Bad Dog's Compleat Khajiit

[Clenn]

Yes, it's this one. I love it if Lykaios mod can have nice feetpaw.

[Bad Dog]

Can't do much with "can't stand." Some detail on what you're looking for might be helpful.

 

My plan for the next and (semi-) final round is to load up the digitigrade feet and the tiger in one mod and give it a fomod installer so you can easily choose what you want. I'll also probably make it work with that other female khajiit mod textures and put a female tiger in there. To do that I have to make a set of female feet or two... so if you want to influence direction, now is the time to do it. My own thought was that a lighter foot on the females worked fine and I wasn't planning to change it. 

 

But nothing new happens until I'm done with my Rigmor of Bruma playthrough.

[Deadly Kitten]

I suppose it's the "matted fur" look, that I've grown to dislike, more so than anything else. I migrated to "Feminine Khajiit" (1) because I kinda like the body, and (2) it has 6 nips, which I felt was more suiting a feline.

 

(yes, she's covered in spunk and been quite busy, but I don't feel like waiting for it to fall off)

 

Long ago, I used http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/31522/? ( Khajiit Six Nipple Retexture for CBBE v3),  but when I switched to UNP before UUNP became a thing, I stopped using it. Now, this one still has the "brush tool" look, which might be what I find annoying, but I haven't looked into very many Khajiit textures, honestly. (A few of Krittakitty's Lykaios textures I like, but I seem to dislike the ones I notice the "brush effect" on. I'm not an artist, but I'd imagine this quirk is hard to eliminate, and might be why I dislike painting as a medium.) I should take more time into finding textures I prefer, but in the meantime, I'm happy with the Feminine Khajiit one.

[boo]

Sorry I haven't updated, been busy with some other things recently. Still want to give a shot at a more substantial foot. I'd also like to find a way to address some weirdness with crouching (floating!) and some bad angles when side strafing while crouched.

[Bad Dog]

@boo, yeah, there are still bone weight issues in the ankle area that cause awkward deformations. I'm ready to see what you come up with, but I've been living with this foot for a while and I'm not really feeling the need for a heavier foot. I might experiment with that on my own anyway tho.

 

@kingcup, I actually sorta kinda agree about the matted fur. (The image link isn't working for me, btw.) It's easy to get rid of--it's in the normal map. Trouble is you can't get fine fur detail from skyrim's engine. But the matted fur just ends up looking like plastic. Once I've settled Rigmor I might take my own crack at it--maybe try for a tuft of fur on the chest like the Flora character. And there ought to be a way to tease more texture out of the engine with subsurface maps and the like. 

 

Anyways, I'll probably do a six-nipple female before I'm done. I use UNP myself, so I'm actually more interested in doing it for that body than I am in loading up CBBE. But hey, if I get happy with fomod I might do both. And a lady tiger.

 

Oh, and somebody upthread suggested more separation in the toes, so I made an ambient occlusion map and baked it into the texture. It looks pretty good. It will be part of the next rev.

[27X]

Actually there is a way to "boost" furriness using the s, sk and normal maps, using a three color "pyramidal" scheme in each map that's identical in position. The problem is this looks really odd in certain lighting situations where in the character would essentially be casting what appears to be a "pseudoshadow" because of the normal map's depth calculation in the Skyrim engine. It's also a metric asston of work because each pyramid is technically a hair, so it requires a huge map to work with and you can't downsize it when you're done without destroying it. There's actually a plug in nDo to do this in a semiautomated fashion.

 

You could probably combine that with parallax map, though parallax on characters never quite looks right because they move independent of the viewing camera.

[Clenn]

And what about adding them to Lykaios Mod?

[Bad Dog]

I'd be happy to if those folks want them. But KrittaKitty and PorscheDog are both very good and both perfectionists. I'm kinda hesitant to go stomping around their sandbox. 

