Brainstorming: Body Mods

[Guest Messenjah]

I like to think I have a bit of experience in mod design. I've designed a lot of outfits for Oblivion that were never released, a couple of mods for Descent 3 (1999) that have been released, and I've been working on a large mod for Fallout 3 that was moved to New Vegas and is still underway. During my time working on the New Vegas mod, I had to spend a lot of time working on a number of very high detail outfits for some of my characters. Now, I mostly buy Bethesda games solely because they make a great development platform for mods and they have a very good modding community to work with. With that in mind, I don't have a lot of time to develop for Skyrim right now between college and my New Vegas mod, however I do plan to develop for Skyrim in the near future.

 

Now, in the past, there has been a huge debate over body mods and it usually boils down to a lot of people fighting over a lot of really silly things. I've found body mods to be pretty much an essential tool for most of my mod-related projects.I'm sure that there will be a lot of various body mods out there before this is all over. However, I would like to suggest some ideas to anyone who plans to work on such an endeavor as a modder with some experience working with such bodies. I have made various clothing and even some of my own personal body tweaks to better fit the various clothing models.

 

 

First of all, I feel like Bethesda actually did a pretty decent job overall on the body meshes this time around, however, some minor tweaks need to be done such as re-shaping the breasts and butt areas and perhaps a bit more definition on the tummy areas. I think that if a future body is developed, it may be worth looking into the possibility of using this body as a base so that we can better fit clothing onto the body mesh.

 

The second point is that I think it would be a great idea to re-create a new skeleton, much like the ones I have seen for both Oblivion and Fallout. What I'm talking about are basically extra bones for the animators out there and clothing designers as well. For instance, adding new bones to each breast would allow us to both create bouncing breasts for certain clothing and would also allow us to import the mesh into an application such as Blender or Max and use the bones to manipulate the shape of the breasts to give them lift or more cleavage depending on the outfit, particularly for items such as corsets/bras that add support. Also, adding extra bones to the foot/heal would be nice, this is to add support to making it easy to re-shape the foot for various high-heels. If we are really creative, perhaps walk animations for high heels could be developed and linked to play when the shoes are equipped. (I noticed in Fallout that with skirts, it used some alternative animations when skirts were equipped.)

 

Something that also might need to be taken into consideration, is that it appears that bodies are already somewhat modular, as it appears that you can in-fact change things such as weight. However, without any modding tools available for the job yet, it is hard to say if this will cause any issues.

 

As far as breast size and butt size, ecs... lets leave that to the discretion of the mod designer, I'm sure they will do a great job as always.

[Thepal]

A lot of good suggestions. I think everything will be fine once one body mod "wins", as has happened in the past, so that other mods start getting based mostly around it. Fallout has worked really well because all the main body mods pretty much use the Type 3 body. I'm hoping something similar happens for Skyrim sooner rather than later, as a body war leads to a lot of mods not working with others (Morrowind had this problem).

 

(just to clarify, I don't consider my mod to be in contention. It's basically a placeholder until the tools are available for someone to create a proper body)

 

It'd also be nice if different versions with different sized parts could work together... Not sure if it is possible to have clothes fit to the body in Skyrim, whichever one the player has chosen. I tend to like to have the "average" body size model, whereas a lot of clothes tend to be ridiculously busty.

[KillerHappyFace]

Now, this may be a bit out of place as it has nothing to do with breast physics, but don't forget to make them new skeletons have a few extra bones for other armor effect purposes.

 

Many armors in the game have loincloths and other cloth effects that laugh in the face of physics. Ex: Steel Plate has a fur tabard that clings to the legs like it's part of a dress instead of dangling behind when walking. Shameful. Kudos if any body modders listening go the extra mile and make skeletal changes for better cloth effects.

 

Extra kudos if they do it for dudes too!

 

A lifetime supply of kudos if they figure out how to do real dynamic cloth effects so cloaks and hanging furs blow in the wind!

[runestyr]

These are all good suggestions. I looked at Coronerras Maximum Compatibility Skeleton again, and it has a lot of extra "parts" such as 2 kinds of wing appendages and extra head joints (such as for a helmet plume) and plenty of joints around the waist for loincloths and similar features. I also note that it also has a multi-joint appendage off the right hand, such as for a whip or chain weapon.

 

I suggest that this skeleton needs only a few addtions to be the desired starting point:

* whip-like joints on both hands for dual-wielding

* a longer tail for Medusae-like creatures

* some simple appendages on the head to anchor an aventail, insectoid tusks or illithid tentacles

* changes to the "fingered" wings so they can function as wings or as centauroid limbs

 

I wish my modeling skill was good enough that I had any idea of the amount of work my suggestion would entail. :whistling:

[Ghogiel]

These are all good suggestions. I looked at Coronerras Maximum Compatibility Skeleton again, and it has a lot of extra "parts" such as 2 kinds of wing appendages and extra head joints (such as for a helmet plume) and plenty of joints around the waist for loincloths and similar features. I also note that it also has a multi-joint appendage off the right hand, such as for a whip or chain weapon.

