Wonderful as always, keep it up!

It is good that Thomas and Nora doesn't live in our age. Blood banks will be empty.

Must compliment Nora+s hairstyle. It suites her perfectly. She is too beautiful even being redhead and having vampire fangs.

34 minutes ago, Soulvexx said:

Wonderful as always, keep it up!

Thanks!

I forget to add some bonus screenshots that I did recently!

31 minutes ago, Elf Prince said:

It is good that Thomas and Nora doesn't live in our age. Blood banks will be empty.

Must compliment Nora+s hairstyle. It suites her perfectly. She is too beautiful even being redhead and having vampire fangs.

Thank you very much! What does "even being redhead" mean  ? That's a feature of her!

Very well done and I sign all my Prince said

3 hours ago, Alter Native said:

What does "even being redhead" mean  ? That's a feature of her!

Im sure its related to Malicia.

As for the session, it was kinda cool when they made a blood bath literally from stormcloaks ?

The blood-soak effect you've done on Nora is quite cool, I like it. I don't know how much blood would "cling" onto the skin like so, but who cares - it looks awesome!

Quite the departure gift from Thomas, eh ? Storywise, aside from his departure and Fina's, the events do slow down somehow. The pace decresases to a minimum in terms of events I'd say (though there could be a lot of upcoming), but at another hand, that allowed you to fully take profit of the blood bath/blood soaked sex scene. And so we get even more intense red contrasts aesthetics, as you can nearly fully cover the scene in red without the lighting tinting the whole thing. And so artistically, some images are to be viewed for quite some time to be appreciated at their fair value.

Contrary to what you wrote, I think you have become greatly skilled in integrating blood ingame, to the point another tutorial form you could be interesting. The tears were a bit lesser however, but still decent. Scenario wise,we get to see interesting parts of Nora, which some signs of attachment towards Fina, and previously some sens of duty. So an interesting entry from several points of view, with Nora alignment getting close to loyal neutral I'd say. A nice stormcloaks twist. ^^ Good job !

Malicia : « Thomas's very meany in fact. If he wanted a bath, he could've just asked. He doesn't look cute anymore, no.

                 Anyway, he put Nora in a good mood, so she was nice to Fina, yes.  »

5 hours ago, Resdayn said:

9 hours ago, Elf Prince said:

Must compliment Nora+s hairstyle. It suites her perfectly. She is too beautiful even being redhead and having vampire fangs.

Im sure its related to Malicia.

Malicia : « I'm very sure too. He still has luckasto problems sometimes, that's all, uh.  »

yeah... Nora's just hot as hell no wonder Thomas can't keep his hand off of her!

and i swear she is looking almost as good as a Fallout 4 character model! how'd you manage to get her THAT good?!

2 hours ago, Tirloque said:

                 Anyway, he put Nora in a good mood, so she was nice to Fina, yes.  »

Malicia : « I'm very sure too. He still has luckasto problems sometimes, that's all, uh.  »

My friend trilog, I like redheads like Nora, malicija and some other posted here as long they have no freckles and they are not fat. Those two things simply doesn't suite me.

Either I have a really weird sense of humor or I seriously dislike stormcloaks, but I've laughed for a good couple of minutes at the whole " I don't think it was necessary - Well, it was necessary for a bath of blood" scene. ? There's something so charmingly bullheaded about Thomas. He decided to be romantic and if it required massacring a squad of soldiers, then so be it.

You mentioned at some point that you do not particularly like writing dialogue, but this entry had quite a few very nice one-liners. Nora's mention of the mutual understanding she has between herself and Thomas's manhood was very saucy while his short, and a matter-of-fact " Love you" was rather touching. ?

Duchess Maerwynn's request to visit Baroness Karlov sounds very suspicious. Feels like there's an intrigue brewing for the future episodes. ?

While your whole chapter is marvelous as always, my personal favorite part was the second spoiler. Nora's hesitance (inquiring about the soup's taste) contrasted wonderfully with Fina's straightforwardness ("What do you want?"). That small role reversal coupled with Baroness's seemingly genuine concern for her servant's well-being was both unexpected and heartwarming. (I really like Fina and hope she survives in your story even somewhere in the background ?)

P.S. Thomas is unfairly hot. Every time he's in the screenshot my mind just turns into a puddle. ?

