"Proper" khajit and argonian bodyshapes/animations

[MarkInMKUK]

I was talking with Drake the Dragon and he designed his scripted Argonian Feet to be expandable by others to other races, so maybe that's the way to go. There are, of course, issues with footwear, but if you really had a world with man-size lizards and cats, then footwear WOULD be a problem. Maybe a solution is an auto-boot-morph mod that produces a wearable "something" for other races like a shin-guard and transfers the properties and item ID over. Drake's script also handles body-shape swapping - my Argonian female is a AA girl in a world of H-cup humans, and has matching clothing due to a little file renaming. Edited February 14, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[Ferryt]

A modders resource dealing only in footwear for realistic Argonian and Khajiit feet should be fairly simple to make. I, for one, am not into the fancy make-overs for armor and such. A few standard boot and shoe models would suffice, and then people could create textures to wrap over them. I'd be a happy kitty (don't play Argonians, but I love the Khajiit race). I frankly don't like the "shinguard solution", and it's not that difficult to adapt standard shoe/boot designs to work with a digitigrade foot -- I'm talking real life, here. I have no idea how difficult it would be to do this in the game.

[MarkInMKUK]

Sounds like a plan - I was hoping someone would step forwards to offer their services as I have all the design talent of a wet sponge. Modified body-type and textures would be nice too, but should not interfere with foot modification if done properly. Drakes' mod handles an assortment of bodies at the install stage, and he suggests texture mods which suit the HGEC/Exnems female and Roberts male bodies very well. There's also a "Morrowind-style" Argonian head mesh mod which I added, and I assume similar stuff exists for Khajiit fans. All we need is people with the time, inclination and ability to pull it all together.

 

Shoes are one consideration - what about clothing - are there any problems likely with leg shape and current clothing, or will it all work ok on Khajiit legs?

[VGI]

i prefer hgec myself lol but yea a skilled modder just needs time and permission and we could have a awesome khajiit and yea i know the nonyxia cheetahs dont have true digitigrade but pretty dang close also :edit: i just looked it up and found the seamless texture and its for hgec :laugh: also i would try to help but i am not very skilled and dont have a computer to play oblivion and mod it on :confused:

 

Could anyone confirm this:

 

So far, I've been going around looking for mods that will fix the laziness of Bethesda in not making the Khajiit and Argonian races proper (their feet are just retextured homo-sapien feet, as well as their hands). Bethesda added tails to these races, but that's it. Why they couldn't go all the way, I do not know. Plus yes, Argonians are reptiles, and reptiles don't suck milk as babies. Reptiles don't have lips or gums. So why the Argonian boobs complete with bras?

 

Any way, I'm getting side-tracked. I installed this mod

 

1. Armored Paws N Tails. I didn't see the paws on my Khajiit character. I made new Khajiit characters, and the Khajiit feet are still...feet.

 

Any advice on this issue is appreciated.

 

 

2. Argonian Beautification I got the plugins Slof's Oblivion Better Beasts and jdayT's Argonian Feet both of which could be downloaded on the Argonian Beautification mod page despite the outdated links in the mod's description. Both these plugins are requried by this mod.

 

This mod states that, if I want to use jdayT's Argonian Feet:

 

"Also this plugin doesn't automatically add the feet to an Argonian Player. If you want to use the feet on yourself or an Argonian Companion, there are some equippable feet and feet with legs (don't worry, they have underwear) in an Ayleid Cask in the water below the footbridge in front of the IC Prison Sewer Exit where you first entered Cyrodiil."

 

Is this for real???

 

I hope that any mod that comes out of this thread comes out better than these two mods.

 

 

So far, I haven't really played TES4 at all. I got Oblivion from Steam last Christmas season and I downloaded it around a few weeks ago to replace ZenoClash, which I finished rather quickly. All I have been doing is follow Beautifying Oblivion the Complete Guide and installing mods and testing them. I am starting to feel like getting TES4 was a mistake because honestly, I didn't get this game to be Bethesda's unwitting beta tester on things that they as developer should have done themselves. I downloaded Metro 2033 after TES4 and I finished it already, and still I am trying to mod TES4 with things that the developer should have done, instead of relying on the modders community too much.

 

And having said that, I appreciate the modders very well. Without you guys, the longetivity of this game wouldn't be so long.

[Ferryt]

Plus yes, Argonians are reptiles, and reptiles don't suck milk as babies. Reptiles don't have lips or gums. So why the Argonian boobs complete with bras?

 

Because all races use the same body model, maybe? That's one of the major, and most disappointing, shortcomings of Oblivion. The game engine simply doesn't use different body models for different races. If it did, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. In Morrowind the Khajiit were digitigrade. I believe the Argonians were, too, although biologically they should not have been. The general consensus is that Argonians are mammals -- they just look like reptiles. It's a cop-out, but what can you do when the game developer gets lazy?

