"Proper" khajit and argonian bodyshapes/animations

[MarkInMKUK]

Thread hijacking's something that just happens - and while not quite what the thread was started to cover, your project is well within the scope of the things people here are tinkering with. Certainly your input on other parts of the project will be appreciated.

 

As a side note, maybe try modelling your horse part on the Caspian breed. It's a very old breed originally used by the Persians for chariot-pulling, and it likely to be similar to those breeds used in ancient Greece. The original size of the breed is thought to be about 9 hands (36 inches / 91.4cm) which would scale better onto a human body - which probably also ought to be adjusted to a typical ancient Greek height to get the ratio more correct.

[AndyDaMage]

Well I have to say you guys got me a little intrigued with the beast race legs. So this is what I did this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoXla9m8wLQ

 

 

I decided as a test that I would try maknig the proper looking beast race legs only editing the skeletonbeast.nif. As you can see it sort of worked. Some parts look alright...others are just plain silly looking. I wont be taking this any further, but it does show off how powerful editing the skeleton can be.

 

Plus its good to laugh at.....oversized leather boots :D

[MarkInMKUK]

That was certainly interesting, and I'm sure the people who actually do the 3D modding have taken careful note of the results. Because of the larger feet, he seemed to be running a bit knock-kneed, so maybe an animation tweak might also be needed ... but at least we know from Drake's work you CAN use a custom skeleton on a per-race basis,

[Semtex]

I would try maknig the proper looking beast race legs only editing the skeletonbeast.nif

This can not work properly - when you edit the skeleton, you must change the length and the angles between bones. This requires simultaneous change in many animations files. Otherwise, the result is "unusual".

And the second thing - such an outcome is usually the result of "incorrect" matched skin to bones.

 

Better result - used is probably normal, unmodified skeleton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpjLEx4WLpc

 

Another option would be to use "Skeletal Variation" by TheTalkieToaster (http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29853)

Edited May 6, 2011 by Semtex

[AndyDaMage]

I would try maknig the proper looking beast race legs only editing the skeletonbeast.nif

This can not work properly - when you edit the skeleton, you must change the length and the angles between bones. This requires simultaneous change in many animations files. Otherwise, the result is "unusual".

And the second thing - such an outcome is usually the result of "incorrect" matched skin to bones.

 

 

Hence why i used dummy bones. The way dummy bones work in a skeleton is that you place these between two bones, make rotations, translations and scalers and it wont be effected by the animations.

 

 

I attached the skeletonbeast.nif I created. You can have a look at the structure of it.....even look at it in-game, it was the only file i edited to make that video. Otherwise thats a completely vanilla install).

 

 

 

EDIT: To your edit. Yes, the problem with that though is that as soon as you make a custom leg mesh....oh no, now you cant wear boots/shoes. Having a skeleton only edit aviods this.

 

To be fair, its not going to be a perfect solution for this problem. But also note that my skeleton edit is only about an hour or so work.....its just an example of what skeleton editing can do. For example, you notice the toe part on te ground is a bit long, you could adjust the scaler for the toe to shorten that.

 

The Skeletal Variation by TheTalkieToaster uses the same method, dummy bones inbetween the actual bones in order to change the look. Thats who a learnt the method from, at the same time showing him how to modify the player's skeleton (which he made this mod with: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31821). As far as these methods go, that have been in use for over a year now (this time last year I was already changing the player's skeleton via OBSE), it just many modders arent realising what they could do with them.

 

I've had to explain this so many time when dealing with people in my centaur threads. I could do a nice upperbody mesh that molds nicely into the horse half....but I never will, because the moment I do that I break any possibility of compatability with other mods. I dont know if you guys feel the same way, but in my opinion if the solution isnt going to work with at least 90% of the mods out there, then it isnt a solution. Might be nice to have a khajiit with proper legs, but if you only have a couple of pants/shoes that would work for it, would many people really want to play like that?

