New Texture mod WIP

[xander2077]

its ok, but some of the sizing and scaling i have to leave alone because of the clipping. for instance when i resized the top of the boots to cover the knee, it clipped do i had to rearrange a few thing so it looks better. of course in real armor there are chinks so i can try to make it better coverage, but some things are going to either clip or have to be left alone so it works.

 

the problem i have with the boots is not so much the bulk of them any more, but the clipping of the actor legs. if it were not for that then things would be able to be scaled down quite a bit. if there were a script that could run to remove textures from the legs while armor was on that would solve the clipping isse and then i could focus on aestheitcs. but since that would only strain the processor more, i think scaling/moving certain parts is really the only fix. remember wemer armor is supposed to be heavy. it is classed as heavy. all i was trying to do is minmize the bulk by taking away the silly kegs from the ankles. that was achieved. however for continuity i had to have certain features like the raised ribbing. one defeats the other so to speak.

 

i still have not taken the most updated pic of the boots but i was at an impass. either slim them down considerably and clip the legs, or unclip them and still have bulkier boots. i think i found somewhat of a balance but still not quite the best. i also reduced the shoes in length a bit more.

 

i had an issue with the curass as well late last night. i added a medallion to the mesh just by sheer change, because as i was looking at it, i noticed something was missing, so i attached a circle to the front between teh rib cage and abdomen. and that took a while since the mesh did not want to recognize the foreigh circle and fill properly, so i had to vertices weld every single contact point to make it part of the cuirass. the resulting mess actually ended up looking like some kind of art deco sunburst which i eventually decided to just exploit and make raised. it turned out nice enough, so i decidedthat was it... then when i tried to export it, blender whines about it not having any vertex weighting on the circle, so i had to figure out how to vertex weight paint (something new for me) and actually did it right. then i was able to export it no problem since the weight was now the same as the rest of the chest tris.

 

by the time i got done there i was too tired to take any more pics, so i will have to take a few new ones.

 

right now i am unwrapping the skyrim style helmet since it has some of the most prominent features, and if i can master that one, then the others should be easier. and it is turning out great. i got it unwrapped and saced a copy of the UVs to a bmp so i can eventually edit that in gimp as a new texture. then the next time i export the helm to nif, and open it in nifskope it will have shiny new textures that bring out the details better.

 

i know it seems like my workflow is all over the place but i am actually following an outline just not documenting it all here.

 

the hardest part is going to be the UV unwrap. since blender tends to mark its own seams in very small islands all mashed into one squiggly mess on the template, i have to eliminate that as much as possible. but even then you get anomalies in the unwrap. so i devised a workflow that helps minimize that. by going into edge mode, and selecting all them in the 3d window, and then choosing to unmark all seams, it leaves a nice clean pallete to work with so to speak. then i have to painstakingly choose each seam one by one so that the layout will be optimal on the texture. and even then you get linked groups that should not be linked and odd sizes. but thankfully even this older blensder version has the ability to choose faces individually as i go, so i can unlink portions of the UV into custom made islands, and then rearrange and resize each island as i see fit. very refreshing after having to deal with the crappy UV layout in nifskope from vanilla meshes.

 

so here is a small update of the newly unwrapped UVs for the skyrim style helm.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/efe7d6b2_o.png

 

 

looks good to me. i have not seen a proper unwrap like this in many of the models in morrowind, besides some of the creatures, or bodies. the armor is so rushed that it makes life difficult, especially with dwemer armor. and with all the cool replacers for other armor out there, this was a huge deficiency in the armor. well not any more. but it will take me a while to get this portion of it done.

 

then i have to figure out a way to make the textures so they dont look like a 3 year old did them. working from a UV unwrap template makes it easier, but still has its trouble spots. i just hope everything works out.

 

 

here is a pic on game of the newest boots edits. now they cover the knee well enough that im satisfied. of course as you pointed out they should hug the leg better, but i will monkey with the mesh a bit more and see if i can slim the ankles down some. it wont be easy, since that probably should have been done before the detailing, but i may be able to pull it off...

 

http://i.share.pho.to/af022c90_o.png

 

 

all in all it doesnt look too bad compared to the vanilla. i also agree that the neck needs better coverage so i will attempt to add some geometry around there on the cuirass. it will be a bit tricky but seems the most logical way to hide the neck for now.

 

once i get everything arranged optimally i will have to import all the new models into the static nifs, or ground meshes of the items as you see them in shoppes and arrange them identically to the existing ground meshes of the armor pieces, and hopefully i wont mess that up. but that is the last thing i will do since it depends on me unwrapping the new meshes first and texturing them all.

