Neck Seam

[Symon]

You should investigate the OBSE plugin 'Blockhead', specifically the ability to set head nif, tri, egm, egt and dds files by race and sex, NPC baseid or script.

[beta000]

Here is a spreadsheet, technically a csv file, of all NPC's containing the formID, editorID, Race and Gender. The formID is in single quotes to prevent parsing the formid as a number.

npcBySex.zip

[junkacc]

Yes, blockhead... there are many things you can do with blockhead and the EGTs and Head nifs. The question is, should I write about them in the docs..... what is the scope?

 

I think I'll take a minimalistic approach to docs too

 

Thanks beta000! Can I include this in the release?

[beta000]

Feel free, I just used the scripting feature of the more recent releases of TES4Edit to generate it.  With documentation I would not worry about blockhead.

[Myst42]

O.K. then...

 

Just had a chance to start testing things

As you said Junkacc, that test file is only an egt and needs more compatible stuff

So in order to be able to do the test I had to build the textures again, including color, normal, and alpha map from normal that defines the shining

I'm keeping to original egm and nif files since I've no idea what I'm doing here 

 

It was a lot of readjusting with intensity of color, shadow/light and other stuff in order to make the best fit possible

I didn't do a "only one color" test just straight to the finals and recoloring

 

I still have to readjust the male body textures as I liked some that came with chest and belly hair in Robert Male v5... but on the mayhem it got deleted so now i have to download and locate the texture again (it's a huge mod...)

 

Anyway... here's preliminary test of a girl

 

WARNING!: NUDITY

XD

Yeah right... like anybody cares around here... 

 

 

 

Results:

It did not disappear completely, but I thing we all saw that coming and wanted the closest thing

It's still a bit lighting-dependant as some angles look better than others and it changes with different lights...

BUT

A much better improvement from the original versions... at least now the color looks almost the same and it's not so evident something like the head being darker than the body

 

On a side note

 

I noticed something strange regarding glossiness but that's from before the egt file...

At least in my PC the heads (all heads) are always way shinier than bodies

So any body head texture with moderate glossiness looks bad unless the body has a texture that shines like the sun...  ol else it looks like only the head is shiny

Anybody else experienced this?

[junkacc]

The glossiness is because the NiMaterialProperties is set to 12.5 for the head and 10 for the body (nifskope values). I think they're 50 and 40 in blender. Also, the amnes textures have a lot of noise around the neckseam that turns into ugly stretches. In fact, anything around that neck area gets stretched becuase of the UV. I'd clean that area up so it doesn't look so dirty compared to the body. A good example is bellagail's bloodelf or vampire race. she does great texture work.

 

Well I'm done doing the documentation. I just need to do a few things for completeness sake. For my game, I can use Plom's orcs but I like my khajiits looking like cats and argonians looking like lizards... Plom's stuff make them look human.

 

Anyone know where I can find head06 khajiits and argonians so I can include them in my pack?

[junkacc]

Alright, I released my stuff

 

For the Head06 stuff goto:

 

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/44370

 

The Vanilla Head stuff:

 

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/44360

 

 

[Myst42]

OooooK...

 

I'm building things now

Even if using the same colors in everything, still some aspects are light-dependent, specially on sun light angle and time of day

I think it was expected

Anyway the best results I've seen ever, as close as it can get

 

I may be wrong but I believe nobody ever bothered with making Argonian or Khajiit heads for Head06 texture UV map, so we're stuck with the ones with vanilla mapping... In that matter the best I've seen are the ones from Nuska's mod... the one I posted on the long description of my setting at page 1

 

Questions

 

1.- Is it safe or could one use your files for vanilla heads in Argonian and Khajiit heads from that mod?

I really want to but I don't know if it can work or its texture dependent just like the eyebrow thing on Head06

 

2.- Could anybody tell me what is the most used male body type these days?

Some time ago It was Robert's Male v4... and Average body type

But now v5 came out and it has like a 1000 different types

So which one is the most used... you know for compatibility issues... like new male armors, Lovers etc...

