New Texture mod WIP

[xander2077]

no, it turns out i just had to understand how each program treats the models and what they all expect, and how nifscripts does what it does to bugger things up. then i had to watch a few videos that show how to pack the UVs correctly in blender and it all made sense, so even if you select all the UVs on the sheet, and pack them in, you can get them to pack even tighter if you want by manually moving things around and repacking them until it works the best. for the new UVs i did on the gloves the other night, the layout is sufficient, even if it is not as efficient as a more professional texture, it will do. there are not that many gaps in the sheet and the ones that are there are minimal. i just could not figure out why the packing was not working when i pressed the button over and over. i knew it was there and i think i accidentally got it to work one time, but most of the armor did not need me to repack it, since the unwrap was pretty good actually. it is all in the seams, if the seams are not thorough, then you get a stupid unwrap with a lot of overlap and stretched UVs. these uvs are certainly much better than they were before with the nifs i sent you. now i did this on both the nifs for the player, and the ground mesh. so i will be able to rebuild the textures all at once and actually get them looking close to identical as a result.

 

the more i use blender, the more i see that even in the older one, this is a very powerful program rivaling the best of them, even maya. and there are things you cant do in max, even though i complain about some of the missing functionality on cetain things, in truth blender is not really as bad as i used to think. in max there was no way for me to successfully select the same parts and weld the vertices together all at once (remove doubles) without ruining part of the model. you dont know how many man hours i wasted trying to fix a mesh i extracted from KOTOR to put in a space sim and then i had to add details that were missing because that ship was only a prop with no bottom etc... but in blender i cant ake the same ship, remove double vertices so it is all one mesh instead of separated triangles, and then turn everything to quads, and actually start adding detail in seconds. that to me is huge.

 

i just wish i could sculpt in this computer worth a damn to do the same kind of prototyping asmore modern gaming workflow, and now that i know how that is done, in blender, it makes me eager to do a 2.0 on the armor at some point. yes it looks alright, and the textures are good enough for morrowind, but i never just rest on my laurels any more like i used to and so i find that theres one little thing that bugs me, or something i think is missing that could be better. now the helmet is pretty close to satisfaction, but the cuirass im not 100% satisfied with, and that is one of the things that is most visible.

 

oh believe me i really like how it turned out, and it realizes a dream i had for years now to replace the goofy dwemer armor in the game, but it is still just below the surface of wow for me. and knowing that people have gotten skyrim mod armor and oblivion mod armor in morrowind, like the dread knight, and a few others, i want to increase my skill level to that on this armor at some point so i can wow myself on it.

 

for now i guess i have to be satisfied with being a technical modeler instead of an artist modeler/ more organic style modeler. and i have a lot of experience with that i am learning how to translate into blender. hard surfaces is something i really love. but all these tips and tricks i am learning about are making me drool for the real beef of it all. and i think now i can say for sure when it comes to statues and ruins that will be the things i can showcase some of these tricks on, like rubble, broken statues, and some of the stone surfaces that never got full attention in vanilla morrowind dwemer ruins.

 

as soon as these gloves and all the icons are finished, then i will move on to the creatures and ruins.

 

sorry the icons were not as nice as they could have been, it was something i did wrong in gimp when i cut and pasted the source picture over the transparency layer and they pixilated badly. i have to find out how to scale it properly and not lose the important details, and also what the icon size limits are in morrowind. then perhaps they will resemble something worth using. so i have to study the higher rez icons that are player made to figure out what the settings are on those as far as pixels and other info, and copy that.

 

but for today i will be back at work to wearing myself out, and then see if i have enough energy to do anything at days end. but that is how my job goes, sometimes there is a lull and i get a lot of modding stuff done, and then there are days where i am so tired i just look at the model and nothing gets done on it.

[xander2077]

i give up today. nothing is going right at all in blender. faces will not recalculate to outside normals at all, they half this and half that in random order. even choosing faces only flips half the face to outside and i have no idea why. all that work i did on the centurions is crap now. i cant import it to nifscope because say for instance i do the head, import the head obj into nifsckope, and everything but the face imports, which just gets magically cut out of the mesh. and it is 4 feet offset too high and turned to the left? this is beginning to be a huge headache. may as well start over and just edit the existing mesh until it resembles something like i had before. im so irritated with blender 2.49b and nifskope right now.

