[IDEA] Mod: Golgotterath.

[DAPPERSTACHETHEATRES]

I'm perfectly willing to do this on my own, just need a good starting point. I've played with creationkit, but not anything in depth. I am also more than willing to accept help. The primary purpose is to check interest and see if anyone else is interested in making this happen. Gonna post over at the bakker subreddit.

 

I am new here, so let me start by saying hello. I've lurked here throughout the years. Seems this forum might be my best bet for advice, or for this kind of mod.

 

I am a huge fan of The Second Apocalypse Series by Bakker. It's a cosmic horror wrapped up as an epic fantasy. 

 

What I would like to do would be to make a mod that can only trigger after the main story is complete. I will link pictures to the various ideas below.

 

The quest would trigger when the player gets close enough to the Synthese. The Synthese is a bird with a human head, an "avatar" if you will. It would fly down, say some cryptic stuff about the oars of the ark, then fly away. 

 

After it does, the player is attacked by 3 sranc, and is then prompted to investigate the canted oars of the ark. As the player gets closer and closer, they encounter Bashrag and Nonmen.

 

As the player arrives to the Horns of Golgotterath, they are flooded by 2 more huge waves of sranc, bashrag and nonmen as well as Consult Sorcerers. 

 

Right then, a "hologram" appears and says some familiar things, before a carapace lifts off surrounded by a whirlwhind (think a massive tornado) that begins killing everything. It would change the global weather, and would continue until everything is dead. Hordes of Sranc, Bashrag, Nonmen (replace Giants) and Wracu (dragons) would bring about the second apocalypse, while a voice can be heard WHAT AM I? WHAT DO YOU SEE?

 

So breaking it down, 

 

I'd need to model a bird with a human head, bashrah, sranc, nonmen (think perfect men but bigger and paler), and 2 massive horns. Then I'd have to construct the area. Navmeshes, etc. Scripted events. Some custom movement animation for sranc. And then the whirlwind that destroys everything, which sounds like the most diffcult part. This would also render all npcs killable, except the consult.

 

How probable/realistic is this? And of course are you interested?

[Papitas]

New models + new animations = almost not realistic at all

 

Both of those are a pain in the ass to make and not too many people seem to be skilled enough for doing them from nothing.

Most of the skilled modellers are doing armors for women but seldomly sharing their knowledge (they are more busy making things than teaching how to make them).

 

Maybe the people doing Demonic Creatures can guide you on how to make the creatures you want.

 

My suggestion: start slowly, start right now and do whatever you can at the moment.

You will eventually gain more knowlegde on how to do mods and then you will have something big before you know it.

[DAPPERSTACHETHEATRES]

19 hours ago, Papitas said:

New models + new animations = almost not realistic at all

 

Both of those are a pain in the ass to make and not too many people seem to be skilled enough for doing them from nothing.

Most of the skilled modellers are doing armors for women but seldomly sharing their knowledge (they are more busy making things than teaching how to make them).

 

Maybe the people doing Demonic Creatures can guide you on how to make the creatures you want.

 

My suggestion: start slowly, start right now and do whatever you can at the moment.

You will eventually gain more knowlegde on how to do mods and then you will have something big before you know it.

First - Thanks for the reply!

 

I have dabbled before, but you are right. Even searching for video tutorials brings up relatively nothing, guides are sparse to come by. Suppose I will dig for a Skyrim modding server

on Discord. 

 

As far as custom animations, I think I'd need to storyboard it out to be sure, but I think I can actually use the werewolf animation for sranc, then size/scale the sranc how I want. Sranc even have "inverse knees" like werewolves. The only other one I think we would need would be for the bird. This is one out of 3 aspects that I am unsure at all of. In this instance, the bord would need a human head, including whatever adjustments/creation of tri files. I tried that once before with a helmet of Geralt I wanted to make a head and couldn't ever figure it out. Guess I didn't try hard enough.

 

The other aspect I am unsure of is "The Whirlwhind". This would require a global weather change, but also a giant particle cloud that is quite visible from a distance and kills everything it touches. The rest I feel confident enough to figure out. The last aspect I am unsure of is modeling. I have played around in cinema 4d, and boy was it a laborious process. The horns I could probably make or find relatively easy. The rest of it though is pretty much a go here, talk to npc, get attacked, go futher, get attacked harder, etc, and then a world ending light show. 