Which one's the one that everybody should be using these days?

 

[junkacc]

The EGTs are just a collection of 50 textures with the same UV as the headmesh. So if your Argonians and Khajiit use the same UV as vanilla, they should work.

 

The SMOOTH stuff just colors the general area so it can be used for all races, but OFF draws the nose, eyes, brows, mouth etc for each race. It doesn't matter much for the beast races because hardly any of it shows through the textures anyway

 

I think its robert v5.2 muscular since most of the armors are made for it.

 

As for me, I've abandoned the amnes textures, don't really like how over the top they are. I'll go with the Robert textures that come with his v5.2 body. You can get them on Nexus.

 

 

Just need to recolor the female bodies and maybe do some work on the age maps and normal maps, but i'll do it slowly over time.

 

Meanwhile, I'll be expecting great work from you elalquimista

 

[Myst42]

Imperial textures for female are done

Pics of Violet coming on Wednesday XD (I'll ride the "Sexy Wednesday" thing going on Nexus)

 

But what were you using for males?

Even using your Example Textures the same colors, male body looks lighter than the face so I'll probably have to darken the body texture...

 

After males are done, the tedious part begins... recoloring for other races and possibly placing special features... like hair, different anatomy... muscles, shining... Ugh... I get tired just thinking about it

 

I hope I can release anything... this projects are so massive (specially the clothing one) and I don't like releasing too much Beta things...

[junkacc]

Just use Robert's stuff. It works but I don't know how. It's in the Robert folder in my pack but you'll also need the normal maps that come with Robert's resource pack.

 

 

The males were the #1 reason I gave up last time. I don't know how he did it but now with blockhead, you can just use Roberts.

 

It is interesting though. What's different about his heads? I even snapped the whole neck to his head but still can't get it work...... oh well..... some things are better left unquestioned.

[Myst42]

Ok now... resurrecting this thread

I havent been very active lately but that doesnt mean I've been doing nothing

All textures for human are much decent now... like I mentioned, I counldt get rid entirely of the neck seam entirely... no idea if it's my material or perfection is just not possible, but it's close enough... I made mixes so every texture is built on top of the plain textures provided in Junkacc's mod and the relevant junction parts are plain textured while the rest is colored

 

Males and females are done, I also got rid of the ehem... hair problem... I drew it myself with a lot of patience and I got decent results (I hope)

I'm missing final touches for Dremora, Argonians and Khajiit

 

As I'm not sure all resources are "shareable" and it's a mashup of tweaked stuff I hope I can get away with it... still I'll give credit and try to put is a legal as I can

For example Vampire eyes came with Bella Gail's mod ("Vampire Race Reloaded", currently hidden on Nexus)

 

 

And the things I plan for Dremora are based on Eiries's tweaks

 

 

So Dremora use Abyss Demon textures... and I found something on the readme that allowed using resources in other mods (yaaay!!)

 

Now that's a lot of stuff, so Nexus release is out of the question. Perhaps I should just stick to the basics and release only the most basic resources... like human textures... some meshes...

I'm not even sure I'll release it with hair... IMHO tweaking the textures, morphs and models is enough to have characters a lot better than they were... adding hairs is overkill... necessary, but overkill all the same, and it is a different mod by itself. (besides I was laxy and I didnt add new hair for males, only some Ren hairs are for males... rest is as it came)

But the whole overhaul point would be diminished... hmm...

 

NOW TO THE QUESTIONS AND REQUEST OF HELP AND ADVICE:

 

I need some direction regarding textures from Argonians and Khajiits

I haven been able to get a clear picture of what I'm gonna do with Argonians, most textures have a horrible compatibility between neck and head, I already mentioned I wanted to use this head texture and mesh, but what about combining it with the body?... anybody know of textures that do match? I can pretty much create hybrid textures at this point... just give me a proper neck line

Same for khajiits... I'm looking for the beest textures I can find, so... Any ideas?

