Custom Race: Avian

[PrinceMason]

**NEW**

Concept art!:

General(male):http://24.media.tumblr.com/24dad50cacd0c65406e0d4578b2b9338/tumblr_mwg7xufafZ1rcmqa7o1_500.png

Wings:http://25.media.tumblr.com/735ac4bf718483d9384168aa1dd2603b/tumblr_mwg7xufafZ1rcmqa7o2_1280.png

Females/Guard:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4380ae2ce6a56253d78c547c20beb20b/tumblr_mwg9e7lm9O1rcmqa7o1_1280.png

 

 

 

This is the right place to post this, yes? It's not a request - it's something I myself plan to make.

 

I have big plans for this race and things implemented to compliment it, but I myself don't have any prior experience. I'm fairly confident in my ability to pick it up quickly, though. But any suggestions, ideas, or even tutorials you think I would benefit from are high appreciated!

 

This post looks lackluster as of now, because I've barely started. But this post will hold all my updates and plans for the mod. The plans will be done from easiest to implement to hardest, but the updates will all be listed in order.

 

Also, Avian is a placeholder name. I hope to have a fitting name for the likes of Skyrim(ie, Catfolk are Khajiit, reptilians are Argonians - even elves are -mers.)

 

If this is the wrong place to be putting this, PLEASE let me know and tell me where it should be posted and I'll move it there.

 

Plans

Race:

• Stats: They will essentially have a balanced mix between Argonians and Wood Elves, with their main bonus being Archery.
• Meshes: I plan to give them beaks, hopefully by working with the mesh and textures of an Argonian head(any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!) They will also have tail feathers, claw hands and feet(if possible), and possibly wings, if flight can be worked in.
• Flight: I hope to give them wings and an option of flying. Flying will have the same speed as sprinting, except the benefit of flying over obstacles. The flight will have a height limit, of course, and I want it to slowly drain stamina so it can't be abused.
• Digitigrade legs: I'm a little unsure about this, because it would take a lot of work with skeletons and armor fittings. If I do add them, the armor will go a simplistic route and opt for no pants(I find that a bit more lore-friendly - if Avians even are lore friendly, another thing I could use some advice on Check updates for Lore-friendliness!). Boots will be edited to anklets that give the same benefits.
• Beaks: Not sure how this could be implemented at all, but it'd be a nice idea if nothing else. Mouth shape options give you different inspired beaks, ie eagle, parrot, owl, etc etc. This will probably be a difficult concept, unless it's easier than I think - though probably not, since certain beaks would alter the entire face shape at least slightly.
• NPCs: Like a few race mods I've seen, I want to scatter a few NPCs around. The biggest thing relating to NPCs will be touched upon a little later on in this post, with something else I plan to implement to compliment the race. Any NPCs I do put in will more than likely be non-important NPCs in high mountains and possibly northern holds.
• Dialogue: This is a very small detail, but I was contemplating making Argonians recognize you as Avian. I heard Scouts-Many-Marshes(in Windhelm, he works at the docks) call me egg brother when I played as an Argonian. If I can, I want to isolate that line so it can also be used if you play an Avian. It could also hint that Avians and Argonians are related somehow, or are just very close races.
• Avian-Avian dialogue: This will obviously be unvoiced, unless people come forth with voices that don't sound too odd in game. When speaking to other Avians, they will reference thew two of you being of the same flock(ie flock brother, similar to Argonian's marsh brother and egg brother(sister, I assume, if female)) as well as possibly cloud/sky brother.
• Lore: Possibly an enemy to Dwemers? They live in the deep, while Avians take to the skies. I myself can see them as opposition to each other, if not solely for their ideals. Despite this, they have technologies similar to the Dwemer, but are not used for fighting. You probably won't see Avian constructs on the ground. Avians also are skilled archers, and will almost always prefer light armor with a bow and arrow.

City

• City of the Sky: Yup, I plan on having a City in the clouds. It will be fully inhabited by Avian NPCs. People have made new lands you can visit. New towns, new player homes. People have made flying/floating abodes. Why can't we mix those? I REALLY like the bit of lore involving bird people on islands, so I'm going in that direction instead. It will essentially be an isolated island paradise.
• Avian constructs: The city will have better technology in it, along with the entire city functioning on one. The most noticeable construct being the latter - as it keeps the city in the sky. Any inventions from them will do the job they're made for, but will seem rough around the edges and unsophisticated, given them being cut off from others.
• Home: There will be a player home for purchase that I hope to make upgradeable, like any other vanilla player home. Until I think of quests for the City, the home will be able to be bought right away.
• Quest: At the moment I have only one idea for a quest relating to the City(or, technically two). One can be taken up by any race by talking to a non-sky-dwelling Avian about the City. The other being a Return To Your Roots quest, which will be activated either immediately upon character creation or when you speak to another Avian. I got the idea for the Roots quest when I got a quest upon discovering Nirnroot.
• Marriage partners: I hope to have at least one of each gender located in the city.

 

Other plans will be added if they pop up.

 

Updates

Nov 17, 2013

• General concept art added.
• Some work is being done with the tail, but nothing worthy of showing off. Just putting it out there that I AM working on this!
• Also changed up the plans a bit to fit more with the given lore.

Nov 13, 2013

• Permissions to use digitigrade legs from Unique Beast Races! Thanks to Derok.
• Lore mentioning bird men. Possible race name: Topalians?

Edited November 18, 2013 by PrinceMason

[gulogulo]

Hello!