Bloody Butts and dicks Batman! Bloody juicy scenes.  Oh and nice boner scenes ehm, I mean bonus scenes.  

14 hours ago, EvalovesEP said:

Very well done and I sign all my Prince said

Thank you Eva  

13 hours ago, Resdayn said:

Im sure its related to Malicia.

As for the session, it was kinda cool when they made a blood bath literally from stormcloaks ?

 

Well I did the math and figured 30 stormcloaks was the easiest to come by .

11 hours ago, Rattlesnark said:

The blood-soak effect you've done on Nora is quite cool, I like it. I don't know how much blood would "cling" onto the skin like so, but who cares - it looks awesome!

Thank you Rattlesnark!

Yeah me neither, in most depiction of that people are either not covered in blood at all (to show more booby), or they are covered it buckloads of fake horror movie blood which looks stupid as well. 

8 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Quite the departure gift from Thomas, eh ? Storywise, aside from his departure and Fina's, the events do slow down somehow. The pace decresases to a minimum in terms of events I'd say (though there could be a lot of upcoming).

Yeah you're totally right, I noticed that myself a while ago. Basically the only meaningful thing that happend in all of chapter 7 was the first kiss of Nora and Thomas the rest of it felt (!) kind of unnecessary.

The main story is in this state for quite some time, basically since the middle of chapter 5 after Nora killed Eric and got her castle. Ever since then the "main plot" basically stopped (not that there was a huge main plot before, but at least there was more). At that point I felt like I had reached a nice "plateau" or a nice setup I wanted to tell stories with.

So for a while I used this to tell a number of "short stories". 

• Nora and the Panther
• Nora and Stan 
• Hannah and Jasper coming to the spooky vampire castle
• Nora and Thomas slaying ferals and finding the secret nord tomb
• Stormcloaks coming to Nora's castle and the bath in blood
• And Chapter 7 Section 9 & 10

You notice there are a lot of short setups of something like a conflict and they are resolved within that entry or the next one. It feels more like a collection of short stories. 

The other reason for doing that besides liking the status quo was my bad experience I made with telling coherent longer stories, namely the bad experience I made in chapter 3. It's where Nora gets captured by the Dawnguard and eventually manged to flee, which takes 4-5 entries. The story is bad and the sex scenes are as well, which made me believe you couldn't combine a good story and good sex scenes over longer periods of time, you either do one or the other.

With the short story setup I had much more control of the story that would then end in a reasonably good sex scene (See C7S1 & C7S2, If I'd add a third or forth entry with a good story I think a potential sex scene would kind of feel forced or unnatural... )

With the flashback of Chapter 6 I tried myself again with a more coherent story and chose the already sexualized environment intentionally. 

With all of that said, I already noticed what you pointed out and the already finished content of Chapter 8, 9 & 10 goes into a completely different direction, with a much better coherent main story while keeping a good level of sex scenes. I learned a lot in chapter 2-7 and contrary to by previous believe it's certainly possible to combine both. (Even though sex scenes are rarely important for the actual story, so they are more a pause in the story.)

Also, by now within chapter 8-10 I have captured a lot of the loose ends again so a lot of the entries of chapter 5-7 don't feel like random short stories anymore but some kind of setups. But as explained, that wasn't planned from the beginning. For example Fina found a nice place in the story by now and Stan will find one too. The same is true for the upcoming last entries of chapter 7.

Quote

And so artistically, some images are to be viewed for quite some time to be appreciated at their fair value.

Thank you!

Quote

Contrary to what you wrote, I think you have become greatly skilled in integrating blood ingame, to the point another tutorial form you could be interesting.

Before I'd do a blood tutorial I want to create a second part to my already existing and show how all the theory is applied to an ingame scenario. 

Quote

Malicia : « Thomas's very meany in fact. If he wanted a bath, he could've just asked. He doesn't look cute anymore, no.

I'm sorry, I tried to warn you beforehand . 

5 hours ago, xGHoSTx said:

and i swear she is looking almost as good as a Fallout 4 character model! how'd you manage to get her THAT good?!

I always notice a big difference, when not doing skyrim related stuff for a while. When you come back you realize how old the game actually is and how bad some of the effects like reflections actually look, especially compared to Fallout or some of the Unreal Engine stuff, but thanks!