 

I can't give any advice on the mods you're trying to use, since I don't use them. I've been holding off getting anything that remakes the Khajiit foot because all of these mods are incompatible with existing footwear. It's absurd, too, that a Khajiit or Argonian foot mod would require the player to find his feet in a bag hidden away somewhere. The simple fact is that if something can exist as a unique object in the game which can be equipped on the body it can be placed into the player's inventory. I know of no exceptions to this. Heck, you should be able to use the console command "player.additem" to do it if you only knew the ID number of those feet.

 

If you buy a Bethsoft game you're buying a beta. Live with it. Bethesda Softworks clearly engages in almost no beta testing of their games. Oblivion is so full of bugs, holes, and outright mistakes that it's inconceivable that any beta tester wouldn't have caught a large number of them. The modding community has been hard at work since its release patching the game up. Don't expect anything different with Skyrim, either. Still, that's no reason not to play it. My first time through was with a vanilla install plus all DLCs plus all Unofficial Patches. I still enjoyed it. I enjoyed it even more once I started modding my game, but it's gone through many incarnations as I try out mods, decide to keep some and toss others out.

 

So, don't hold off playing just because you don't have everything you think you need. You will, in fact, have a better idea how you want to mod the game if you try things as you go and evaluate them "on the run", as it were. I've held off playing a Khajiit character for a long time, but finally started doing so, even though I don't have a mod that gives them digitigrade legs. Actually, I could offer very good reasons, soundly grounded in biophysics, why upright bipedal cats would NOT have digitigrade legs. I just think they look cool and that's why I want them in the Khajiit race.

[MarkInMKUK]

VGI - if you use both the argonian Beautification stuff AND the Scripted Feet, and actually read the recent discussion between myself and Drake in the comments section, you SHOULD be able to make a flat-chested, reptile-footed , moderately convincing bipedal Argonian with NO "add your own feet like socks" - but with the drawback you cannot equip boots because we are still working on that bit. To see the end result, this is "Walks-on-tiptoes" - the black bars are there to hide areas that would otherwise potentially get a photo removed.

 

Currently the best Khajiit feet I've seen are these ones (there's also a VIDEO) or the one in THIS video (sorry, no idea whether the modder ever uploaded it) - but they need a modder who knows what they are doing to make them applicable to the various body mods, and to make them auto-equip. Then we need to make suitable footwear and to make Oblivion auto-replace the meshes to suit.

 

As I said earlier, Drake's scripted feet script also allows for a different body shape than the humans, I think Khajiit would look good as maybe a A/B cup body as an evolved cat race - starting with smaller litters, any extra nipples would become vestigial and leave a pair of "in use" ones. There's at least one replacement body texture that adds back in the positions of the remaining ones to give the visual effect.

 

Clothing is the other irritation - because the clothing contains its own mesh, you have to use a clothing pack that matches the body underneath, rather than it "just fitting", so for my ideal setup of "flat" Argonians, A/B cup Khajiit and E-cup humans/elves, I'd need three clothing sets for the top body. But if it actually works, it's worth the effort.

 

I have the ideas and the vision, but as yet none of the abilities, hence I started this post.

Edited February 15, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[MarkInMKUK]

Summary Statement:

 

Currently we have:

 

Argonians: (Thanks to Drake the Dragon) Scripted self-fitting feet for several major body types, Scripted body-type replacement and Scripted clothing-shape replacement for upper and lower body, but only one or two trial meshes for footwear. A couple of nice texture replacements. Morrowind-style heads for those who prefer those shapes.

Khajiits: (Thanks to JazzJR) Non-scripted wearable feet in at least one style, for one body type, plus (possibly scriptable) feet from another modder. No Scripted body-type replacement. No scripted clothing-shape replacement, no meshes for footwear. Assorted nice texture replacements.

 

Not yet discussed:

 

Varied skeletons for Argonians and Khajiit based upon Reneer's Varied NPC Mod which allows npc's to each have a custom skeleton. Would "tweaked" skeletons for the Argonians and Khajiits help with their "more realistic" appearance, or just lead to problems with clothing and the like?

Support for other Khajiit-type races - how simple/complex does it have to be to add a second race to use the same body and feet, but it's own texture?

 

Requirements:

 

Mesh adjuster to make whichever feet are judged to be the best fit with more body types.

Mesh designer to create footwear styles to suit for both Khajiit and Argonian feet.

Texture Tweaker to take stock clothing and armor types and make workable footwear using the above meshes.

Scripter to make it all work.