[Deadly Kitten]

Ok, here's a non-imbedded version of that pic. Yes, this is my Khajiit. I suppose I should've gotten a pic of the feet as well, but it's Grimora's plantigrade atm. Feminine Khajiit has a 6-nip version, as well as a "furry" version, but you can't use both afaik.

http://imgur.com/BhacP6c

 

And I think you're right, the "plastic" look really bugs me. (As a side note, part of that stems from a guy I knew that put so much hair gel into his hair, it, I kid you not, looked like a plastic hairpiece. There were always people who joked that if he ever started getting bald and got a comb-over, he wouldn't be able to go out on windy days.) I can't see "real fur" being easy to create ingame, and would be even tougher to render; my GPU croaks when playing Tomb Raider with the hair physics on high.

 

 

EDIT: I can't tell you how much I loved seeing a little pink slit on my Khajiit though. That's the biggest thing I miss from the "six nipple retexture". I know that Bodyslide has a way to merge textures, but I've been too busy (and lazy) to figure it out/find instructions.

 

I did a search on nexus, and found a few things. The texture set I think I started with was probably http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/4962/?, then I moved on to http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/7690/? which is still kinda pretty. Not asking for these to be made compatible (since the ones I've mentioned earlier I prefer), but they're there if you want ideas (or just see things I've liked.)

[Bad Dog]

The cheetah-style fur in your second link looks pretty good. Maybe I'll see what that guy did to get it. 

[Deadly Kitten]

Besides that cheetah-style one, there are three other "spotty khajiit"-style textures I liked. Feminine Khajiit has a leopard option, and then there's Khajiit Leopard www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/23119/ and http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/7690/?

[Bad Dog]

I finished with Rigmor, so now I'm all blue and not inclined to play Skyrim for a while. So I guess I'll go back to the mods.

 

I looked at the normal maps from some of those other mods. Most of them are pretty much smooth, but KrittaKitty's got something odd going on. She/he/it's got a light large-scale fur pattern overlaid on a very fine pattern--fine as in hairs being only a few pixels wide. Not sure how she gets away with it or how she made it but it looks pretty good in game. I'm going to play with that a bit. My tiger needs to be smooth overall, but with a fuzzy tummy and maybe chest. I would like to give him a bit of a ruff like the Lykaios has, but I don't think it's really a tiger thing. 

 

More as it happens.

[Bad Dog]

Some progress with the khajiit. I spent a bunch of time with the texture, but of course once you smooth him out then you want the muscles back. So that took a bit of playing with the SOS normal and mixing it with a smooth fur normal. This is what I got:

 

 

 

 

 

You can't really see it there, but I gave him a happy trail and a bit of a ruff:

 

 

 

 

 

You can see in that last image I'm having a terrible time with the normal going all pixilated. If anyone knows how to deal with this kind of thing, give me some pointers. I played with it a bit and haven't been able to get rid of it. It seems to be some sort of compression artifact. There must be some way to deal with it because other normals look better but I dunno what that is.

 

I played a little more with the foot mesh and the skeleton, especially for boo. Not much change, but I lengthened the foot a tad and took up the slack by bending the legs a tad more. The mesh is just a bit wider through the instep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've got to clean up that wrist seam -- not sure where  that's coming from either -- and then do the ladies. I think they'll be pretty similar except no happy trail, right?

 

[boo]

Toes definitely have better definition and the foot looks closer tot he right size. Anyway to drop and fatten the knee a bit (shortening the lower half of the leg)?

[Bad Dog]

Not that I've found, not without changing the mesh. Shortening the calf by scaling it makes it skinny; trying to move up the ankle position collapses the part of the calf susceptible to the foot bone, which is a very narrow band on males and none at all on females. So all the collapsing happens in that one area. I've already taken it as far as I can without weird deformations. I think the only option at this point is to change the angles, which turns the stance into more of a crouch.

[Deadly Kitten]

Here's a mod that was recently (re)-released. Ultimate Beast Race http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74833/?

Changes the foot into a somewhat wedge-like shape. Suppose it's a hybrid between the slender mesh and the more beefy meshes. Personally, I think it's ugly, the "fat" foot clashes with the slender legs, but that's just me.

