Joshawowo Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 Hey all, I've been wanting to get into modding for awhile, so I decided a good first project would be to retexture the Chillrend blade. In the vanilla game, the Chillrend blade just looks like a glass sword, except blue instead of green. I decided maybe it would look cooler if it actually had sort of an icy look to it, so that's what I wanted to do. Along the way I decided to get rid of some detail like the part going down the middle of the blade (haven't decided if that was a good idea or not, I just wanted to differentiate it as much as I could). Here's where I'm at right now: http://i.imgur.com/led9v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/6aj3d.jpg So I liked it when I was working on it, but when I went back and look at the original I feel like I missed the mark a little bit, as I'm not really sure I made it more like actually "ice". I feel like now it's maybe just kinda grungy looking. But I'm not sure, maybe I've been looking at it too long, so I could use some second opinions. I'm not very experienced at making new normal maps, so that could be part of the problem. Also, I'm considering playing around with transparency, like making the blade (or maybe just parts of the blade) slightly see-through, like 80%. I played around with it and I know how to do it now, but haven't tried it enough to get a result that I liked. Figured I'd stick with just the texture and normal for now. So let me know if anyone has some suggestions or advice or anything. If anyone likes it, I'd be happy to release it, even if it's not 100% quite yet. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imperistan Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 Oooooh this is good. Your idea about transparaceny is spot on though. It could definitely use it. What it could also use is a smoother normal in -some- places. The parts like the hilt and the base of the blade (on top of the hilt) can stay as they are, but the rest of the blade should gradually smooth out into a nice smooth look. Basically you gradually remove the sharpness as you go up the blade, going from a rough ice feel to a smooth ice feel. Get me? Couple that with transparency and a frost enchantment and this will look amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshawowo Posted February 14, 2012 Author Share Posted February 14, 2012 I like your idea! I will definitely try smoothing out the normals a bit more than I have here (I think I went a little overboard on it..), and I'll take another stab at transparency. I'll post an update when I've got one (either later tonight or sometime tomorrow). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshawowo Posted February 15, 2012 Author Share Posted February 15, 2012 So I played around with transparency for a bit, and think I finally found a look that I like. I didn't want the entire blade to be the same transparency, so it was a bit tricky to get a good look. The only problem is that it looks better in certain lighting situations than others, but really I think it looks good 90% of the time, and that's good enough for me. It mainly just looks weird if it's in full blast sunlight, or a in a completely dark room. I think the transparency makes it bit more "special" looking, since that's not something you see much in the game. Take a look and let me know what you think! I'll most likely release it on the Nexus and see how the downloads go. Enjoy! http://i.imgur.com/SCHON.jpg http://i.imgur.com/uKYqh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QA2b6.jpg http://i.imgur.com/XJsEy.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakisthe Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 Mmmm...icy! I dunno though, the flanged scallops at the end still look kinda odd...perhaps smooth out the end a bit more as imperistan suggested and scale the tip down so it doesn't....balloon out so much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshawowo Posted February 15, 2012 Author Share Posted February 15, 2012 Thanks for the advice Jakisthe, unfortunately modifying the actual mesh of the object is still a bit out of my skill range at the moment, but I definitely agree that it would be cool to change the tip to further differentiate it from the default glass sword. When I get better at 3D modeling and whatnot I'll probably revisit this and see what I can do with it. In the meantime, I decided to go ahead and share my blade on the Nexus! Here's the link if anyone's curious in getting it: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9705 Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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