12 hours ago, Pleasemadam said:

With how active Valehyena's been with YA, have you thought about asking him to make a horse body texture for you?

You think the reason I mod is to not mod?

Truth is I'm not planning anything very fancy for bodies. They'll get unique hands and feet tho.

I think especially the full-size nose on this guy is out of proportion and overbalances him some. He looks better with smaller sizes. I can't make the neck longer, at least not by much, but maybe I could move the skull to the human position. The beast skull is set forward a bit. That might be a better balance on the spine.

Tried putting the head in human position and made it just a bit smaller so the neck is just a bit longer. 

Thinking:

Hooves aren't going to fit into shoes and open-toed shoes and slippers are going to look stupid. N there will be horse-specific hands, but they'll disappear under gloves.

n most helmets are going to look stupid.

I could *not* give the horses an armor race, so no standard armors fit. I could write a quick script like SOS uses to edit all armors at runtime to add the horse race, but not add it to boots or headgear. You'd still be able to put them on and get the buff, but they wouldn't show up. That way I could have horse-specific versions of any armor I like. 

Good idea? Bad idea?

Also what about the ears? I did the usual body part dismember thing so they disappear under helmets. But I could not do that and just let them poke through hoods and helmets. 

2 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Hooves aren't going to fit into shoes and open-toed shoes and slippers are going to look stupid

Eh, to be honest this will apply to basically anything that doesn't have human or human-like feet.

Closest we could get to footwear compatibility feet-shape-wise if we wanted to get picky about that would be doing what Grimoa did for Argonians and Khajiit (pic), but while that can work for lizards and feline (or canine) paws, I don't see it working out for hooves at all.

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N there will be horse-specific hands, but they'll disappear under gloves.

Horse-specific hands? What would those look like, anyway?

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n most helmets are going to look stupid.

Well, that's the case with the sharks as well; only helmets that don't look like crap on them are those that don't cover the front at all (like Scaled, Imperial or Hide helmets), and even then not all of them look good, but only having access to some is better than not having any at all IMO.

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I could *not* give the horses an armor race, so no standard armors fit. I could write a quick script like SOS uses to edit all armors at runtime to add the horse race, but not add it to boots or headgear. You'd still be able to put them on and get the buff, but they wouldn't show up. That way I could have horse-specific versions of any armor I like.

Good idea? Bad idea?

I guess if the runtime script thingy works, it could be an acceptable middle ground. I think an outright lack of ArmorRace so all vanilla and mod-added gear needs to be patched to work on them would be a very bad idea, but the patcher script would get rid of the main downside to it if it does work.

TBH I still think it's better to avoid unnecessary complexity and just choose a vanilla ArmorRace and be done with it, but I'd say this idea is still worth looking into at least.

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Also what about the ears? I did the usual body part dismember thing so they disappear under helmets. But I could not do that and just let them poke through hoods and helmets. 

Ears can be folded down and kept like that to fit under gear (though I'm not sure it would be comfortable long-term), but then again we can also pretend all headwear pieces have holes for the ears to peek out of so either option would be acceptable I'd say. I kinda like seeing my character's ears but I also think hoods should conceal the whole head, so I don't really know what to suggest.

For YA, the helmets pretty much all reveal the ears and I think it works for them. Thing here is the horse has to work as a standalone race in a human skyrim.

Feet problem is a problem for birds too, I've just been ignoring it.

Hands are going to have thick, stubby, hoof-type nails.

Anybody got good equippable pony tails? I don't need to make those if they exist already. Else I'll just steal the ones off the actual horses.

40 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

Else I'll just steal the ones off the actual horses.

you may not want those, they are using vertex colors for the transparency.

Thanks for the heads-up, but I can fix that.

10 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

For YA, the helmets pretty much all reveal the ears and I think it works for them. Thing here is the horse has to work as a standalone race in a human skyrim.

Vanilla Skyrim gear already magically changes shape to fit whoever wears it regardless of what the original owner looked like; if a female Khajiit can get a full set of armor from a male Orc and still be able to wear them somehow (because "gameplay mechanics", of course), I don't see why the horses getting custom helmets with invisible-but-they-are-actually-there-I-swear ear holes wouldn't be that far off.