 

[DAPPERSTACHETHEATRES]

As it turns out, the whirlwind can be taken from Apocalypse Magic's tornado. 

[Papitas]

It's great you can reuse werewolf animations. Animators are even more elusive and less in numbers than modellers and they are highly sought after.

You can consider yourself quite fortunate if they even read your messages xD

 

Maybe you can try using Outfit Studio for doing models. I've had moderate success doing an armor from zero using it.

Believe me: I've tried to use the ancient Blender plugin and following that tutorial (the only one that seems to exist in the whole internet) that uses that prehistoric version of Nifskope and got nothing but literal headaches.

 

This is what I would do:

1. Import the werewolf mesh to Outfit Studio. File > Import > From nif.
2. Export it to obj/fbx or whatever.
3. Import it into my 3D modeling program for using it as a base; this way I could know which size it needs to be and such.
4. Once finished, properly UV mapped and texturized, export it as obj/fbx/whatever.
5. Import it into Outfit Studio with File > Import.
6. Once imported, I would paint vertex weights by hand using the werewolf skeleton you already imported since step 1.
   This Sun Jeong video will give you a great insight on how to do that.
7. You can assign your textures to your model using Outfit Studio, so Skyrim uses them.
   If you get to this step, don't hesitate to ask me for more details.
8. Delete the original werewolf mesh.
9. Export your skinned and textured sranc to Skyrim using File > Export > To nif.
10. Test the model until vertex weights are correct.

These were more or less the steps I followed with my armor test and they worked.

I say I've had moderate success because there were some micro corrections I had to do to my imported mesh and some mesh scaling because of the way I did it in my program.

 

But overall I was quite satisfied with this, even if the process is more complicated that one would expect.

But hey... at least I used tools made within the last decade :v

Edited September 19, 2021 by Papitas

[DAPPERSTACHETHEATRES]

5 hours ago, Papitas said:

It's great you can reuse werewolf animations. Animators are even more elusive and less in numbers than modellers and they are highly sought after.

You can consider yourself quite fortunate if they even read your messages xD

 

Maybe you can try using Outfit Studio for doing models. I've had moderate success doing an armor from zero using it.

Believe me: I've tried to use the ancient Blender plugin and following that tutorial (the only one that seems to exist in the whole internet) that uses that prehistoric version of Nifskope and got nothing but literal headaches.

 

This is what I would do:

1. Import the werewolf mesh to Outfit Studio. File > Import > From nif.
2. Export it to obj/fbx or whatever.
3. Import it into my 3D modeling program for using it as a base; this way I could know which size it needs to be and such.
4. Once finished, properly UV mapped and texturized, export it as obj/fbx/whatever.
5. Import it into Outfit Studio with File > Import.
6. Once imported, I would paint vertex weights by hand using the werewolf skeleton you already imported since step 1.
   This Sun Jeong video will give you a great insight on how to do that.
7. You can assign your textures to your model using Outfit Studio, so Skyrim uses them.
   If you get to this step, don't hesitate to ask me for more details.
8. Delete the original werewolf mesh.
9. Export your skinned and textured sranc to Skyrim using File > Export > To nif.
10. Test the model until vertex weights are correct.

These were more or less the steps I followed with my armor test and they worked.

I say I've had moderate success because there were some micro corrections I had to do to my imported mesh and some mesh scaling because of the way I did it in my program.

 

But overall I was quite satisfied with this, even if the process is more complicated that one would expect.

But hey... at least I used tools made within the last decade :v

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

After discussing it with a few people, it was pointed out that the Falmer basically ARE Sranc, save for the larger ears (depictions of Sranc I have seen often haven't had lobes at all) and the dog legs. I am going to dig and find out which between switching/adapting the werewolf skeleton to Falmer and editing the Falmer head or just remeshing the werewolf and scaling them down. 

 

Unafflicted Falmer are a candidate for Nonmen. Interesting to me, because in TSA lore, Sranc find a lot of their genetics from Nonmen via genetic manipulation on behalf of the Inchroroi/consult (being specifically engineered to be sexually aroused by violence). 

 

I will absolutely keep these steps in mind though. I'm sure they'll be very useful if things progress.

[SmedleyDButler]

+1 for OS. Outfit Studio is an incredibly robust tool for modelling these days.