 

here is the inventory window for a better look at the coverage of the armor around the legs. as you can see i managed to get the knees covered pretty well, but still need to modify the ankle area a bit. the odd psing around the feet with the body being more fluid and the armor being rigid makes it harder to get it right. i also did resize the upper leg greaves a bit so they match the boots beter and the boots dont look as exaggerated in size. but i have to do the same thing with the upper arm pauldrons as well so they are a bit more balanced, and they dont clip the shoulder pauldrons (clavical pauldrons)

 

http://i.share.pho.to/bfcb944b_o.png

 

 

here is the aprt i had issues with and had to vertex paint. as you can see it sort of came out like a sunburst of sorts, and i kind of like the design. so im keeping it. since i learned a bit )even though it was painstaking) aboout getting the circle into the mesh and also cylinders into a mesh as part of the shole thing. i will probably redo the circular devices on all the helmets i put them on. and this should make them easier to work with in the unwrap as well.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/6645e0c5_o.png

 

all i can say is that sunburst is going to be fun to texture when it is all said and done.

 

im not usually good with adding details like that, but it just kind of worked out this way.

 

im kind of torn between using the set as smooth feature on the armor or leaving it as set solid. set solid has crisper lines and better shadow detail without a normal map, but setting it as smooth is usually how it is done for most armor. if i can figure out a smoothing threshold, then i may find a balance between the two i can live with. of course the eyes are set to smooth while the other parts are set to solid. so i have to make sure i omit the eyes from the halfway point. still learning about what blender can do.

[xander2077]

ok, i managed to slim the ankles down a bit more, snd i think that is about as far as it will go and work. the coverage is pretty good except the front of the neck which i have to re adjust, and the backs of the legs. which i thought was stupid anyway. so i may have to add some more geometry to the boots just to cover the pesky gap there. and it will be based off of memory since i have no way of putting the actors leg and upper leg armor in the same scene. but i think i know how to pull it off without worrying about the clothing underarmor. even though i still want to do that mod.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/43f369e9_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/b708f83b_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/6b174186_o.png

 

 

both of those edits will be easy. the tricky part is narrowing the neck enough to not clip the helmet, but not so far it clips anyones neck no matter what race they are playing. the backs of the leg is fairly easy compared to the neck. so all i have to do is add a cap that closes off the back and make sure it is rounded enough outside to keep from clipping the back of the calf.

 

perhaps the only other two areas i am being picky about are the shoulder pauldrons, which i think need some more geometry on the inside near the cuirass, and the tops of the shoes which need to move a bit back to keep from clipping the boots around the ankles. but not clip the ankels of the actor.

Edited March 1, 2016 by xander2077

[RubberMan01]

Um. You could make the boots a body part rather than a piece of armour mate and that would solve your clipping problems.

 

I do like that UV mapping is that in blender? I don't bother spending a great deal of time on mapping (buildings don't really need it because they are all pretty much straight edges), Grabbing 5 boxes that are the same size and dropping them on top of each other to save map space is about as far as I go.

 

In your pics it would be nice if you dressed an NPC in the vanilla armour and stood next to it for the selfies so you can see the difference. Trying to see what changes you have made from memory is hard work!

[RubberMan01]

Actually.....if you made the boots a body part it would give you the option of extra things such as a cape etc?

[xander2077]

Actually.....if you made the boots a body part it would give you the option of extra things such as a cape etc?

now a cape would look cool, but i have no idea how to make the boots act as a body part. instead i just adjusted the mesh on the boot and the upper leg greaves to hide all the skin. still a small tweak on the back leg on the boot, but it is almost finished. probably about 3 seconds to edit and i wont even waste time taking pictures.

 

i really dont know how i would get a character in the game with the old armor since this replaces the dwemer armor globally. maybe if i summoned a character from a mod that still uses the old stuff. it might show. but i have no idea how to since most people dont tell you how to use the console to summon their additional creatures.

 

that is the unwrap in blender, but i had to do it myself, because the default unwrap was a mess. just a bunch of tris all sloppily piled on top of each other in a huge mess. i thought i would need a script or a plugin to unwrap it, but it turned out ok. i just have to remember to unmark the default seams that blender gives it by default and it turns out ok with minor edits in the UV window. what takes time is marking the seams by hand. a helmet is one thing, but a cuirass will be painstaking. since i have 4 different parts to unwrap.

 

anything with a helper usually has 2 parts to unwrap. the upper pauldrons and boots have one object to unwrap. the shoes have two with no helper object. the bracers have two with a helper. the upper arm has two parts and a helper.