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Hands are going to have thick, stubby, hoof-type nails.

Huh. Looking forward to it, then.

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Anybody got good equippable pony tails? I don't need to make those if they exist already. Else I'll just steal the ones off the actual horses.

AFAIK the only "pony tails" of the actual tail kind out there are mostly fake ones included in "ponygirl" fetish bondage sets and they lack proper tail bone rigging, so chances are you'd be better off simply making your own, even if it's using vanilla horse tails as a base.

Speaking of ponytails of the not-actually-tail kind, will the horses be getting custom horse-like hairstyles? I don't see current human or beast hairs looking good on them, and also what's a horse without a proper horse mane anyway, lol?

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That looks pretty good. I'd suggest desaturating the final texture (except for the relevant bits of course) like you did with the foxes and tigers so it's easier to get white/black skin tints while still being able to go for more saturated ones, but as a showcase of what it could look like it's fine by me.

Ya, I've already made some mane styles. I'll post pics.

Quick photoshoot 

White Unicorn.dds

2 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Quick photoshoot 

 

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White Unicorn.dds 349.96 kB · 1 download

They look great!

Although it looks a little strange to me the claws on the hands lol

Got another important body part fixed up... also note fingernails.

3 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Got another important body part fixed up...

Heh. Was wondering when that would happen.

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also note fingernails.

Eh, those look mostly like just fingernails, but thicker.

TBH since we were getting custom hands I was expecting something more like "half-finger-half-hooves" (or alternatively mini-hoof-tipped fingers). Something like what the half-goat Sayer of the Law (Ron Perlman) had for a right hand in The Island of Doctor Moreau, only with 5 small fingers instead of 2 large ones + the thumb. And also with horse hooves instead of goat ones, of course.

Alternatively, I bet someone has done something like what I'm suggesting somewhere in yiff, so I could check E6 to see if I find any references should that be of help.

Ya for the fingers. I was thinking something like this:

I might take a second pass at them. 

Same guy has a different take on the feet:

I was making that last section thinner than the rest which is *ahem* more accurate. But this looks good and would look better than what I have in-game.

maybe you could steal the feet from this, they look pretty nice *at first glance
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83640

8 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Ya for the fingers. I was thinking something like this:

I might take a second pass at them. 

Yeah, that looks more like it. I just thought if we're doing custom hands we might as well make them distinct and not just "human hands but with slightly thicker nails".

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Same guy has a different take on the feet:

I was making that last section thinner than the rest which is *ahem* more accurate. But this looks good and would look better than what I have in-game.

You mean that part where the leg meets the base of the hoof? If so, yeah, I like this style better than the current one.

I know real horses do basically walk on stilts, but your current mesh still looks too flimsy to support a bipedal skeleton; making them thicker like in the drawing there looks a bit better and less "oh-gods-those-legs-will-break-in-no-time"-y, lol. Don't know if you would be able to get the "fur going further down past the base of the hoof" effect, though.

7 hours ago, Learningmoment said:

maybe you could steal the feet from this, they look pretty nice *at first glance
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83640

As far as I can tell those are simply the vanilla Skyrim horse meshes re-rigged to whatever custom skeleton/system the centaurs use, so using those would be the same as using the vanilla ones in the first place. At most I see them being used as visual reference, but I don't reusing the actual meshes and/or textures would be worth it.

This could be useful  for feet or tail for deer.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83524

Uploaded by

Setribb

Stuff from "Mod Resource Collection by Nuzka https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11277/

Permissions and credits

22 minutes ago, Raydric said:

This could be useful  for feet or tail for deer.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83524

Stuff from "Mod Resource Collection by Nuzka https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11277/

Yeah, AFAIK Nuska's assets are free to use as long as you give credit (actually I don't even think crediting is mandatory, but why the hell would you not do so), so there's that in case they are ever of use. TBH her (?) hooves look pretty damn good, so they could be useful as a reference for the horse ones if need be, at least for the fur-to-hooves transition with the fluff going over the hooves a bit.

Also while the original LE file for the Mod Resource Collection was removed, the SE file from the second link seems to be the exact same as the original so there's no need to back-convert it or anything for it to work on LE.

