[Wip] Official Tnt Custom Race Thread - Or, What The Femboy Idea Turned Into

[ItalianDragon]

On 6/28/2021 at 11:57 PM, Thelewdgooberkitty69 said:

can we use that

As soon as the model is complete and properly ported to Skyrim, of course

[Ashen1]

On 8/10/2021 at 12:11 PM, ItalianDragon said:

Hello folks

 

 

Good to see you're alive and well. 

About the poly count: would it be best to remove polys in the crook of the elbow/knee/armpit? (where you wouldn't pay much attention)?

 

(just my amateur oppinion tho)

Edited August 14, 2021 by Ashen1
punctuation

[ItalianDragon]

8 hours ago, Ashen1 said:

Good to see you're alive and well. 

About the poly count: would it be best to remove polys in the crook of the elbow/knee/armpit? (where you wouldn't pay much attention)?

 

(just my amateur oppinion tho)

That's what I'm gonna attempt to do because there's a lot of the mesh that is pointlessly detailed.
Like, I need a lot of polys for the fine detail (like the niplles or the pelvic/anus areas) but I need nowhere near as much on places like the thighs or torso in general.
I did try to decimate the polygons using Decimation Master but that leads to the loss of that fine detail in places where I absolutely want to keep it.

So yeah, lots of digging left to do ?

[ItalianDragon]

Hello folks !

Been a while isn't it ?

Well, I have great news, as you'll see in the snippet below

 

Spoiler

 

As you can probably see, there's quite a bit of detailed added where it matters, but the ken eyed folks here probably noticed that if anything the poly count is lower than before. That is because I've resolved my "how to add more detail where it matters" issue! What did the trick for me was a combination of the Decimation Master to lower the polycount significantly (from nearly 8 million down to 2.5), dividing it a tiny bit to get a bit more topology to work on and then relying on the Dynamic Subdivision feature. When used with proper polygroups, if you have them isolated on screen and divide them to get more topology, only the visible subgroups benefit from that and not the rest of the model.

 

This procedure was failing because I had an issue of overlapping points which I was able to resolve. So, now I can sculpt to my heart's content and really reach the level o detail I want. The task at hand is finishing the genitals, re-doing the detailing of the anus (as unfortunately decimating the model caused some loss of detail), adding details to the bellybutton and nipples and I'll be pretty much done after that. The remaining thing would be zapping out of existence the excess material from the neck, ankles and wrists but the procedure is fairly simple so I'm not worried about this.

 

The other great news is on the retopo side.

On my practice mesh, once I got to the texturing I realized that some edges weren't properly topologized. What this means is that the edges, instead of being properly welded, well, weren't welded, causing gaps in the model. The other issue, inherent to a manual retopo, is uneven topology, with unnecessary loops here and there and spots who would need them being critically in need of that. When I tinkered with an export of the femboy body I suddenly noticed something that was in plain sight: 3D Coat's auto-retopology feature. With it, the algorithm handles everything (although you can tell to it how detailed you want certain zones to be or how the flow of the topology must be.

 

Of course since the algorithm handles the retopology process, the geometry is nice and even, devoid of gaps like I did. Now there's some issues nevertheless (some spots have weird stretched faces for example) but it's still nevertheless a great improvement. The algorithm also confirmed what I was already thinking, which is that the inner part of the anus had to be its own mesh, instead of being all one thing. I'm not surprised by it at all, since all the female bodies who do have a vagina for SexLab and the like have it as its own separate mesh. So, one less problem out of the way. For the "hole", if you want that part as a more SFW thing, I'll just add a zap with a proper deformation of the model to close it up.

 

That's all for now folks, take care and stay safe !

[ItalianDragon]

Hello folks !

 

It's been a long while isn't it ?

 

I'd like to apologize for this very lengthy silence.

I've had a plethora of things happening IRL (nothing too serious thankfully) and that swamped things for quite a while. A few of those affected my modding capability and one in a bad way, the other in a good way.

 

First with the bad: I discovered that my 4TB SSD where the femboy files were stored in my PC (along with all my steam games and whatnot) was going bad (surprisingly) after a mere year of usage, and so I had to RMA the drive after spending three days recovering data from it. Thankfully that was a successful task (even if very time consuming as it took me three straight days to copy the data out of it). Even if the HDD was 100% broken with no hope of recovery, I've made a wholesale backup of all the data on an external HDD and online, as to make sure that no matter what, the important files are preserved.

