Creating a mesh for a scar (not the assault rifle)

[ClayPidgeon162]

I'm working on a companion who had a scar going across her neck, meant to be a scar from a slave collar, and part of her personality is that she covers up her scars with tattoos.

 

Here's a current picture of her.

 

So, she has a tattoo running across her neck, meant to cover up the scar. My problem is that I want the scar to be noticeable to the player without being overly obvious. The best way for me to do this seems to be to create a mesh for the scar so that its contours appear from beneath the tattoo.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know the first thing about creating/altering meshes. I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction to some good tutorials, programs I'd have to use, etc on how I can go about learning to create this particular mesh.

 

Thanks.

[AllanOcelot]

Ive just come off a week about learning all there is to know about making, skinning, importing exporting, you name it, ive had to learn it.

 

Your best bet for something like this would be to ask an experienced modder, if you truely wish to get started and are ready for the time and commitment to making a mod then please head over to blender.

 

Blender is a free 3d modeling program. Once you belive you have mastered the basics ( id start with this simple but effective tutorial :

, he is young, but his advice is sound.)

 

Your next step will be importing models into blender, there are plenty of tutorials out there, but its good to get grounded with the basics first.

have fun with blender. :)

[ClayPidgeon162]

Thanks

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Its good to learn how to make meshes and stuff, but i was wondering about how you are planning to place a scar mesh onto the face or neck?

 

The head meshes have morphing animations of facegen on them so each vertex is referenced in several files of the game. This makes it complicated to actually alter the mesh of the head.

 

A great alternative would be to make a normalmap for your character s head. and have the scar strongly detailed in it, this way when light reflects off the area the scarred area will reflect diferently and There will appear to be an actual indentation without altering any geometry.

[ClayPidgeon162]

Hi!

 

Its good to learn how to make meshes and stuff, but i was wondering about how you are planning to place a scar mesh onto the face or neck?

 

The head meshes have morphing animations of facegen on them so each vertex is referenced in several files of the game. This makes it complicated to actually alter the mesh of the head.

 

A great alternative would be to make a normalmap for your character s head. and have the scar strongly detailed in it, this way when light reflects off the area the scarred area will reflect diferently and There will appear to be an actual indentation without altering any geometry.

 

I didn't really think that far ahead. My initial thought was to just create it as a separate item, like clothing, but then I realized it wouldn't look right whenever the character twisted their neck.

 

It's purely a cosmetic detail, so it's probably not worth going to the trouble of creating a new mesh.

 

Thanks for the alternative. Just one question, is a normalmap the .dds file ending with "_n"?

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Yeah, it is the one with _n on it. you will be pleased with the result once you have a good normalmap made.

 

So what do you use for textures? there is normalmap plugins for gimp, paint.net or photoshop.

 

 

I guess u can use some links so i hope these can be helpful.

 

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Understanding_Normal_Maps

 

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/95745-i-need-a-specific-normal-mapping-tutorial/

[ClayPidgeon162]

Photoshop.

 

Thanks a lot for the help. I really appreciate it.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

For making normalmaps with photoshop You should try ndo cause you can get a lot of control over the result.

 

http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/244691-ndo-normal-creation-toolkit/