Edited May 6, 2011 by da mage

[MarkInMKUK]

The Khajiit with "proper" legs would actually look VERY odd (I've watched my cat walking on his hind legs and it's really not a good look for even vaguely humanoid animations), hence why we're doing the best we can with the digitgrade foot (Razorpony's work at the moment) and working on a full replacement set of stock clothing/armour meshes/textures for that foot (Razorpony again) - the whole substitution then being handled by some of Drake's clever scripting. Once done, adding a tweaked/adjusted skeleton could well allow a body/leg proportion change to make the Khajiit look even more "correct" with just a minor angle/length change. The scripting method could also easily handle altered meshes/textures for clothing mods to suit the centaur, thus allowing it to complete quests where wearing ALL parts of the armour are required, and LOOKING as if that is being done ...

 

... which means that, along with Drake's work on the Argonian Beautification and Scripted Argonian Feet mods, and a FEW more tweaks to the meshes/textures for THOSE feet, both "canon" beast races in the original game are working correctly. The modified footwear meshes may not need much tweaking to suit the "hoofed" leg mods too, so if you used that as the basis for the centaur's front legs you could import any adjusted meshes very easily, thus just leaving you with lower body mods to fight with.

[hellchosen]

i see things are going well also the centaur race sounds interesting

 

well thats all i can think of to say hope this continues to do well

 

@da mage i would be fine with no pants or shoes just have khajiit wear lioncloths or shorts and no shoes and same goes for argonians xD

[razorpony]

Just thought I'd throw in an interesting piece of work I found on DeviantArt. Might try some footwear like this.

 

 

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/1/17166/1259142-khajiit___desert_walker_by_snowskadi_super.jpg

 

Edited May 7, 2011 by razorpony

[Telyn]

Neat picture. I like it, looks elegant.

[DrakeTheDragon]

Also it's a great reference for "believable" anthropomorphic anatomy and proportions.

 

I was immediately remembered of my own very first attempts when I saw the hilariously frog-like Argonian in the video above.

The first version of my dragon feet meshes was far too big!

 

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5106/newfeetwalking1lg3.jpg

 

And it looked horrible when walking:

 

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/226/newfeetwalking2hj1.jpghttp://img209.imageshack.us/img209/6408/newfeetwalking3fb7.jpg

 

 

As shown in my latest progress reports I'm now going the "skeletal alteration" approach myself as well.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/497/referenceposeold.jpg ==> http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1741/referencepose.jpg

 

I was very pleased realizing clothes and armor automatically deform according to the "scale" of the underlying bones, which is all that was altered in the above comparison.

 

http://tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/461894-1296262246.jpghttp://tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/461894-1296635285.jpg

 

However, so far I was unable to get this "size" information to stay on exported skeletons' bones. I can use an idle animation to set the size of the bones though at any time.

 

The only real trouble is with existing animations. They can basically "undo" every skeletal changes you did, as well as they can introduce them in the first place. There's obviously not much use in including translational or scale data for bones which are part of the skeletal structure (when does one's arm grow in thickness or one's neck elongate ever in any natural motion??), but still most existing animations seem to have been done by just selecting all bones each frame and inserting a keyframe for just about everything there is every time. This of course makes it impossible to make real use of an altered skeleton anatomy, unless you're introducing said "inbetween" bones, which are not affected by existing animations. But as my dragons will not be moving like any other species and most likely no existing animation will look right on them, I'm going the route to give them their very own unique set of animations already anyways, so there will be no animations undoing my skeletal alterations ever as a side bonus.

 

Using this approach many alterations to equipment will be done by the underlying bones for me and there's only the really different body meshes (feet mainly) which need adapted meshes for items to be wearable anymore. And my scripting approach can proficiently take care of this for me already. I'm getting rid of more and more flaws with every new OBSE release. There's no "item becomes fully repaired during exchange" issues anymore already and the "no OnEquip blocks trigger when equipped through scripts"-issue is non-existent now either. I only need to take care of cloneFormed items to be recognized as their originals by GetEquipped, GetEquippedObject, GetEquipmentSlotMask or "GetItemCount" checks in other mods, for quests to still recognize the items they check for although it's actually an adapted counterpart. But I was talking with Scruggs about a solution similar to the "race alias" already and last time I heard from him things were looking positive.

 

edit: Isn't there a way to get those images to display smaller in this forum?! Had to spoiler them because of their size, but it's just getting worse.