[WIP] A new body replacement idea.

[barjack]

Looking good, Its also packed much better. 

Though its hard to tell looking at a 2d UV but you might want to do a test paint on the breasts.

The under boob and nipple don't look as if they have much density.

 

Ya,I've checked that area,,it should be okay,because it has very tiny polygons in the connection area between breast and torso.

Before baking,,I will add skin into mesh.So i can bake some area invisible in the current pose.

Here is another very serious problem i found in the vanilla's skeleton frame,it's the reason caused lots of animation error when character rise hands over shoulders.It's joint location is totally wrong in the human topology.please look the picture below .

Now you should know why the shoulder looks so weird when character tanning the leather.

[Vioxsis]

Yeah, i noticed that too. There's not much you can do with out completely redoing all the animations...

The only body that skeleton was made for is vanilla male at 100% weight, and even then it could be better.

 

The only thing i think you will be able to do is weight it as best you can to mitigate its effect.

And if you have seen the weights on the vanilla female..... seriously. You can't do worse then Bethesda.  

 

Well on a brighter note looking forward to seeing how your bakes come out.

[Mickster]

For general gaming purposes that's a good UV because it makes good use of the available space. For modding skyrim it's very bad. I know you want to save up space on the map for details and such but keep in mind that people like to add asymmetrical details like say a tattoo on the left shoulder and another one on the right forearm.

[ElectricSheep]

I know it's more of a private project, but some of the ideas don't make much sense to me.

 

 

 

I found people mostly play Skyrim with ENB,it's very nice.But those effects cost too much PC performance.

Unless you have a very powerful pc.or you won't be able to play it smoothly,,most ppl only use ENB to take pictures.

I find ENB more of a screenshot tool than a gaming tool and normally don't use it, even though my PC can handle modern graphics. After a certain point you just won't run Skyrim smoothly even with a high-end rig due to engine limitations; in fact, a mediocre PC - by moderns standards - is more than enough to run this game as good as it gets.

That said, counting polygons so diligently will give you a whole lot of zero fps gained in comparison with other bodies if you plan to play with ENB turned on, and maybe 2 or 3 additional fps with ENB turned off and your character bare-assed all the time. Besides, what's the point of making an extra low-poly body meant to work with a tool that is all about eye-candy?

 

Also, making the body incompatible with the vanilla head and textures renders it pretty much useless for about 99% of players - so much for functionality.

[barjack]

I know it's more of a private project, but some of the ideas don't make much sense to me.

 

 

 

I found people mostly play Skyrim with ENB,it's very nice.But those effects cost too much PC performance.

Unless you have a very powerful pc.or you won't be able to play it smoothly,,most ppl only use ENB to take pictures.

I find ENB more of a screenshot tool than a gaming tool and normally don't use it, even though my PC can handle modern graphics. After a certain point you just won't run Skyrim smoothly even with a high-end rig due to engine limitations; in fact, a mediocre PC - by moderns standards - is more than enough to run this game as good as it gets.

That said, counting polygons so diligently will give you a whole lot of zero fps gained in comparison with other bodies if you plan to play with ENB turned on, and maybe 2 or 3 additional fps with ENB turned off and your character bare-assed all the time. Besides, what's the point of making an extra low-poly body meant to work with a tool that is all about eye-candy?

 

Also, making the body incompatible with the vanilla head and textures renders it pretty much useless for about 99% of players - so much for functionality.

 

I know your point,but what you said is just speculation,,did we see any body replacement focused on performance improvement already?

At least i didn't see any.You said the fps gain would be tiny,i agree.But i choose mod very carefully,,

1 mod may only gain 2-3 fps,,how about 200 mods?

This project is kind of test,yes,,it won't be compatible with vanilla face,because i said lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements~

[ElectricSheep]

The Dream Girl is quite nicely optimized if you ask me, there's also so called "Pandora body" by mk1mk2; not that, say, CBBE is high-poly enough to affect the performance at all. Anyway, you can easily put those speculations of mine to the test and install UNP (20088 polys) and then said DG (8690 polys): no noticeable performance gain, even though 1139 polygons less on the second. What's eating out fps the most are the textures: oversized diffuse maps, uncompressed normal maps etc.