Install script writer to make it all install as painlessly as possible.

PERMISSION to make use of other people's mods where we are intending to combine them.

Someone(s) to kick my ass if I forgot anything important.

 

Do we have the talent available in the thread so far - if not, do we put out a request for modders to help in specific areas?

 

What have I forgotten? Oh, yes - wages ... er... well ... Kudos to everyone who helps?

Edited February 15, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[Ferryt]

MarkInMKUK, thanks for the synopsis. That really helps us see where we are and where we need to go. I'd like to address a number of issues at this point.

 

Regarding your comments to VGI on the "Khajiit Beast Foots" mod, I agree that at least the shape of the front of the foot is pretty good, although I serious problems with the rest of it. First of all, the claws would not be needle-sharp as they are in the mod. Claws on toes evolved to aid in traction. They get worn down. They should also curve downward so that they can actually touch the ground, rather than just stick straight out like daggers.

 

The foot, as a whole, is nothing more than a modified human foot, with the character standing on the balls of his feet. A true digitigrade leg doesn't look like this. Digitigrade legs evolved for one purpose -- speed. This is why the bones of the legs have different relative proportions than the legs of plantigrade primates like humans. The two videos (ugh!, I despise the "sexy walk" animation -- real girls don't walk like that) are much closer to what a real Khajiit would be like. Sadly, as far as I know, neither of the mods behind those videos were ever released. If either author could be located, either one of those mods would be excellent starting points for a modder who wanted to take up where they left off.

 

Regarding nipples ... there's a reason primates have two breasts and for their placement on the body and those reasons (I won't go into them because it would require a dissertation involving quite a bit of evolutionary biology) upright bipedal Khajiits would be like humans in this regard. Nobody said they evolved from quadrupedal cats. Yes, I know the official lore about Khajiits, but that was thrown out the window by the developers of Oblivion. Let's not rock the lore boat and just assume that Cyrodiil has two humanoid "beast races" and that they followed a similar line of evolution as did humans. Speculating otherwise leads to all sorts of problems that any evolutionary biologist would be happy to discuss at length. I absolutely HATE multiple breasts on anthropomorphs (which is what Argonians and Khajiit are). They make no sense whatever to me and I will never use a Khajiit mod that employs them -- not even additional vestigial breasts in the form of extra nipples. This just sets off too many "reality warning bells" for me.

 

As far as breast size goes, I'm divided with regard to Argonians having them at all. I've argued that we should consider them mammalian for the sake of just having them in a game which made them utilize human body meshes in the first place, but it still bothers me to see what looks like a reptile with breasts. I don't play Argonians, anyway, so it's not really a huge issue to me one way or the other, but I'd be quite happy with breast-less Argonians, so long as it's still possible to distinguish the sexes apart.

 

Khajiits should have the same range of options for the player as do humans, elves, and orcs. I'm totally not a fan of enormous breasts. They just look stupid on otherwise slim, trim, and athletic females (another set of reality warning bells going off). Porn stars have those nice bodies and huge breasts for one reason -- silicone. My suggestion is that a good Khajiit mod should be compatible with at least the HGEC and Robert's male and female body mods. I'm including Robert's female body because that's the one I use and I use it instead of HGEC because of certain technical issues with HGEC and because the limbs on those models look pathologically stick-like to me. I create characters with "B" and "C" sized breasts because that's what I think looks best on an average body type. You see mature women with "A" breasts mostly in the gym and they tend to have muscles like guys. You see natural breasts above "C" on chubby women. Remember that the amount of fat tissue in a breast (and they're mostly fat tissue) parallels the amount of fat on the body in general. Enough of the biology lesson that most guys never seem to have gotten.

 

Reneers Varied NPC Mod: I've looked at this, but only very briefly. My issue was a deal-breaker for me. It was totally random. The idea was, in theory, a sound one, but had immersion-breaking consequences within the game for some people, and I happen to agree with them. I don't really think it's all that applicable to this project as it stands, but the idea of applying different skeletons to different NPCs might be adaptable. I just have no idea at all how to do it.

 

All Khajiits and Argonians could use whatever skeletons are decided for them. You only need to add different textures to create different "sub-races" of these species. Body conformation would remain the same. What I don't want to see in a mod of this nature is the necessity to use the same texture for all instances, or one that only applies to the NPC. Ideally, there would be a configuration file (i.e., an ".ini" file) containing the names of every Argonian and Khajiit in the game, followed by the name of the texture mod that NPC will use. This could even be combined with the idea that Reneer had to make NPCs skinny, fat, hunched, etc., allowing a player to fine-tune NPCs AND have it consistent from game session to game session and even from game to game. Yeah, that could be a bigger project than what we're talking about for just Khajiit and Argonian characters, but could be included as an extra benefit, with a separate .ini for all the human, elf, and orc NPCs. Since the .ini is a text file it could be easily upgraded to include custom NPCs, such as companions, or those added by other mods.