 

Your idea is very interesting but Im not sure you grasp the complexity of the task. The most important question for me is whether you can create a working model with wings and with flying animations. If you can ...................... then please contact me. I need such model for my mod. Some kind of beast with wings that uses werewolf animations and has custom flying animations. Im ready to make the flying scripts myself. I have experience in the field and few crazy ideas.

 

Im not that realy interested with the rest honesty and besides the flying should be made first for if it cant be done the rest is pointless.

[Derok]

I'm for all beast races mods and I love when people want to make new unique races. I wanted myself to make the Argonian sub-race called Naga. I was going to sculpt a snake head but then I realized making an new animated head from scratch is too hard or even impossible.

The Argonian head just wouldn't look right as base for your race. It's too reptilian looking and has lot of spikes.

I'm now working on a werewolf race, but only because I could find some unused assets to use as base.

The best I can do to help is giving you permission to use the new digitigrade bodies used in my mod Unique Beast Races. Also I plan conversion of most armors and maybe boots.

And big suprise, bird men are in tes lore. Mentioned in this book:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Father_Of_The_Niben

About the head, do you know how to make the weight slider (so the neck scales with body) and the facial sliders?

Also... Flight... It may be possible. Race settings have a walks, swims, and "flies" tick box. I want to see what happens if I check that box.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Derok

[Hallgarth]

You've got ambition, I'll give you that.

If you're going to pull this off, then you're going to need a whole lot of people who already know how to sculpt heads, how to use .tri files, animations, etc. Or it'll take YEARS to complete, if it even gets past the planning stage.

By your post, I don't think you fully comprehend the task you have set out for yourself. I wish you luck, because it does sound interesting.

[PrinceMason]

@gulogulo

Actually, I want to do flying last. If I can't manage to work it out well enough, then I think the race would be fine as just a bird-like beast race with tail feathers. It would still be a cool race in my opinion, since there's not a lot of diversity with the beast races as compared to humans and elves.

 

@Derok

A Naga race would definitely be cool. I think the biggest trouble would be the slithering animations, since you could just alter the mesh slightly and change texture for a more snake like head, I think.

And yeah, for that aspect it would have been easier to just alter the Khajiit's fur to look like feathers. But my plan was to shape the already large mouth into a proper beak, and then add feathers and alter face shapes.

And thank you for permissions! As for the armor, I do prefer the idea of no pants + anklets, because it just feels right for a bird race in my opinion. If enough people say otherwise though, I'm not one to deny. (It wouldn't counteract your's of course, I mean them being a race specific thing if possible)

Also, that bit of lore is very interesting. From reading it, it might be a better idea to change the sky city to those islands, as well as make the race more primitive rather than what I was planning on going for. Though, they have advanced some since the telling of this. And perhaps make the race call themselves Topalians, in reverence to the one they made their lord.

Also, not yet. This project is going to prove to be a learning experience as well, at least for me.

 

@Hallgarth

I know a LOT is gonna have to go into this. From what I can tell though, the community seems really good with helping each other out. For example, the post above giving me permissions for the legs! As for sculpting heads and file understanding etc, there seem to be quite a lot of tutorials. If someone came forward and offered help, then I would gladly accept it, but I'd rather not burden people by asking them.

Edited November 13, 2013 by PrinceMason

[Matth85]

I must ask: Have you done ANYTHING similar to this before?

I ask because, you know, this is no easy task. Making a mesh is one thing, making a good mesh of a character will take you months to learn. If you have no experience in 3d before, we talk years to get anything of quality out.

 

If you got experience with character creation, animations and rigging, I say: Good luck!

If you got nothing of that, I say: Start small! I bet you won't find any architect in the world that started their job by making a skyscraper.

 

But you are right, the few of us left on the forums are a helpful bunch. It's all the matter of asking the right question, and somebody will always know.

 

Good luck!

 

Matth

[PrinceMason]

I've been doing a little testing for a while, but nothing big yet. Thank you for the advice! I'm hoping to start out with just the tail and shaping the beak before I get into much else.

[Matth85]

In that case, I recommend you take it even slower than that.

As in, learn your software package.

 

This is how I would do this:

In your basic 3d package - make a base mesh.

Importing it into my sculpting software - Flush out the anatomy and details.

Back into 3d package - Fit it to to the argonian skeleton, and get it rigged correctly.

Tweak every animation to fit

Tweak every vanilla armor sets to fit

 

Other options would be to edit an existing race. Though that would require a lot of tweaking, but if you'd rather tweak than create, that's fine.

 

Now, what I am going to tell you is more of a rule than a tip: Use reference. As much reference as possible.

[PrinceMason]

I plan to kind of mix tweaking and creating. For instance, I'll have to create a new tail and wings if I go down the flying route. Again, thank you greatly for the advice and I will definitely be taking your advice to get a good grasp of things.

 

And I've always been big on references. I don't like to jump into things without any - especially something like this.

[Derok]

Personally I would just try to make awesome textures. Working wings and new animations are an extra, something you may consider if everything looks right.

Also don't bother if something is lore friendly or not. After all, The Elder Scrolls is fantasy, so almost anything can be lore friendly if it doesn't directly break existing lore. And the beauty of TES is that is in contine expansion, each new game devs add story, creatures, places etc... So why we modders should be limited to do something because it's not in the wiki?

But it's nice that this book is giving you ideas.

Edited November 13, 2013 by Derok