[Bad Dog]

Sorry to have so few updates lately. Partly it's because I'm now doing a Dawnguard with Amorous Adventures and also Helgen Reborn playthrough, partly it's because I'm a bit overwhelmed. Here are the options I have in play:

• Paw feet with and without digitigrade skeleton - done, but the skeleton needs to be updated to the latest XPSE
• Vanilla texture -- males are done (for now), females need some fixup in the mesh
• Smooth texture -- males are done, females aren't (looks pretty good, I think)
• Grey cat and leopard female khajiit -- got started on this but the females have to be fixed first
• Male tiger PC - done
• Female tiger PC - not done
• White tiger PC, male & female - not done

I'm not really sure I'm going to get to all that, but that's the list. None of these include boots, btw. Also the werewolf PC is bugged in my game and I'm not sure if that's my skeleton, the tiger, or something else.

[Nepro]

Nice work Bad Dog. I appreciate your mod support for beast races.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50637/?

 

Up to release of this mod I used TEST XP32 Skeleton Compatibility Version. Looks nice. Some boots look disfigured but I can live with it so long as I get Khajiit anatomical look from Morrowind.

 

 

 

Practically, doing custom boots is a big job and it turns out that making all the khajiit in the game barefoot is also a big job.

 

That's one of the reasons that Bethesda didn't do it for Oblivion. Animation was another biggie.

Kudos, by the way.

 

 

Lazy fucks. I can't imagine how will they make TES X - Elsweyr with all of those Khajiit sub-species.
 

[Bad Dog]

Okay, khajiit fans. A new version is up with a fancy new fomod installer and everything. Try it out and let me know what's broke.

[boo]

Playing with the latest version as well as some skeleton edits. I've managed to make something I'm pretty happy with the direction of (still WIP of course) that preserves the scale of the thighs and calves with more "normal" length foot.

 

Still would like to figure out some solution to the floating crouch problem.

[Bad Dog]

So share -- I'd like to see what you've got.

[boo]

A quick preview of what I have right now:

 

 

I did end up scaling the thighs (but only the thighs, and a bit less). Weights need to be fixed on the foot meshes, and there are a few kinks I'm still working on. Still wish I could figure out how the hell to counteract the floating while crouched effect. Also of note, I've increased the scale of the toes and the head.

[boo]

So while I'm rather happy with the proportions, there needs to be a better solution in place for any animations which have the foot bending. Since the modified skeleton basically replaces the heel with toes, any animations which involve resting on the toes (and the heel in the air) will result in floating pads.

 

Trying to think of a good solution short of modifying the actual skeleton and redoing "standing" animations (though I wonder if it would be possible to do this well programmatically).

[Bad Dog]

I'm liking that your guy has less of a crouch. Dunno about the larger pads, would have to see it in game. 

 

Redoing animations sounds really hard. There was someone who did an animated sheath with a bunch of script manipulation of bones, but I can't imagine doing a lot of that. And animations would have to be for khajiit only. Is there any way to simply move the center point/starting point/root of the skeleton down, so the whole body is positioned down a bit?

[boo]

I'm liking that your guy has less of a crouch. Dunno about the larger pads, would have to see it in game. 

 

Redoing animations sounds really hard. There was someone who did an animated sheath with a bunch of script manipulation of bones, but I can't imagine doing a lot of that. And animations would have to be for khajiit only. Is there any way to simply move the center point/starting point/root of the skeleton down, so the whole body is positioned down a bit?

Moving the whole skeleton down would only half-solve the issue. I'm noticing there's also an issue with sideways motion operating on a diagonal rather than completely parallel to the floor. It may be possible to mitigate by adjusting the skeleton on the fly just when crouched.

 

EDIT: Played with the existing skeleton a bit by moving the toe node and adjusting a few rotations to bring the toe completely in line with the unadjusted skeleton. Result seems pretty great (when crouching only, when standing you see physics being defied) while mostly preserving proportions (this can obviously be worked on to a high degree of precision!). It would appear dynamically changing the BD nodes a bit would produce the best results. Now, how one would accomplish that is a lot more fuzzy. Whether it is simply a function of the angle between toe and foot, or if you could leverage properties of individual animations (is there any kind of tagging system?) to make the adjustments when needed.