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

Either I have a really weird sense of humor or I seriously dislike stormcloaks, but I've laughed for a good couple of minutes at the whole " I don't think it was necessary - Well, it was necessary for a bath of blood" scene. ? There's something so charmingly bullheaded about Thomas. He decided to be romantic and if it required massacring a squad of soldiers, then so be it.

Agreed, but still, in there eyes this is much less of a crime then it is in ours  .

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

You mentioned at some point that you do not particularly like writing dialogue, but this entry had quite a few very nice one-liners. Nora's mention of the mutual understanding she has between herself and Thomas's manhood was very saucy while his short, and a matter-of-fact " Love you" was rather touching. ?

Thank you! I'm doing my best when it comes to dialogues and it's nice to hear that they are good sometimes.

4 hours ago, Devianna said:

While your whole chapter is marvelous as always, my personal favorite part was the second spoiler. Nora's hesitance (inquiring about the soup's taste) contrasted wonderfully with Fina's straightforwardness ("What do you want?"). That small role reversal coupled with Baroness's seemingly genuine concern for her servant's well-being was both unexpected and heartwarming. (I really like Fina and hope she survives in your story even somewhere in the background ?)

I like Fina as well and if I like a character, there's a good chance they stay alive  . (Watch your back Vasil.)

Thank you Devianna!

1 hour ago, Jayomms said:

Bloody Butts and dicks Batman! Bloody juicy scenes.  Oh and nice boner scenes ehm, I mean bonus scenes.  

 Thank you Jayomms!

Awsome entry as always and damn those bloodsoaked pictures looked awesome!

14 hours ago, bodabira 01 said:

Awsome entry as always and damn those bloodsoaked pictures looked awesome!

Thank you bodabira!

Oh hell. The whole bloodbath scene is just amazing! Doing all this stuff from scratch in a first place is a huge amount of work, and including the trace thing you mentioned and knowledge that blood is a complex liquid and should look and act way complex than water... I don't even know what is easier, to so it via tattoos and overlays or just to draw it in a Photoshop... 

In a different dimension of magic you are probably a Blood magic grandmaster ^_^

Great job Alter ^_^

2 hours ago, Crw said:

Oh hell. The whole bloodbath scene is just amazing! Doing all this stuff from scratch in a first place is a huge amount of work, and including the trace thing you mentioned and knowledge that blood is a complex liquid and should look and act way complex than water... I don't even know what is easier, to so it via tattoos and overlays or just to draw it in a Photoshop... 

In a different dimension of magic you are probably a Blood magic grandmaster ^_^

Great job Alter ^_^

I think Photoshop is better for individual images with blood on it, but when you do 100+ screenshots with lots of blood on it you have no other option but to go for tattoos/overlays.

Thank you very much! 

Great job as usual! I've been learning quite a lot recently but you still do some things I have no clue about yet

Here's a question: I'm assuming the candles and blood weren't on location. How do you spawn a body of liquid? I'm guessing you set that bath up using the Creation Kit? I guess the candles have an ID you could call up, but they wouldn't have an actual light source attached to them, so that must also be CK?

I haven't played with CK at all, is there any decent tutorial you could recommend before I go off looking for one myself? I don't want to create my own cells (so far~) but being able to add things like fire, liquids, light sources, certain objects you can't spawn in etc would certainly be useful.

Oh and where is that pretty candelabra in the 2nd half? Pretty sure I saw it before but I don't know where it is. Is this a cell you created yourself or is it some house mod I never saw?

I ought to be releasing my stupidly long overdue next part soon too

3 hours ago, Irstina said:

Great job as usual! I've been learning quite a lot recently but you still do some things I have no clue about yet

Thank you.

3 hours ago, Irstina said:

Here's a question: I'm assuming the candles and blood weren't on location. How do you spawn a body of liquid? I'm guessing you set that bath up using the Creation Kit? I guess the candles have an ID you could call up, but they wouldn't have an actual light source attached to them, so that must also be CK?

 

I haven't played with CK at all, is there any decent tutorial you could recommend before I go off looking for one myself? I don't want to create my own cells (so far~) but being able to add things like fire, liquids, light sources, certain objects you can't spawn in etc would certainly be useful.

Ok, so the whole scene was set up in the Creation Kit. I don't think there is a way to achieve something like this purely ingame with mods. Even if there was a way the CK would be faster for sure, it's designed to build locations fast and easy. 

