"Proper" khajit and argonian bodyshapes/animations

[MarkInMKUK]

Semtex - you produce clearer English with Google Translator than many people who are supposed to speak English can.

 

I understood that shooting a bow while running away would be very complex. But every time I think something can't be done, somebody manages to do it, so I keep suggesting things :)

[AndyDaMage]

Sorry for my dissapearances guys.....been busy doing university assignments.

 

Anyway, Semtex! your textures for the centaur are brillant! However I really dont want to use the exsact same technique you did as you have merged the torso with the horse, making a lot more clipping issues when apperal is added. I do however like that way you've fixed it (adding an addition part of mesh onto the top that overlaps with an transparent texture) and if you dont mind, I will properbly end up using a similar technique to solve my seam.

 

 

 

Animations.....such an annoying system in oblivion. To note, you can indeed, draw and arrow and run while its drawn.....however the problem is that the game forces you to run very slowly. In the case of animations, the distance you specificy in the animation does not relate to the speed yo umove at, it rather effects the speed at which the animation plays. The only way to speed up the player, or anything, it to assign them a high speed stat. I am planning to look into stuff to see if there are any gamesettings I can potentially modify for this. In my head there are so many animation ideas I would love ot be able to implement, but the basic way oblivion does animations just doesnt allow it.

[Semtex]

Hi da mage

I know that the solution that I used to cover the interface is not too good.

I also tried the second option - edit the texture for the human body. In NIFscope it worked well, but not in the game - after many dozens of trials (I have made about a hundred textures gradually) getting the proper hue I left this option.

It's just a normal human body enlarged by about half a percentage point with same "material" as horse body. So overlap with player's body is small.

The overlap of clothing and armor is small, it does only on the back - and on the front in motion :wallbash: . It will have to be resolved through the exchange of models.

(Overlap in motion - Can help small correction of the vertex weight?)

A portion of the overlap is caused by animation - the movement of the human body to tilt forward (this is probably the rest of the horse animations - on the move also horse head and neck are tilt forward)

 

Horse mesh should still be slightly adjusted - transition on the backs between human and horse parts is now too sharp.

 

Exchanging of models will always be needed - many models of clothing and armor for the upper body has also links to the bones of the lower body and leg. This must be removed in new models.

 

I was try to join human body part to horse body, but it failed - each vertex can be controlled up to four bones, but in the transition area need more bones - about six.

The second problem is the scale. That the transient part of the body to function properly, he should exactly copy the human body skin. But the skeleton contains many Scale bones. So the problem is to determine the proper size of the human body skin before joining with horse body skin. If this fails, the overlap is much greater than in the applied solutions.

 

edit:

So has the idea: There is also a third option - completely revised textures for horse body and paste it as part of the texture of the human body ...

I ll try it tomorrow ...

Edited June 2, 2011 by Semtex

[AndyDaMage]

part of the problem with only adjusting the torso texture is that then the skin colour modifiers effect it and it goes a slightly different colour to the rest of the horse. The only way that I think you could fix it is to thne make the horse texture part of the race data so that the horse part is skin adjusted too. Its not my ideal plan, as then I need to create a new race for each colour of centaur.

 

What I would love is if there was some way to harness the power of these shaders, would be very cool if I could apply the hair shader to something like the tail, without having to have the tail use the hair texture. But from what I've seen this isnt possible.

[razorpony]

So I've been tossing a few things around in my head the past few days, and I'm not sure if the current direction is the way I want to go. Thought I'd put it up for an informal vote to get some input. Here's the deal:

 

Using scripts to change the mesh seemed very cool at first but now it's just striking me as unrealistic. Since we're going for more realistic bodies it seems backwards to have boots that 'magically' change shape depending on the race of the person wearing them. What I'm considering now is a more 'Morrowind-like' approach that forbids Khajiit from wearing regular armor but in turn adding a new vendor (perhaps around Borderwatch or Leyawiin) that will sell foot and leg armor for Khajiit. It would work something like this:

 

-This vendor would sell the 3 lowest grade armors in each category: Iron, Steel, and Dwarven for heavy and Fur, Leather, and Chainmail for light.