 

Now here's the good: I've finally retired in March my now old i7 5820K in favor of a 5950X. This means that I migrated to a new platform and so I had to reinstall a LOT of things, including a plethora of programs I use for the femboy mod (3Ds Max, Zbrush, etc...). This change has had the double benefit of making the gameplay tests immensely faster as games load massively faster and run in a much more stable fashion, weeding out a lot of the "is it my mod who's eating the dirt or is it the game itself who's eating the dirt ?" scenarios. Productivity is also massively better, particularly with Zbrush. For example, the maximum limit in terms of mesh density I could hit with my 5820K before things slowed down to a crawl was about 8 million polygons. With the 5950X the limit is in the ballpark of 80 million. Safe to say that now I can sculpt fine detail as much as I want and I won't even notice the load on my system.

 

Paralleledly I've started to work with Blender as there more powerful tools for Skyrim modding on that software, although I'm not ditching 3D Coat entirely as it has useful features that aren't on Blender or on Outfit Studio. For example, an addition to Outfit Studio is the possibility to add geometry to a mesh, which is handy when you need to conform (for example) a particularly low poly outfit to a higher poly mesh. The problem is that the option doesn't offer the possibility to do it symmetrically, meaning that if you're dealing with a low poly problem on either side you risk making janky topology, as the creation of new topology won't be identical on either side.  Furthermore you can only do it one edge at a time and not several (or a whole loop) . 3D Coat can do all this just fine and on top of that it can add geometry rather extensively to existing meshes without breaking UV's, meaning that textures will still work even after you're done, and that's incredibly useful for the adjustment of existing outfits (for example).

 

So I've spent quite a fair deal of time familiarizing with all that new software and I'm fairly confident it's gonna help me finally polish things out and finally make meaningful advances in the project. I'm hopeful that in te coming weeks and months I can finally polish to my taste the femboy mesh, work on the final detailing and move forward with the retopology work.

 

So, that's all for now from me but rest assured, the project's not dead and I haven't gone AWOL ^^

 

Take care everyone !

[ItalianDragon]

Hello folks

 

Just a quick post to give you all an update. IRL I'm still very busy with not that much time to work on the project but that's not what promlts me to write this post today.

 

As I'm sure you're aware there's a massive heatwave battering Europe ATM and I'm right in the middle of it. It caused my home's temperature to absolutely skyrocket to dangerous levels. To give you an idea: on Saturday I got a bout of heat exhaustion because I sopnt an hour in the batroom with the door closed. This bout was severe enough I was torn between just freshening up at home and wait for it to pass or go to the E.R. . At that moment temperature indoors had hit 32°C (89.6°F) with 63% humidity.

 

It goes without saying that this heat also affects my PC who runs noticeably hotter than usual and raidates heat way more than usual in my apartment. Because of this consider the project on hiatus for the time being as I simply cannot work with this heat at all. Truth to be told, I only turn it on for about 10 to 15 minutes a day just so I can do two gamepass activities and that's it.

 

Anything else I do it form my phone, and it includes weiting this post.

 

I'll keep you posted obviously as soon as I get back into gear with all this.

 

For now I'm making sure I weather the storm the best I can (which includes shaking things up with my landlord so I can get aircon set up ASAP).

 

That's all for now.

 

By all means stay safe in these extreme times. This heat is not a joke and can kill you.

 

ItalianDragon

[downbad16]

On 7/19/2022 at 3:39 AM, ItalianDragon said:

Hello folks

 

Just a quick post to give you all an update. IRL I'm still very busy with not that much time to work on the project but that's not what promlts me to write this post today.

 

As I'm sure you're aware there's a massive heatwave battering Europe ATM and I'm right in the middle of it. It caused my home's temperature to absolutely skyrocket to dangerous levels. To give you an idea: on Saturday I got a bout of heat exhaustion because I sopnt an hour in the batroom with the door closed. This bout was severe enough I was torn between just freshening up at home and wait for it to pass or go to the E.R. . At that moment temperature indoors had hit 32°C (89.6°F) with 63% humidity.

 

It goes without saying that this heat also affects my PC who runs noticeably hotter than usual and raidates heat way more than usual in my apartment. Because of this consider the project on hiatus for the time being as I simply cannot work with this heat at all. Truth to be told, I only turn it on for about 10 to 15 minutes a day just so I can do two gamepass activities and that's it.

 

Anything else I do it form my phone, and it includes weiting this post.

 

I'll keep you posted obviously as soon as I get back into gear with all this.

 

For now I'm making sure I weather the storm the best I can (which includes shaking things up with my landlord so I can get aircon set up ASAP).