 

I suggest that this skeleton needs only a few addtions to be the desired starting point:

* whip-like joints on both hands for dual-wielding

* a longer tail for Medusae-like creatures

* some simple appendages on the head to anchor an aventail, insectoid tusks or illithid tentacles

* changes to the "fingered" wings so they can function as wings or as centauroid limbs

 

I wish my modeling skill was good enough that I had any idea of the amount of work my suggestion would entail. :whistling:

 

some of that is pointless to have on the one commonly used skeleton now.

 

in skyrim your player can control an entirely different skeleton. *cough* werewolf. Meaning if someone was to make a playable medusa, which wouldn't be comatible with any vanilla outfits anyway, they could just go and do that in a modular fashion. Not of this crazy cram it all into the player skeleton malarkey.

 

There would be no need to have Medusa tails on the player skeleton... making the rig totally bloated carrying 50 unneeded bones no one ever used,... not that anyone ever made a an animatable rig for these things. Only skeleton nifs, which is like a tiny fraction of the work involved in creating entire character animation sets and state machines and game set up etc.

 

Even the whip idea might not be needed on the actual player rig.it might be possible make new animation sets... just for that type of weapon now. And not replace anything.

 

Potential is high

 

but don't get me started on body mods. I've already said how to have every body mod compatible with every other one... many times and no one listens.

[KillerHappyFace]

There would be no need to have Medusa tails on the player skeleton...

 

Erm...Khajit and Argonians. Their tails are 100% static, just an animation stuck on their butts that moves like it's reacting slightly to the wind. And it still moves like that when said Khajit or Argonian is dead.

 

I'd agree with you if this were still Fallout, and also if all of the default armors didn't already have something horribly wrong with them. Nearly all of the armors will be redone anyway, to a much greater extent than any Bethesda game to date, judging from current forum chatter. So why not do it right and make them compatible with a better skeleton? So what if there are a few unused bones, that adds greater modability and future mod compatibility. The only thing I'd consider not keeping from that skeleton are the wings.

 

Potential is indeed high for a modular approach, but I think that the total replacement is needed for the sake of many of the armors/robes and for the bestial races.

Edited November 18, 2011 by KillerHappyFace

[Gilibran]

I'm no modder myself but i hope the modding communtity will put their heads together and share their experierence to come up with 1 mod skeleton/body wich will become the standard from the beginning. It's a shame to see so much good stuff out there wich unfortunatly is'nt compatible. Edited November 18, 2011 by Gilibran

[Antagonistic]

This is needed, but... the best one won't be the first one, so the standard one might hold everyone back. And creative people will certainly think of bodies that even the super compatibility skeleton won't be able to deal with.

 

But still, full support. Once nif files decoding is done, someone who can do this with the NAME and reputation of not just good models but clothing and faces and races to go with it could make a standard model and skeleton, this would have the best chance of success.

[runestyr]

in skyrim your player can control an entirely different skeleton. *cough* werewolf. Meaning if someone was to make a playable medusa, which wouldn't be comatible with any vanilla outfits anyway, they could just go and do that in a modular fashion.

 

Even better.

 

I've already said how to have every body mod compatible with every other one... many times and no one listens.

 

I'm new to the forums, but if no one is listening maybe they didn't understand the suggestion? Skyrim mods are at the point where the first person to do something well will set the new standard.

[Guest Messenjah]

@Antagonistic: Not necessarily true. HGEC became pretty much standard in Oblivion, even though Eshme and several other bodies came first, same goes for FO3, BABE came first but most used Type3. Type3 stuck in New Vegas simply because it was already standard in FO3 and there wasn't any need to improve on it, as New Vegas was pretty much a massive expansion to FO3. No offense to anyone intended, I love NV and have modded it extensively but that is pretty much what it is and I loved it as a game, but it is true. Really, it boils down to what the modders will use, how much work was put in, and overall, just personal preference.

 

I think modding it to set up breast size is a good idea so that we can end the debate over that. ;) Not to say that it will happen, some things are just more feasible than others, especially in the beginning stages and with Skyrim, we need to pretty much start at the beginning as it's Nif files will probably be structured a bit differently than in the past.

 

I think if we are to add too many new things, such as Coronerras Maximum Compatibility Skeleton, it may over-complicate things for the average mod designer. I agree completely with anything that will fit into the lore such as loincloth bones would be cool. Also, I'm sure someone will eventually try to mod bouncing breasts so included bones to make this easier/better for them will be a great idea. I think maybe an advanced skeleton for advanced modders might be a good idea later on with all the extra whip-like joints. For now though, stick to basics. Remember, you can only animate so much without using motion capture technology, which I seriously doubt that anyone here has. I would go with small minor tweaks for things like bouncing breasts, moving man-parts (for lack of a better word), and swinging loincloths..... wow that sounded dirty. j/k ;) I'm thinking more about bones to do some simple tweaks.

 

@Ghogial, I would like to bring up a point about Werewolves though. As of yet, we don't really know if we can do anything much with them. Not sure if you are modding back in the Morrowind days but there were some serious issues with messing with the werewolves and making anything like that compatible with the game. Apparently, there was some sort of box within the mesh design that was hard-coded into the game for the transformation. No one could figure out how it was hard-coded or how to get it to work. Although, there were some mods where the transformation could take place by binding pieces of armor to the player to look like a werewolf. So this may not work, depending on how Bethesda has set this up.

 

I guess in the end, we will all see. ;)