 

 

 

lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements

Is making a head mesh incompatible with the game assets really an improvement?

[barjack]

The Dream Girl is quite nicely optimized if you ask me, there's also so called "Pandora body" by mk1mk2; not that, say, CBBE is high-poly enough to affect the performance at all. Anyway, you can easily put those speculations of mine to the test and install UNP (20088 polys) and then said DG (8690 polys): no noticeable performance gain, even though 1139 polygons less on the second. What's eating out fps the most are the textures: oversized diffuse maps, uncompressed normal maps etc.

 

 

 

lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements

Is making a head mesh incompatible with the game assets really an improvement?

 

how much characters you put on screen?i will say less than 10 and you won't make big difference.Try load full UNP characters with 4k textures in Whiterun,then you will see the goal/reason of this project.

Well,,let's see the result first then discuss if it's an improvement or not later.I'll remember your concern,if it's really looking bad with this mirrored UV,,I can switch back to normal photoshop friendly assignment later,thx for your opinions:)

[dTd]

The Dream Girl is quite nicely optimized if you ask me, there's also so called "Pandora body" by mk1mk2; not that, say, CBBE is high-poly enough to affect the performance at all. Anyway, you can easily put those speculations of mine to the test and install UNP (20088 polys) and then said DG (8690 polys): no noticeable performance gain, even though 1139 polygons less on the second. What's eating out fps the most are the textures: oversized diffuse maps, uncompressed normal maps etc.

 

 

 

lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements

Is making a head mesh incompatible with the game assets really an improvement?

 

Actually I do notice a performance gain switching to Dream Girl from even CBBE. It's one of the major reasons I switched and stayed with Dream Girl. My game just runs smoother all the time.

[barjack]

For easier life,i do like to make it compatible with vanilla head.

I gave up it,because it reached lots of limitations i couldn't break through.

Take UNP for example,,it's a great piece of work,all ppl like it,,but it's size just unreasonable,,it can be rendered much better in blender if you just want take pictures,,

Ok,,here is the side product of this topic i made ,3ds max animation template for testing skinning.3700 frames.It should save you some time when skinning~

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48896/?

[ElectricSheep]

 

Try load full UNP characters with 4k textures in Whiterun,then you will see the goal/reason of this project.

I don't see it. Try to load a dozen or so of NPCs in Whiterun with ANY body and 4k textures installed - you'll get pretty much the same results.

 

 

 

Actually I do notice a performance gain switching to Dream Girl from even CBBE. It's one of the major reasons I switched and stayed with Dream Girl. My game just runs smoother all the time.

Even if you do, it has little to do with the polycount.

[barjack]

I've finished the skinning of the left side body,but i have a problem.

The picture below is the structure of the shoulder area,when i mirror my finished weight data from left side to right side.

3dsmax's mirror tool always picked the wrong skeleton in the right side upper arm and UpperarmTwist2 bones.

It means it paste left upper arm's weight into right upper arm twist2,

and  left upeer arm twist2's weight into right upper arm. as the picture showed below.

Is there anyone knows a quick solution?

The reason is the stupid 3dsmax choose the bones by it's direction,I can mirror the correct bones by rotating the right upper arm into mirrored direction of left upper arm.however,,it will cause the exported mesh twist back into it's original angle when importing back to 3dsmax.

I can also manually adjust the weight of the right side,,but this method is slow,,so if you know any fast solution,,plz let me know,thx~

[Guest]

 

The Dream Girl is quite nicely optimized if you ask me, there's also so called "Pandora body" by mk1mk2; not that, say, CBBE is high-poly enough to affect the performance at all. Anyway, you can easily put those speculations of mine to the test and install UNP (20088 polys) and then said DG (8690 polys): no noticeable performance gain, even though 1139 polygons less on the second. What's eating out fps the most are the textures: oversized diffuse maps, uncompressed normal maps etc.