 

As it stands, I don't see anyone volunteering for any of the jobs you mentioned to get this project off-the-ground. I certainly don't have the skills in any of those areas right now, although I'm studying scripting. Modeling and texturing is a non-issue for me -- it just isn't going to happen because I seem to have almost no artistic ability, at least with computer software. So ... I think it's time to ask for help.

[MarkInMKUK]

Hi Ferryt,

 

There's nothing to stop us taking a joint look at the available feet and deciding how we'd like to adapt them to whatever we do - as long as we give the original modder due credit as the basis of our work and as long as they don't object. I think we're stuck, to some extent, with the plantigrade foot, unless the people who've done the Curse of Hircine werewolf mod have done anything clever we can borrow from, or unless the alternate modified skeleton idea can be made to work. However, for simplicity, let's assume we take the "Beasty foots" mod, and tweak it.

 

On 2/8 nipples - that should JUST be a texturing overlay - the option can be offered by suggesting one texture for two-boobed Khajiit and one for two-plus-vestigial ones. Not a major issue as long as we don't try to enforce a viewpoint, and most of the reskinned Khajiit variants are two-boobed.

 

Breast size - I've gone for the HGEC AA size for my Argonian female because that's the flattest chest I can find. Once I learn how, I'm going to perform a nipplectomy on the mesh to smooth the last bits off, and similarly for the male (Roberts V5 muscular) mesh. I'm not sure how adjustable the Roberts female is, having not tried it, and part of the problem is also clothing mod availability.

 

I certainly wasn't suggesting Reneer's varied NPC mod "as is", but wondering whether we can use his technique for different racial variants amongst the Khajiit and Argonian species - I know there are some more tiger-like and cheetah-like and even slow-leopard-like versions, and they could easily have differing body proportions using Reneer's method - the clothes self-adjust.

 

I'm going to suggest using the latest version of Deedes max compatibility skeleton as the basis if we DO tweak things - the only incompatibility I've found amongst mainstream mods seems to be something not working with Growlf's latest body mod with the high heel bones. As Khajiit or Argonians in 6 inch heels isn't my idea of a good move, we're probably ok there for the moment.

 

I like the idea of ultimately adding an ini file for all named characters, but that might need to be stage 2 ... or 3 ... or 4. The potential is there of course, along with the texture unlocking so we can assign individual faces, textures and everything else.

 

As for volunteers, let's give people til after the weekend to look and speak up. Some may only get a chance to look at weekends, and this thread seems to be getting a fair number of looks. Reaper9111 has pposted a separate thread offering to do texture modding so I posted a "would you be interested in helping out" comment there - maybe she'll say yes.

Edited February 15, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[Ferryt]

Sadly, it appears that Curse of Hircine appears to be abandonware, since the author is not responding to anything being posted in the discussion of his mod and hasn't for many months. Fortunately, there's an alternative -- Curse of Hircine Resurrected. That's the official website for the mod. I think they've got some things right and it might be worth talking to them.

 

As I understand it, though, the transformation from human to werewolf involves the donning of a bodysuit which is actually defined as "armor" in the game and uses a mesh by Jcarl. I'm not sure that's the right way to accomplish what we're talking about.

 

The main distinguishing factor between a real Khajiit makeover mod and one which simply introduces a different texture into the game has to be the structure of the foot and, possibly, tweaks to the body. With a standard human plantigrade leg it would be little different than simply replacing the default Khajiit texture.

 

I can deal with multiple textures, two for each race for the female -- one with extra nipples and one without. It would make configuring it on installation a little more involved, but I think that can be automated easily enough with OBMM for people who like to have such things done through menus, rather than manually installing a mod that has lots of options.

 

You might want to talk to Aliensloff regarding Robert's female body. Anything she does for females supports ONLY that body (and the stuff she does for males supports ONLY the Robert's muscular body), so I'm sure she's pretty familiar with both of those.

 

I didn't think you were suggesting to use Reneer's varied NPC mod -- only pointing out to any readers of this thread that it has some serious issues and really can't be used as a basis for what we're trying to accomplish. I think some variant of his technique might be workable for racial variation among Argonians and Khajiit, though. It's just that only someone with modeling experience could figure out how to implement it.

 

I honestly don't know a lot about skeletons, although, from what I've read, the one you suggest would be most compatible with other mods which currently exist. I'm not familiar with Growlf's body mods, but I agree -- Argonians and Khajiit would not wear high heels.