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"Proper" khajit and argonian bodyshapes/animations


MarkInMKUK

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Good luck razorpony! We're rooting for you! :thumbsup:

 

Scripted armor specific to Khajiit would be a natural outgrowth of the stuff Drake's version already does - if that functionality is kept a "tribal" pack can be added later with little difficulty.

 

I guess ideally we'll end up with one mod to handle BOTH races, but that may be asking too much. One esp per race isn't too bad as an overhead - I can always remove something else :)

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Just wanted to post a progress report.

 

I've finished the legs and feet for both Roberts male and female bodies. The feet have been reworked a bit more to reduce some unneeded polys and smoothe the mesh. I also changed the UV mapping to blend more seamlessly with the leg texture. Overall I think they turned out well. I changed the positioning of the claws to the top of the toes to resemble the way an actual cats claws roll forward when extended. They're still black, I can't find a color I like that gives decent contrast with the fur. Any suggestions here? This is what the feet currently look like in Nifscope:

 

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w101/Razorpony/Crebain/NewFeet.jpg

 

I've also worked out what I hope to be the last of the scripting hurdles. Now that I'm confident this will actually work I can share with you the details. I've used an OBSE function to redirect what .nifs get loaded based on the player (or NPCs) race. Basically if you're an Imperial then steel boots will look like steel boots. However if you take those same boots off and give them to your Khajiit CM partner, they will look like Khajiit style boots. No vanilla .nifs get overwritten and all NPCs in the game will get the new style armors whenever the mod is loaded. It also fixes the Springheel Jak quest item issue. We can make any armor look like anything we want, but only when worn by a Khajiit.

 

The downside is that to do this I had to attach scripts to all the vanilla armors, and edit those scripts for quest items. This SHOULDN'T cause any problems so long as no other mods try to do the same thing. I didn't want to use this method but it was the only way I could get everything to work seamlessly and so it was a fair tradeoff in my opinion. So far I have a rough model of the steel boots that look like this:

 

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w101/Razorpony/Crebain/NewBoots.jpg

 

The rest of the vanilla armors will likely have a similar style unless anyone has other suggestions. I'll report back in when I've made more progress.

 

-Razorpony

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The meshes aren't bad though they do seem to have a couple of solely aesthetic issues. The biggest one would be making the calves shorter. I personally think it looks really awkward, and it's likely going to make it a pain in the butt to get the feet to work with any type of unmodified pants. I don't suppose the Real High Heels mod would help with that, would it?

 

Second thing may just be me being picky. The toes seem to have some odd lengths there. Were you going for a more human-like foot? The toes on a cat paw don't shorten to the outside like that. The middle two toes are roughly the same length while the outer two are slightly shorter, as you can see in this picture.

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re the claws: What about a somewhat shiny light grey?

 

I'm loving the leg armors; having the claws exposed would definitely give a combat advantage (not like we can utilize that in OB... but it at least fits logically) Perhaps adapted fingerless gauntlets would fit for the hands (perhaps utilizing the paw hands you made... least I think that was you...).

 

Also, cause I'm curious... has Drake been notified about what you guys are doing here? He might have some suggestions, and you might be able to share scripts for when he's finally able to mod again.

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Lattice: My first attempt changed the leg shape more but I ran into issues with the skeleton rigging getting wonky the more I deviated from the standard mesh. What you see is a balance between aesthetics and ability, I'm trying not to get too far into the realm of changing skeletons or animations or having to re-weight paint the leg and foot meshes. I'm not sure how the high heel mod works, but I don't want things to get more complex than they are right now. On a purely aesthetic note: I like the fact that there are both human and feline traits. It makes the Khajiit neither fully human nor fully feline but a hybridization of both. As far as pants fitting the legs, no they won't. BUT, I'm working on mesh replacers for all vanilla greaves, pants, boots and shoes, so it's all good. Modded armors will look like they always did unless someone requests or creates a conversion.

 

Erudite: I'll play around with lightening the color a bit. I haven't been in contact with anyone else yet, mainly because I wanted to see if this would even work first. The scripted feet that work with Argonian beautification are extremely complex, and unfortunately scripting isn't my strong suit. Also, they are pretty limited in scope from what I remember,,, there's only a couple of pant/feet combinations that work together. That's not what I'm going for here. I have a feeling that after the Khajiit portion of the mod is done there will be requests for an Argonian version, and I'll be in touch with Drake about pooling resources.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Also, anyone who is interested in doing some beta testing once I get it up and running message me with an email addy and I'll get copies out before it goes on the Nexus.

 

-Razorpony

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It's probably something that demands the resources of Pixar, but...

 

Is it even possible to replace the Khajit and Argonian races with ones that actually have bodies that LOOK like lizard-evolved or cat-evolved ones? Female lizards with boobs just looks wrong somehow, and cats with only two mammaries are certainly odd - most cats have eight IIRC. Plus their leg stricture looks very odd using a basically human animation.

 

I believe it's 8 for dogs, and 6 for cats. And 13 for the virginia opossum :-)

 

Point made though.....human body with an animal head stuck on the neck isn't very convincing. Those races could be really interesting and attractive with some effort.

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I'm not so sure on those bulky boot-upper sections, which look so detached from the lower sections. I've still got no net access at home, so find it hard to have any meaningful input but I'll have a look when I can for some alternative concepts.

 

The actual feet look great now, but the leg bone proportions above may mean we want to move the knees up a bit, and that'll mean a tweaked skeleton - not too hard as far as I understand but the modification installer would need to handle that. Obviously some work will be needed on animation to check that the walk looks ok, and to tweak tail motion, etc.

 

I suggest starting talking with drake now about his stuff, as he's taken the approach he did for assorted reasons - maybe that'll stop us heading down a blind alley someplace.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been going pretty well, busy with various armor conversions. This is the slow tedious part, getting all the meshes edited and fitting together. I wasn't that crazy about the original steel boot I posted either, so I decided to make a new mesh from scratch. This is the Ebony version, basically a short shinguard with linked plates over the foot. I think it looks much nicer. For my sanity's sake, I've decided to use this mesh for all the boots and just tune the UV and texture to the various materials. I've almost got the male armor set complete. After that is female and then both sets of clothing. And THAT will just be for Roberts, I'll still have HGEC to do, but I'll likely release Roberts as a beta and then HGEC as an add on pack later.

 

Razorpony

 

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w101/Razorpony/Crebain/EbonyAngle.jpg

 

 

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w101/Razorpony/Crebain/EbonySide.jpg

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