I'll have a look at those. Despite my snark up above I have no objection to borrowing other people's assets. 

The deer hooves could be useful for a possible future minotaur or deer race. Horns too.

I'm now at the point where I don't want to play the game because I'm already planning my next character and I don't want to keep playing my old one. (It's going to be a winged horse, maybe unicorn.) 

I'm working on expressions and phonemes, which take forever. The fun part tho is you get to spend a bunch of time staring into a mirror and making funny faces.

The mouth texture isn't final, I just hacked it in from the khajiit texture for now.

Something I did different this time was to borrow an approach from Fallout and make a set of morphs that can be mixed and matched to make the final expression I want. (Eyes wide open + ears back + mouth down = fear; squint + frown + mouth down = anger.) They still generally get tweaked some but it's making things faster. Maybe.

I took a break from phonemes and played with warpaints and face tints.

Once the phonemes are done and properly exported I'll have a functioning alpha. It won't have things like revamped feet or hands but it should be reasonable to check things out.

That schlong upthread is a standard SOS schlong, not a hoodie. Anybody have strong opinions about whether this guy needs a retracting sheath?

59 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

I'm working on expressions and phonemes, which take forever.

Expressions looking good so far, they feel... well expressive, lol. Do horses actually lower their ears like that when displaying aggression, though? In any case, liking them so far.

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Something I did different this time was to borrow an approach from Fallout and make a set of morphs that can be mixed and matched to make the final expression I want. (Eyes wide open + ears back + mouth down = fear; squint + frown + mouth down = anger.) They still generally get tweaked some but it's making things faster. Maybe.

Huh. Does that mean if you keep those base morphs, it would be somewhat easier to port these assets to FO4 by using them to create the FO4 morphs? Just wondering, is all.

TBH horses wouldn't be first on my "porting priority list", for example the YA Citrus-based races would be the first ones (since once you port one you can get all the others by doing alternate base shapes and then tweaking the morphs a bit). But hey, if the work is streamlined by having "modular" morphs already, more options are always welcome. We can't have real horses because "Radiation killed them all" (except for the ones in that NV comic, but IIRC it's been declared as "non-canon"), so we might as well get anthro ones instead, lol.

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I took a break from phonemes and played with warpaints and face tints.

The first two were practically a given, seeing how those seem to be the most common natural patterns on horse faces, but the last two that are actual warpaints looks pretty good as well.

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Once the phonemes are done and properly exported I'll have a functioning alpha. It won't have things like revamped feet or hands but it should be reasonable to check things out.

I take it that alpha will be male-only, like with the previous race mods? I'll check it out all the same, but it will be nice to see how females turn out, seeing how males look promising so far.

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That schlong upthread is a standard SOS schlong, not a hoodie. Anybody have strong opinions about whether this guy needs a retracting sheath?

I'm personally not very picky about horse sheaths so a "normal" schlong can work as far as I'm concerned, and also no Hoodies means less stuff that can bug out. I do have to say it looks a bit weird with that modeled sheath (?) if it's going to be static.

Just a random idea, but what about taking a normal (human) SOS schlong and replacing the tip with a horse-like one without altering anything else? May look better when flaccid and such while still keeping the distinctive horse-ness thanks to the tip.

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

Do horses actually lower their ears like that when displaying aggression, though

Yup. They lay their ears flat back and show their teeth.

Alpha will be male only, I think, just because it will take a while to get clean female textures.

7 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

retracting sheath?

Personally, if you can I'd say do it. Especially if you can get the whole process looking as 'realistic' as possible. It would be something new and interesting.

We already have regular equine SOS addons, making compatible with custom races isn't something I would feel is worth the extra effort. (A guide to make one of the currently available schlongs compatible would be all that's needed, and already kinda exists)

Testing out in game:

3 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Testing out in game:

 

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You are really fast in what you do. Until you're testing it in the game

It's almost ready!

17 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

I'm now at the point where I don't want to play the game because I'm already planning my next character and I don't want to keep playing my old one. (It's going to be a winged horse, maybe unicorn.) 

I'm curious.  Was your previous character a sabrelion?

My characters are:

A bat, a selachii and an argonian

I think after adding something else to my list