[xander2077]

well, i finally figured out how to get the blend file to stop being stupid and open in blender 2.49b. so now i at least have the old centurion mesh and the new one on different layers of the same scene, and i awas able to get it to look right, and get the ambient occlusion to work on the parts, which really does a lot for the shadows. so now i just have to get the other one imported to blender 2.49b and the old nif in the sphere scene to have them side by side so i can compare things and one day get it working right. will not make the same mistake with the other ones.

 

i also finally found a developer version of nifscripts that works somewhat in blender 2.7, but it imports a mess if there is an animation, and wont export for crap, so i lucked out exporting one of them and it actually being something i can open in old blender. so finally, finally, finally, i got something to work right today.

 

so here is two screens of the same file on different layers, and i have it this way so i can move the skeleton to the second layer and possibly link things eventually. but if everything is on the fisrt payer it would be a mess.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/a4723531_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/7842b987_o.png

 

as you can see here is part of my problem, i need to figure out how things ar linked because even with all the possible import settings chosen to make sure the model is not scattered all over the screen in random locations, the vanilla mesh still is not in the bind pose like it should be. the right foot is back too far, and the thing looks like it is being shoved over. so i cant align the parts to the model and join them without having issues. in short i have to study the model parts, from the vanilla mesh in one layer, and make sure the new parts are in the same vertex groups where they belong, linked ot the correct bone just like the original part, weight painted the same, and then maybe they will animate correctly. if not i have both there so i can keep comparing them until it is right.

 

but that is not all, i also have to mess around with them once i export them in nifskope, because something will go wrong there. it always does. so i may have texture issues, and the only reason why is because these parts are all supposxe to be in the same mesh, but are not because of how nifscripts imports them, separated into different materials. so this could be problematic, because one mesh will want to have the same texture as another. and the only way to alleviate that is to join them all, and then destroy the weight painting info. which is the reason i scrubbed the dwemer gloves and just textured an existing set and renamed them. so this will not even be close to easy. it has only been one headache after another because nifscripts was never designed to handle animations, it was designed to handle clothing and armor and animations was an afterthought. if they had included that in the design parameters, then it would be possible to import the vanilla mesh as one mesh and not as several parts that are supposed to be grouped as one mesh.

 

anyway i will have my hands full with these unless i put them aside and then just go back to structures.

Edited March 31, 2016 by xander2077

[xander2077]

ok so i got the other one, the sphere in the same workspace and the vanilla sphere now too, and got some of those issues worked out, but i sitll have to rig it to the skeleton and i really dont have time to study everything and do that right now, so, i went back to the armor and imported all my nifs, gave them all fake ambient occlusion and the details on everything, shield, armor are much better. shadows really pop more. of course i wish icould get some reflection on these, but i do not know how to yet.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/ea7e9a93_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/11e5668d_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/38f13c50_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/05642de1_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/7d13c685_o.png

 

i like the combination of set smooth and the faked ambient occlusion. using det smooth alone is fine for leather and bonemold, but for something metal, it needs some sharper shadows, and that was the missing element. now that the vertex painting is fixed on those i have to go back in and do that with the ground meshes. did not want to mess up and save a ground mesh as a piece of armor so i carefully avoided those this time.

[xander2077]

more sacreens, this timeof the ground meshes. fixed a few issues i had with the boots, because on reimport they wanted to shrink on one side, which was because i rotated them as an object instead of as a mesh. then i occluded them all and exported them back out. much better than before.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/6fc03051_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/cffdc090_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/a54d7ca0_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/1a51f0e4_o.png

 

http://i.share.pho.to/5cbf24e6_o.png

[xander2077]

ok, now that i have the armor released, and still have to figure out how to get gauntlets to work, i decided to try and redo the dwemer alcove, and this is what i came up with so far. not really a huge change, but something that would fit better with a new tileset for the interiors.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/c5b2f5be_o.png

 

not really finished yet, it was a quick model and sculpt of the rock. i replaced the original alcoves with new ones, and had to sculpt the rock to give it better surfaces. then i had to cut the openings for the alcoves. i think this needs some statues instead of just being empty, but that will come later. for now i think i might need to add some small details to the arches to tie them in with the different architectural styles of the dwemer that will be in the new tile set.