 

That's all for now.

 

By all means stay safe in these extreme times. This heat is not a joke and can kill you.

 

ItalianDragon

hey its been some time now hope you are doing fine. but i was wondering whether the progress with the mod is still on haitus or? any new update? hope you are doing well all things considred though .

[FutaNemesislol]

ah i never knew this thread existed most interesting

Edited November 13, 2022 by FutaNemesislol

[Ashen1]

7 hours ago, FutaNemesislol said:

ah i never knew this thread existed most interesting

Do you know of any femboy mods for fallout 4?

[FutaNemesislol]

1 hour ago, Ashen1 said:

Do you know of any femboy mods for fallout 4?

 

nope i only do skyrim stuff

[ItalianDragon]

Hello folks !

 

Sorry for the very lengthy silence on my end.

 

Unfortunately life got me plenty busy since my last update, in part because of work and in part because of family stuff which left me very little time (or energy) to work on the mod (pulling 60-hour weeks is not great for the general well-being, I can say that much). Add on this a sprinkle of health issues and it's a nasty recipe for chaos (sprained my ankle right before Christmas and I'm dealing with weird allergy/general intolerance problems for a couple months).

 

Thankfully things have calmed down somewhat now and I'm leaving on the 20th (ergo this Monday) for three weeks of vacation to visit my family and get some rest.

Once I'll be back I'll be able to resume working on the mod with, hopefully, more consistency than in the past months.

 

Now it's not all grim though as I've been able to still get some practice here and there and I've retired my now old Wacom Bamboo fun Pen&Touch tablet in favor of an Intuos Pro.
This replacement makes my work a lot easier and more comfortable given the better sensitivity and general responsiveness, and that means better quality for the mod as well.

That's all there is for this short update unfortunately, but rest assured I'm still there and I don't plan on abandoning the mod at all.

 

Take care !

 

ItalianDragon

 

 

[ItalianDragon]

On 9/30/2022 at 8:29 PM, downbad16 said:

hey its been some time now hope you are doing fine. but i was wondering whether the progress with the mod is still on haitus or? any new update? hope you are doing well all things considred though .

Rest assured there was just a lengthy hiatus because life's a bit of a mess on my end. I just did an update post on that matter.

 

Rest assured though, I'm still there and I don't plan to abandon the mod at all ^^

[ItalianDragon]

Heyo folks !

It's been a while isn't it ?
I'm not dead thankfully, it's just been quite chaotic on my end and that made things a bit complicated between health issues and just general family business that cause chaos. Compounded with it are health issues, most notably something I suspect I've been suffering from my entire life and went undetected, ergo ADHD. I'm in the process of booking an appointment with a specialist just to make sure it's indeed that or something else entirely. This is likely why I'm very "On-Off" in terms of work, as this kind of laser-grade focusing is typical of that and well, I tend to do just that. Needless to say that causes problems on long term projects like this one and even with my job (staying focused on long translations is quite difficult for me). So, ironing that out will absolutely be beneficial for this project and more.

Anyhow, things have finally settled down some now though, so back to work I go !

 

Spoiler

 

I've refined the chest shape and it's basically final. There's just a bit of smoothing to do here and there but as far as things go that part's done.
Same goes for the belly area pretty much: there's a teensy bit of detailing left to do but for all intents and purposes it's 100% done.

What remains now is some more detailing in the back and smoothing the legs as they have a very uneven sculpting in places. It's not visible on the screenshot but when it's illuminated, the surface is visibly "bumpy" or "rough".

 

Beyond sculpting I've been practicing very intensely the next time-consuming part ergo retopology and I've honestly become quite proficient in that regard. I've also switched from 3D Coat to Blender with the RetopoFlow addon for that process for one simple reason: the former doesn't give you any information to tell you if the edges are properly welded (or not). In my past practice meshings, I've had several times mesh sculpted, retopologized, UV mapped and textured only to discover in Outfit Studio that there are spots where two faces aren't welded, causing a gap in the mesh. This is fixable but it'd involve redoing the UV mapping and because textures are UV mapping-dependent, it'd also require remaking the textures and the weighting too. Having these blunders on practice meshes - while frustrating - is fine. Potentially having these problems on the femboy mod is absolutely not fine and so to mitigate risks I've switched tools.

 

That's about it for now. I'll keep on persevering on this and I'd like to apologize to y'all for these infrequent updates and spotty development.

 

Take care !

[Sezuel]

Looks amazing and am looking forward to this still. Please keep up the great work but always put your own health first