The actual CK and building locations like this is actually not that hard. You need to figure out how to navigate in the 3D object window, similar to blender or mudbox. You pull static objects via drag and drop from the object window, that's open by default. 

I don't really know a good tutorial about all the basic cell design stuff. I taught it to myself as a script kiddy during the oblivion days. But one common newcomer mistake is to not chose an active plugin when loading. So you pick a plugin to load and have to set it as active plugin. (That's very easy to miss when getting started.)

Maybe check the official creation kit tutorials for more information on basic location building and the controls of the CK, but in principle it's fairly strait forward. I'd suggest you just give it a try. 

When you're able place objects and make small edits you can basically create your own cells there really isn't much more to it besides navmeshing. 

For stories specifically you will mostly edit/modify (copies of) existing cells. For instance, as I tell a vampire story I don't want to have too many non vampire items like happy flowers or bread and cheese or whatever in the background. So if there is a cell of a mod I want to use I remove those and replace them with silver goblets or whatever. 

The blood scene was one of skyrims many caves where I placed a couple of rocks to form a pool, added the candles and added the (blood-) water. You can't spawn water ingame as far as I know. Water is found under "activator" instead of "static" and they are basically planes that mark the water surface. Check existing interior cells to understand that better. 

Now lightning is also fairly easy and you need the basic principles I talked about. The official tutorial for that is actually quite good (also as video). In general stick to the offical documentation, and the bethesda tutorials, they are actually good.

You'll find a lot of random tutorials on youtube of people who are just copying the bethesda ones and most of them have no idea what they are talking about, they just picked the CK up a couple of days ago. 

You'll also find good tutorials on TES alliance and there's a nexus wiki that seems good as well.

For what you want to do right now the official tutorials Nr. 1 and Nr.9 got you covered and I'd suggest getting started with them.

One last thing that's really powerful and covered by most tutorials are imagespaces. These are some kind of filters that get applied to the image before the rendered image goes to the ENB and your screen. Every cell in skyrim has them. They give every scene and cell a unique look. Think of your typical matrix screen that has a green tone all over it. This is basically an imagespace. 

You noticed for sure that cells in Windhelm feel much colder then in Riften. This is mostly due to the imagespace, windhelm cells have additional grey and white, while riften cells have an orange brown tone to them.

Imagespaces are very easy to use and very powerful in storytelling, here is an example:

 

[All screenshots are taken in the CK without ENB ]

 

This is the normal cell, how it comes out of the box in the mod:



 

This is the same cell with darker/night imagespace:



 

and a warmer/day imagespace



 

It's a single click and it completely changes the tone of the scene and the cell:

 



 

How to find these menus is explained in the first linked tutorial. Together with placeable lights (second tutorial) this is a very powerful framework. Also check the "Custom Light" mod that's also super helpful for dynamically changing light with one source ingame.

 

That should be enough to get you stared. Let me know when you have other questions or problems. 

3 hours ago, Irstina said:

Oh and where is that pretty candelabra in the 2nd half? Pretty sure I saw it before but I don't know where it is. Is this a cell you created yourself or is it some house mod I never saw?

It's from one of the resource mods of the nexus, I don't know which one by heart, but I know Raven Castle uses it as well, so you can get it from there. The manor is completely custom build, with a planned release within the next weeks.

3 hours ago, Irstina said:

I ought to be releasing my stupidly long overdue next part soon too

Looking forward to your stupidly long overdue next part then. 

19 hours ago, Alter Native said:

Thank you.

Ok, so the whole scene was set up in the Creation Kit. I don't think there is a way to achieve something like this purely ingame with mods. Even if there was a way the CK would be faster for sure, it's designed to build locations fast and easy. 

 

The actual CK and building locations like this is actually not that hard. You need to figure out how to navigate in the 3D object window, similar to blender or mudbox. You pull static objects via drag and drop from the object window, that's open by default. 

I don't really know a good tutorial about all the basic cell design stuff. I taught it to myself as a script kiddy during the oblivion days. But one common newcomer mistake is to not chose an active plugin when loading. So you pick a plugin to load and have to set it as active plugin. (That's very easy to miss when getting started.)

Maybe check the official creation kit tutorials for more information on basic location building and the controls of the CK, but in principle it's fairly strait forward. I'd suggest you just give it a try. 

When you're able place objects and make small edits you can basically create your own cells there really isn't much more to it besides navmeshing. 