 

i also fixed the problem i had with the upper arm pauldrons, since for some reason it keeps wanting to add a useless extra node in the tree, which was the cause of it floating 10 feet from the actor. i had to fix that in nifskope since the interface for nif trees in blender doesnt work well in wine. but i got it all moved around and fixed. so now it shows like it should in game. problem is i may have to do that again once i unwrap that mesh. ugh...

 

http://i.share.pho.to/4b022728_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/7ec53cc4_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/837f797d_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/97656363_o.png

 

that was before i covered the knee cap.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/0e2f918e_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/c93bb482_o.png

 

now the only thing i really need to fix is the shoulder pauldron, since it just seems like it is missing something closer to the neck area, theres an empty space there that needs to be filled a bit. other than that im almost done nitpicking on the fitment.

[RubberMan01]

Much, much better. I shall continue to give you sh** as it obviously spurs you on lol!

 

Now you can't see his body parts the armour doesn't look so out of place. Before when you could see his knee's and his upper arms it looked like someone had put a very skinny guy in a oversize suit of armour haha

 

As for making armour/ clothing into body parts check out Metal Queen Boutique. That uses the method heavily.

[xander2077]

well, i will check out that mod, but for now i am going to go ahead and lay these models to rest for the time being. i think i have done enough nitpicking on seams between the different pieces. i should really start working on the unwrap and texture part.

 

i will probably be busy with that for a while, so i may or may not do any updates between now and when that is done.

 

i dont mind the ribbing. it is always good to have a second set of eyes to see things i may miss.

 

well, back to the grindstone.

[xander2077]

ok, now i have a more serious issue. since i used the old vanilla mesh, and modified it to keep it the right size and such, and i edited the UV layout in blender, now i cant figure out how to save the new UV data to the old reworked models. i have the UV layout in the window same as before every time i open the blend file. the problem is it will not update the nif when i try to export it with the new UV layout. i cant figure out how to remedy that right now, because all the tutorials dont tell you how to remove the old material and UVs. they only tell you how to add new ones to a completely new model with no UV info at all.

 

and if the nif is going to recognize the new UV layout in nifskope, that has to be updated somehow. this is the first time i have tried doing this part for morrowind. whereas before i never had to worry about it because all my textures were for plain vanilla models that already had the UV info like originally. so everything was already lined up. i simply had to modify the texture and drop it in the right folder before i load the nif.

 

this is a bit more complicated. brain is fried.

Edited March 2, 2016 by xander2077

[xander2077]

well, it turned out i needed to use a script to fix what was wrong with the material. so from now on before i even attemtp a UV unwrap i will do this. for now i have it working, but i may just go ahead and redo the UVs since it doesnt wuite look right in nifskope.

 

anyway, i treied everything to get this in nifskope at first. i tried exporting an OBJ, and it didnt work. 3ds export, and still didnt work. what i wanted to see is if it would be able to be imported there and then see what was wrong, and trying to import the 3ds locked up nifskope. so i had to force it closed. then the OBJ just was invisible. but i was able to see a tree, which is good news because it told me that the old material data was messed up. i got that from the error window.

 

so in blender again, i used a script to clean the unused material and anything else that was off about the model.

 

and then it worked. the UVs were mostly intact and i was able to edit the few wonky bits in nifskope to fix the appearance

 

so now i have a working new skyrim style dwemer helm.

 

first attempt at export after cleaning gave this result. so i had to clean it again in blender. i forgot to clean material that leave the surface white.

 

 

http://i.share.pho.to/e1eba3c2_o.png

 

 

so i took it back in and here are the shots of it in blender as is, and then the cleaning script that worked with the settings shown.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/c8b12dce_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/0a0424e7_o.png

 

after cleaning it reverts back to object mode

 

http://i.share.pho.to/646167de_o.png

 

 

now that it was cleaned a second time i attemted the export again and it wrote. before it would just flash and the green progress bar at the top of blender did nothing. that usually indicates an export failure.

 

but this time it worked and i was able to edit the UVs a bit in nifskope, and here is the result.

 

http://i.share.pho.to/59460ea6_o.png

 

a shiny new beat up old dwemer helm in the style of skyrim (just a tad bit)

 

http://i.share.pho.to/047ea1ce_o.png

http://i.share.pho.to/584bc54d_o.png

 

im still not satisfied with a few spots on the helm, but it works so i cant complain really. now at least i know how to fix the mesh so it exports properly.

 

on to the next one. i will update the texture later once i have time to age it and smooth out the coloring a bit.

[RubberMan01]

I still think you're nuts lol but well done on the finish.

 

I couldn't be bothered if it took that long to texture haha