[junkacc]

I just use the Khajit that comes with EVE and Argonian that comes with XEOsp++ (not the humanized one)

 

 

They use the vanilla heads which have slightly worse neckseams than the Head06 ones, which is due to skeleton misalignment.

 

Cut and paste the necks over the OCO necks. Or leave the kats and args alone and wait for OCO v2.0 which should come out soon.

 

Or you can make a Khajiit replacement based on Head06 Experiment B

 

 

 

BTW, for vanilla heads and their derivatives, you should use my EGTs for vanilla.

 

http://www.oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/44360/

[Myst42]

Now working again...

Well I tried... but nobody cared about Argonians XD

I recognize those Argonian textures (from the head and body) But if you notice the detail the head texture has higher detail on the head than body so the neck line seems still odd. I made a bit of recolor to both but still the thing does not match perfectly

I said nobody cared cause those are the only "Exnem" body textures for Argies... there's no more market for it and I cant do better ones... well I guess I'll have to contempt...

[Myst42]

I need feedback cause I'm not really convinced

Almost done with everything but Argonians

 

Here's a current prototype:

 

 

 

I always made weird faces when thinking and trying to make sense of the fact that the human body meshes are for human mammals, and Argonians have boobies and nipples, however the textures were all scaly... as you know, reptiles do not have mammal glands unless of course they are hybrids or reptilians but that's for another subject...

 

It just looked too weird those modeled breasts and nipples in a fully "scaled" body

 

But I didn't want to put full human pink skin or a too soft one cause that's also weird as seen in some mods "cough! cough! Argonoids!"

 

So I put a "scale" filter on a recolored human texture to make it look like very tiny scales at the same time it's providing a softer look and a believable way of making sense to the fact Argonians have nipples...

 

Any comments? suggestions??

 

[junkacc]

Looks nice. I like what you did with the neck.

 

The scales seem a bit blurry though. Looks like the normal map doesn't line up with the texture. Also, are u using 4096 or 2048 textures? I personally don't like 4096 I think they are overkill and always reduce them to 2048.

 

And age maps... especially the f30 agemap. f60 can look ugly like this.

 

 

But f30 is hard. You gotta hit that MILF look

 

 

without looking too young or old.

 

[Myst42]

Uh yeah... sorry about that.

 

Currently there's no normal map 

Oops

 

There's a reason for everything as I want to create the normal maps last... after the whole thing is finished. I've messed with everything in a level so deep that the original normal maps are no longer accurate.

Oh and... screw the age maps for Argonians they made the head a lot shinier than it was supposed to be and having almost blank ones gives a better result

 

And I'm using 4096

I agree it's overkill but better have big textures and have the ability to reduce them than have small ones stuck forever in lesser quality

 

 

[ger4]

Looks nice. I like what you did with the neck.

 

The scales seem a bit blurry though. Looks like the normal map doesn't line up with the texture. Also, are u using 4096 or 2048 textures? I personally don't like 4096 I think they are overkill and always reduce them to 2048.

 

And age maps... especially the f30 agemap. f60 can look ugly like this.

 

1.jpg

 

But f30 is hard. You gotta hit that MILF look

 

2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg

 

without looking too young or old.

Well, it can be hard to tell the difference between 2048 and 4096, but 4096 textures can look noticeably better really close up so don't count them out.

[junkacc]

Yeah there definately is an improvement with 4096, more definition and all, but I shudder when I see the normal map for them. 4096 normal maps are 21MB in size but there are nothing but nipples on them. For just nipples, I think you can get away with 512 normal maps but I keep thinking there might be problems with such discrepancy in size.

 

[ger4]

Yeah there definately is an improvement with 4096, more definition and all, but I shudder when I see the normal map for them. 4096 normal maps are 21MB in size but there are nothing but nipples on them. For just nipples, I think you can get away with 512 normal maps but I keep thinking there might be problems with such discrepancy in size.

Could we have the 21MB normal maps as an optional file for those who want them then?