. If I ever get bored I might try my hand at it; it seems like a no-brainer of a mod and it's pretty simple to make something like that relative to other things. It's like one of those memes about having big brain energy; just making a bikini is a normal thing to do, but making a bikini that's also BASICALLY BUILT INTO THE LORE is some next level move, it's just hiding in plain sight AND no one saw it. However, that leads to the next (logical, illogical?) step, which would be the TES Arena box art bikini on the TES Daggerfall box art lich and I don't know if I (or the world) will ever be ready for THAT... (I'm sorry).

Yo what up skyrim Back in August I released this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/39702 For like a month after that I was slowly working on making a set of armor to go along with it which isn't quite as inspired by Morrowind,but I think it's still pretty cool; the shape of the gauntlets is modelled somewhat off Wraithguard and the boots are a bit more top-heavy like Morrowind's, the main torso piece was mostly referenced from something someone in the comments suggested (some Legends card I think) and there's also a few hints of vanilla armor hanging around too (some might say like a bad stench... I'm kidding!). I got pretty burnt out on it for various reasons and completely dropped it. I did a little bit of tweaking since, but it's basically negligible. Aaanyway, I just wanted to show this off since it might actually reach the light of day now. The textures aren't final + it's rendered in Blender Eevee, so it's definitely not going to look remotely like this in-game. I also have a high poly model of a female version hanging around too, which I'll have to sort out as well (boob plate, yes or yes?), but it probably won't be nearly as much hassle; I feel I've learnt a lot from both the trials and tribulations of this armor and everything I've done since then and now. I grabbed a posable skeleton for blender so I'm not weight painting like an absolute maniac, don't ask me why I didn't do this sooner. I also realised glossiness is the literal inverse of roughness, so that's added (or possible removed?) fun when making the texture maps. I'M A FREAKIN' GENIUS PEOPLE. I hope you enjoy the picture! :)