How to edit a 117 head for Oblivion

[Myst42]

Hey... does anybody know how do you edit one of those?

I know it can be really tricky to edit a head

 

Some say you have to do intermediate steps passing a head mesh as .obj and then move between Blender and Nifskope

Something about copying only StripsData or something like it...

 

The thing is, I dont even WANT to mess with vertex positions or face morphs, what I really want to do is make some changes to the UV map

 

Actually, the idea is making a 117head compatible with Head06 textures

Nothing important really, its just a wimp of mine to have my version of a couple of 117 races, for collection.

 

Original 117 heads, all use the UV map from vanilla head, UV map from head 06 is different, the eyes are higher on the texture

The race refers its texture path for the head to imperial, but I have some textures and meshes that change the imperial head and textures to type 06

So imperial textures are no longer compatible with old UV map

I could redirect the path to another texture, but where's the fun in that

 

I want a 117 head compatible with head 06 textures

Nifskope can do some tweaking on UV maps, but its editor sucks and is way too hard to make the tweaking there

I need to be able to make changes in Blender

 

But the head's size and some vertices' position in the neck line went wrong after the edition

 

Oh and... I'd like to do the same kind of UV map tweaking for the eyes

 

Anybody knows how to do this?

 

It's not vertex change, I want the model stay the same, only change UV map

 

This is the original head:

This is what it looks like when the UV map is not compatible with Head06 type 

This is after the UV map tweaking in Blender and exporting

This is what happens when I copy the original into the new one for comparison

This is what happens when I copy the new one into the old nif armature for comparison

 

Any help please?

Thanks

[movomo]

I'd choose to sculpt head06 to current x117 shape rather than making such radical changes in the UV map. Well.. we have clothing body type converter, no? I don't know, l 've never seriously tried head editing, especially x117. Keeping vertex order intact would be the major pain for this work, for sure.

[kingkong]

it might not help      But the only way i see it without touching vertex is to load the new image and point by point on the uv resize and adapt it to the new      You might need to subdivised some vertex to have less streching (it will not change the head neither the paint)        You can do the same with nifskope  (not the subdivised)   this is reshaping the uv manually to the new image without touching the head shape.

[Myst42]

Remaking the UV map manually point by point in nifskope is out of the question... that would be the work of a lifetime

So are you telling me nobody knows how to edit a 117 head?

How did someone even made it?

One of the most used assets in the whole world of modding, a key factor in all advanced racial packs, key to all 117 races, and nobody knows how it was done?

Wow that's bad... that's really bad...

 

 

[xartom]

Imo would be easier to simply take nifskope and just multiply the head06's head bone (and only the head bone) by 1.17. Then all the head06 trig and stuff should still work. I think that's the little trick they used to make the head in the first place but don't quote me.

[movomo]

Hey, how about using Shrinkwrap modifier?

Shiringkwrap should perfectly deform Head06 mesh to LeE 003 Head shape, while keeping vertex order and UV map intact. Makes sense? You can use Head06 egm/tri file.

[kingkong]

you can play with the 'mark seams'   and   'unwrap'    and      image view orientation with uv bound        till you find how the creator original seams marker to fit the image        and do not forget  the creator might have used some option like 'pack island'  or 'stich'  or nothing. 

[Myst42]

Been a little busy really... cannot try this for now

I'll see what about that rescaling head bone option

This is really weird...

 

If a solution can't be found... then I guess I'll be back to changing texture paths in the CS

That's so unclean for this idea...

[Myst42]

Hey, been a few weeks, had a little time

I learnt that there are more problems with the original idea of remaking UV map, tri file and egt file for example. It is said tri file can be made with the conformulator but there's still the egt file problem, and there's no way of editing that as far as I read

 

So now the plan is getting a 117 head from a head06

 

Tried to scale head bone to 1.17. didnt work

On every functional 117 head, the scale value on head and head bone are equal to 0

Trying to scale head bone leaves permanently a trace of 1.17 scale value on the nif fine, so that either is not how they did it or there's something else to do...

 

EDIT: at least one thing was right, multiplying scale to 1.17 for other things is the way, as it is the method explained on how to convert hairs on this page I was reading: http://narulivion.blog46.fc2.com/blog-entry-138.html

 

[movomo]

Good work, keep us updated!

Did you try deforming head06 into x117 using shrinkwrap or clothing body type converter? I'm not sure what the export options would be. Just one wrong edit could mess up the whole facial morphs.

[Myst42]

     

 

Found It

I hope it's not too soon to celebrate, but preliminary experiments indicate I found the way

http://kumakumakokuma.blog38.fc2.com/blog-entry-50.html#more

It was something related so bone scaling but one has to go to a really odd place for it

This is beyond the frontiers of known nifskope "where no modder has ever gone before"

Tested on a head06 and it actually made it bigger in game, eyes and mouth in right place... now it's a matter of making some shape tweaks before the final conversion, but I have done that before for head06  alter shapes

 

 

 

[movomo]

aha, good. Then no problem in facial animations too right?

[Myst42]

None at all. Of course when replacing the head it has to go accompanied with head06 extra tri, egt and egm files. The only thing that changes is the nif as it uses the same morph as the normal sized one, I'll post images later