-To get the higher grade armors you would need to trade in a set of boots or greaves made of that material.

-The excess material left over from the creation of the paw armor would be turned into matching plate for the base of the tail.

-The player could choose through the barter screen which version (with or without tail armor) to buy, tail armor costing slightly more.

-If an esm/esp combo were used then any future Khajiit armors could easily be added to the store inventory as they are made/converted.

 

Scripting would still be required for NPCs in order for them to utilize the new meshes. Also, by combing the boot and tail armor meshes the NPCs could wear tail armor as well, since they do not equip tail slot items by default. I realize that logically the tail armor would be combined with greaves, but the greave conversion process would be merely reshaping and there would not be any excess material left over per se.

 

That's it in a nutshell. I'd like to hear everyone's opinion on it, both pro and con.

 

RP

[AndyDaMage]

considering that the armor is already gender changing? is it really too important that it could also be beast/human changing?

[MarkInMKUK]

I guess it's part of where you define the realism point to be.

 

From a purely personal level, having to have items modified to fit a Khajiit or Argonian sounds good - it adds realism (which i love). However, the converse should also happen - if you kill a Khajiit highwayman you should need to convert his gear back to human if you are a human.

 

Armoror level could have an influence - once you reach a certain level you should be able to convert between races yourself.

 

But for most people, "magic self-fitting" boots will allow them to enjoy the gameplay and the visuals without having to get into the deep underlying flaw.

 

I'd suggest the following:

 

(1) Initial release to get the mesh bugs out, using the scripted approach.

 

(2) Once the meshes are all fixed, a second hardcore realism release which uses the same items, but adds in the need for conversion, and maybe the armorer stuff. That way nothing is wasted, and people can select which esp to run to get the desired effect.

 

Does that sound like a good compromise, without wasting any of the work already done on either mesh or scripting?

[razorpony]

Da Mage: you have a point there.

 

Mark: That's sort of where I was heading. I still plan on the initial release to be scripted. Makes playtesting easier. If you want to go see what all the armors look like then hit the testinghall and voila. I suppose it's still an option for the final ultra platinum coated special edition version. :P

 

RP

[MarkInMKUK]

OK, that sounds good to me. I look forward to starting my Khajiit off from scratch - I'm also playing about with night-eye mods to get a more realistic effect. Someone mentioned Khajiit hands/gloves a while back - those could always be added later if enough people wanted them, I guess - but if so hopefully some of them can help with the mesh modding needed.

[Semtex]

:tongue: My "The third idea​​" works perfectly! :thumbsup:

Test:

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/3558/kent20.jpg

http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7060/kent21.jpg

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5870/kent23.jpg

 

The horse body and the human body uses the same texture (adjusted footmale.dds). (ESM and ESP are not modified.)

"Invisible" human body was removed from horse body model. The horse body uses material "skin" and has an modified UV mapping.

The most important modification was to rename NiTriStrips parts of the model - from name "Horse_Lower" to name "Foot:Horse_Lower". (It is a key point!)

 

Sure, there are some minor problems:

- nails have horse skin color

- for each color version of the Centaur - for each combination of human skin color and horse skin color - will be a new texture of the body (and three different - for body RF, RM and HGEC)

 

 

...if you kill a Khajiit highwayman you should need to convert his gear back to human if you are a human...

Not - why? His armor is "playable object" only for khajiit with the correct body proportions. If a player has not a "right" race, the armor can not be used - It can provide by an object script.

I think this is fair - if khajiit can not use man armor (or armor parts), man can not use khajiit armor. He obtained only an loot of an value and weight, which may, like khajiit, sell for money - or give to exchange (this is IMHO not necessary - except in VERY special cases).

 

I like the idea of Razorpony:

- cheapest armor can change the character itself (via "magic" or "natural" ability) - for Fur and Leather you need only knife :teehee:

- Usually armor can be purchased (or exchange) at the normal armor merchant

- Expensive armor change an specialist