LE Flat-chested Female Argonians, magnetic mesh

[KaptenN]

 

 

Success, I've found a pretty easy way to create a new skin and give any model I want to the female argonians. I switched the male argonian mesh to the human female mesh, lol. That was just to test it, of course. I didn't save that.

 

Now the obvious problem is that the meshes we need don't exist. I don't think anyone has made a total flat breast conversion for all the clothing and armor, or even the argonian body itself. If those meshes existed, the textures would be easy enough and I could make a WIP flat female argonian body. There's most likely nothing like that on the Nexus, because it would be classified as a pedophile mod unless it was meant for argonians, and if it was meant for argonians, then we wouldn't be on this thread. :(

 

So, although the idea could work, without a complete mesh conversion for a flat chest, it won't be possible.

This has to be the simple part. You can use Caliente's BodySlide to make a flat chested preset and then batch build most of the outfits.

 

 

The nipples might need to be removed as well, hmm... That could work though. Nipples can be made almost invisible with the right texture work.

 

So far:

I could probably make female argonians use a different mesh from everything else in the CK. Most likely. I never make promises, because then when it doesn't work out there has already been a warning.

Caliente made a bodyslide tool that can be used to make flat chested meshes.

Breast shadows and nipples can be removed from textures in many editing programs.

 

 

The nipple can probably be removed with the "nip-b-gone" slider in BodySlide++.

 

As for the shadows... I don't think that it is texture related. If outfits use normal maps that end with _msn as you indicated in the following post...

 

There are 3 types of textures.

argonianfemalebody.dds ---> It's called a diffuse map. The basic texture that you see in game.

argonianfemalebody_msn.dds ---> It's called a normal map. This texture controls how simple lighting acts on the diffuse map.

argonianfemalebody_s.dds ---> It's called a specular map. It controls how shiny the diffuse map is, and also controls how the shine effects behave.

 

...then that means that they use object space normal maps. I know that most other things in Skyrim, other than bodies and outfits, use normal maps that end with _n, which means that they use tangent space normal mapping, just like in Oblivion. Here's the thing; object space normal mapping can't handle meshes that morph. It's so stupid it's absurd. Had Bethesda known what they were doing then bodies and outfits would use tangent space normal mapping and everything else would use object space normal mapping, but instead they did the other way around.

 

Tangent space normal mapping stores normals in two dimentions. If you open up a tangent space normal map you'll see that it is blue/purple. When light is calculated the shape of the mesh is taken into account.

Object space normal mapping stores normals in three dimentions. If you open up an object space normal map you'll see that it is RGB coloured. When light is calculated the shape of the mesh is NOT taken into account.

Tangent space normal mapping is more performance heavy than object space normal mapping, but object space normal mapping, as I stated before, can't handle a mesh that changes shape.

 

If outfits really do use _msn normal maps then the only way to fix the problem with the fake shadows is to bake new normal maps for every outfit in a 3D program like Blender.

Edited July 11, 2013 by KaptenN

[padmaus]

 

Tangent space normal mapping stores normals in two dimentions. If you open up a tangent space normal map you'll see that it is blue/purple. When light is calculated the shape of the mesh is taken into account.

Object space normal mapping stores normals in three dimentions. If you open up an object space normal map you'll see that it is RGB coloured. When light is calculated the shape of the mesh is NOT taken into account.

Tangent space normal mapping is more performance heavy than object space normal mapping, but object space normal mapping, as I stated before, can't handle a mesh that changes shape.

 

If outfits really do use _msn normal maps then the only way to fix the problem with the fake shadows is to bake new normal maps for every outfit in a 3D program like Blender.

 

eek! that might explain why the area around the flattened chest looks strange. hmm... does anyone know how to make new normal maps with blender? ive tried doing tutorials with that thing, but im always so lost... ill see if i can find some directions online, once the mesh is completed.

[KaptenN]

I know how to. The problem is that the normal maps that comes with the game are made from high quality meshes. The whole point of normal maps is to give the illusion of detail. Making the normal map from the low quality mesh that you intend to apply it to is therefor pretty pointless. They only reason to do it is to remove the odd shadows, but you will lose a lot of detail.

 

Personally I've only done it once and that's when I made a pregnant body mesh with BodySlide and needed to correct the shadows. However, I cut out the belly part of the new normal map and pasted it onto the old high quality normal map. Since it is a round belly the loss in quality is hardly noticable, but if you did the same with the breasts on clothing I think that the loss in detail would be pretty obvious because the high quality normal map might take seams, fabric and layers into account while the low quality mesh lacks all that. Though I haven't yet had a look at any of the clothing's normal maps, so I don't know for sure.

 

Btw, tangent space normal maps are what is often refered to as "bump maps", since they record the diffrences, or bumps, between a low quality and a high quality mesh. While an object space normal map only take the high quality mesh into account. That's why the mesh must maintain roughly the same shape when you use object space normal maps.

 

EDIT: We are in luck! I took a look in the texture BSA-file and found that clothing use tangent space normal maps! :D

But then I don't know what is causing the strange shadows someone reported.

Edited July 11, 2013 by KaptenN

[padmaus]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/d28133b8cfbcdaeaf48514ff4ecf8d1f/tumblr_mprkjgzrlk1sos6bvo1_500.jpg

 

this is what we have so far, courtesy of insanityman. you cant tell much in the preview, but up close you can see some strangeness around the outline of where the breast would be, as well as the nipple area. can you tell if this is because the diffuse texture was made to stretch here, or is it an issue with the normal map?

[KaptenN]

The only way to find out is to open up the textures and take a look...

[Rennn]

Well, that actually looks promising. It looks like the UV map is messed up around the nipple. Either that or something deliberately blurred the texture there.

 

Edit: Should the bellybutton be removed from the texture?

 

Another edit: Do you happen to have the resources for the current WIP floating around?

 

Triple edit: Does this affect every female, or has someone for sure changed the female argonian mesh to a new mesh?

 

Lol, many edits.

Edited July 12, 2013 by Rennn

[padmaus]

Well, that actually looks promising. It looks like the UV map is messed up around the nipple. Either that or something deliberately blurred the texture there.

 

Edit: Should the bellybutton be removed from the texture?

 

Another edit: Do you happen to have the resources for the current WIP floating around?

 

Triple edit: Does this affect every female, or has someone for sure changed the female argonian mesh to a new mesh?

 

Lol, many edits.

you should message insanityman about that. hes doing all the meshwork--and yes, belly buttons must go too. not sure about how to make this affect only argonian females, but im pretty sure its doable. im pretty new to modding, so i cant answer many of these questions, but i do have many ideas for mods that i want to try to make in the future.

 

btw thank you guys so much for helping me out with this!

Edited July 12, 2013 by padmaus

[Rennn]

I'll message him, then. Thank you. :)

[padmaus]

just updated the texture to a non-bellybutton version.

[AbrahamMateo]

This mod looks great. This issue is something that annoys me since Oblivion. Glad your working on it so all of us the lore-friendly/inmersive fanatics can play with an argonian female without feeling something is horribly wrong with it. ;D

 

Thanks for the work.