 

For stories specifically you will mostly edit/modify (copies of) existing cells. For instance, as I tell a vampire story I don't want to have too many non vampire items like happy flowers or bread and cheese or whatever in the background. So if there is a cell of a mod I want to use I remove those and replace them with silver goblets or whatever. 

 

The blood scene was one of skyrims many caves where I placed a couple of rocks to form a pool, added the candles and added the (blood-) water. You can't spawn water ingame as far as I know. Water is found under "activator" instead of "static" and they are basically planes that mark the water surface. Check existing interior cells to understand that better. 

 

Now lightning is also fairly easy and you need the basic principles I talked about. The official tutorial for that is actually quite good (also as video). In general stick to the offical documentation, and the bethesda tutorials, they are actually good.

You'll find a lot of random tutorials on youtube of people who are just copying the bethesda ones and most of them have no idea what they are talking about, they just picked the CK up a couple of days ago. 

You'll also find good tutorials on TES alliance and there's a nexus wiki that seems good as well.

 

For what you want to do right now the official tutorials Nr. 1 and Nr.9 got you covered and I'd suggest getting started with them.

 

One last thing that's really powerful and covered by most tutorials are imagespaces. These are some kind of filters that get applied to the image before the rendered image goes to the ENB and your screen. Every cell in skyrim has them. They give every scene and cell a unique look. Think of your typical matrix screen that has a green tone all over it. This is basically an imagespace. 

You noticed for sure that cells in Windhelm feel much colder then in Riften. This is mostly due to the imagespace, windhelm cells have additional grey and white, while riften cells have an orange brown tone to them.

Imagespaces are very easy to use and very powerful in storytelling, here is an example:

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

[All screenshots are taken in the CK without ENB ]

 

This is the normal cell, how it comes out of the box in the mod:



 

This is the same cell with darker/night imagespace:



 

and a warmer/day imagespace



 

It's a single click and it completely changes the tone of the scene and the cell:

 



 

How to find these menus is explained in the first linked tutorial. Together with placeable lights (second tutorial) this is a very powerful framework. Also check the "Custom Light" mod that's also super helpful for dynamically changing light with one source ingame.

 
 

 

 

That should be enough to get you stared. Let me know when you have other questions or problems. 

 

 

It's from one of the resource mods of the nexus, I don't know which one by heart, but I know Raven Castle uses it as well, so you can get it from there. The manor is completely custom build, with a planned release within the next weeks.

 

Looking forward to your stupidly long overdue next part then. 

Thanks! Looking into CK stuff is definitely the next thing I'll be up to, although I suspect my next chapter won't really need anything radical in that regard.

A lot of the chapter I'm finishing up now takes place outside, which I've always found more difficult to work with - lighting and such in interior cells is much easier to control I feel, but the script needs it to happen outside, so I've had to deal with it

2 hours ago, Irstina said:

A lot of the chapter I'm finishing up now takes place outside, which I've always found more difficult to work with - lighting and such in interior cells is much easier to control I feel, but the script needs it to happen outside, so I've had to deal with it

Yeah interiors are much easier, but the same principles still apply to exterior. If it's too bright you have to look at your weather/weather mods, if it's too dark you can just place lights or use the "custom light" mod. 

There was some fantastic emotion in this entry! Seems like Nora is catching feelings ?I really love the shot of Nora watching Thomas leave at the end; you really captured her emotion there. I also totally understand you feeling like this didn't match that picture, but I found the effect to be perfect. Working with those blood textures looks incredibly difficult, but you always pull it off so seamlessly. Great job, as always!

8 hours ago, Collygon said:

There was some fantastic emotion in this entry! Seems like Nora is catching feelings ?I really love the shot of Nora watching Thomas leave at the end; you really captured her emotion there. I also totally understand you feeling like this didn't match that picture, but I found the effect to be perfect. Working with those blood textures looks incredibly difficult, but you always pull it off so seamlessly. Great job, as always!

Thank you very much Collygon  

Great work, its nice to see the "nice" side of Nora too. I now see thats shes somewhere in the middle between good and bad

On 8/27/2019 at 12:03 AM, Nuka Raider69 said:

Great work, its nice to see the "nice" side of Nora too. I now see thats shes somewhere in the middle between good and bad

Thank you Tex, much appreciate your feedback, also on the other entries!