Races; How much effort?

[chaoswiredloser]

Hi, I'm not expecting to great at this (first time at this) but I'd like to know what things you go through into making a race? Or for first off how do you even go about starting? I mean does the average race maker (granted I don't think they are that average, but you understand the expression no?) use a mesh or standard body shape? Or do they build from scratch? Any help or suggestions would be much obliged. I've already downloaded the blender program(FYI) and the noob to pros program. Thank you for your time.

[Tchos]

All races, even custom ones, use the same body mesh. You're limited to changing the heads and tails, as well as attributes.

[chaoswiredloser]

Ah, I see I have no Idea what I'm doing XD

[dezdimona]

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=26095

I'd start out small,and work your way up!

[LoginToDownload]

Some races would need a new face mesh, but with many you can do all you want by simply changing the textures of an existing one. If you want to access Oblivion's race meshes and textures, you'll need a program like BSA Commander.

 

And generally, but not necessarily, it'll be a huge amount of work A 2D paint program is probably going to be more important than a 3d modeling one. You can find a tutorial for navigating races in the Construction Set here, but it doesn't really help with setting the files up in Oblivion/Data once they're finished, or making the new files at all.

 

If you extract, say, the Imperial race's Textures folder (under Textures/Charactes/Imperial), you should be seeing entirely.dds files. The contents of the Male and Female folders are textures for body parts aside from the head. All the non-numbered .dds files are pretty self-explanatory, except maybe the ones that end in _n, but more on those later.

The numbered "head" textures, like headhumanf20.dds, look very much like the result of sticking one's head in a styrofoam mold and paste another texture on top of the previous head texture if the NPC's sex and age match the listed ones (f for female, m for male). If the age is a multiple of 10, it will be attached for anything of that age or older that isn't governed by an "older" texture. If it isn't a multiple of 10, it works for that age only. This is primarily used for adding and changing wrinkles depending on the NPC's age, but Django's Unique Features takes advantage of it to give some NPCs scars, tattoos, or other things. They can be coloured if you want.

The _n files are the secret behind Oblivion's graphical quality. These determine how light reflects off a texture to give flat textures a psuedo-3D appearance. The stone walls of the Imperial Dungeon are a great example, as light falls through the cracks in the stone. I know very little about editing and creating Normal Maps by hand, but NVidia provides a filter to turn a standard texture into a normal map as well as plugins to import and export .dds files, both for Photoshop.

 

And, I'm out of time. Will continue the tutorial shortly if you're still interested.