 

 

 

lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements

Is making a head mesh incompatible with the game assets really an improvement?

 

 

Actually I do notice a performance gain switching to Dream Girl from even CBBE. It's one of the major reasons I switched and stayed with Dream Girl. My game just runs smoother all the time.

 

Interesting that you notice a performance gain after switching to a body mod that has 1k polygons more than your previous one.

[barjack]

I've finished the skinning of the left side body,but i have a problem.

The picture below is the structure of the shoulder area,when i mirror my finished weight data from left side to right side.

3dsmax's mirror tool always picked the wrong skeleton in the right side upper arm and UpperarmTwist2 bones.

It means it paste left upper arm's weight into right upper arm twist2,

and  left upeer arm twist2's weight into right upper arm. as the picture showed below.

Is there anyone knows a quick solution?

The reason is the stupid 3dsmax choose the bones by it's direction,I can mirror the correct bones by rotating the right upper arm into mirrored direction of left upper arm.however,,it will cause the exported mesh twist back into it's original angle when importing back to 3dsmax.

I can also manually adjust the weight of the right side,,but this method is slow,,so if you know any fast solution,,plz let me know,thx~

 

problem solved,,just keep using mirror tool again and again,,then it assigned the correct bones by chance......

lol,,,wth,,,

[Rayblue]

 

I found people mostly play Skyrim with ENB,it's very nice.But those effects cost too much PC performance.

Unless you have a very powerful pc.or you won't be able to play it smoothly,,most ppl only use ENB to take pictures.

I find ENB more of a screenshot tool than a gaming tool and normally don't use it, 

 

I disagree and never went back to vanilla. You just have to turn off much of the pretty FPS-eating ENB parts (DOF, SSAO, sun effects, shadows, bloom, etc) until you only have the settings that enhance the color palette and with a better framerate.

[barjack]

ok,here is my first release for testing,only body,and no head yet,,still working on it.

,remember to modify the texture path in the 3 nif models,or it will ctd.

Just for testing normal/seam lines,i didn't make specular/SSS/glow maps yet,,and diffuse is baked very very rough,still need time to finish it .it should have lots of shader flags need to be adjusted:P

I think we can make a modified vanilla head to fit this body,it will be faster.

i spent all my time on zbrush/photoshop,,still don't have time to test it myself,,plz test some animation for my skinning.it doesn't need anything else besides vanilla skeleton atm.

 

 

Edit: some shader flags need to be adjusted,,i've fixed some of them,,uploaded 4 screenshots,shadows seems to be okay,,and seam in the center of body isn't cause lighting problem.

I'll upload fixed data later.

[barjack]

I think mirrored UV won't work in skyrim.

Here are some errors i found from testing.

1,I baked normal of full body in one piece,but the different body parts always cause lighting difference in seam line,as the picture i showed below..i don't know if it's the shader flag's problem.plz let me know if you can fix it,,or i gonna turn back to use normal UV.

 

2. The shadow casted on body of outside objects are okay,but self-shadow is mirrored,,that's not correct,,Is this only happen on me?

 

3.I forgot a critical problem of mirrored face,,This is my experience happened in oblivion's face modding.The nif format will automatically separate polygons in the seam line,no matter you weld the points or not..It will cause morpher error when creating facial expressions,because morpher require 2 meshes have same vertex count/vertex index order.nif will break this order and automatically generate new vertices in the seam line area.

 

So,,plz test and adjust the shader,,and see if you can eliminate the lighting difference in seam-line,or i will have no choice and switch back to normal UV assignment.

 

Here is an updated version,fixed some shader flags and texture path. 

 

 

Performance_body_alpha_0.2.7z

[Vioxsis]

Like i said before you can't mirror an object space normal, but you can mirror a tangent space one.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/k8ofvlljoiafe46/PBAT.2.7z

I changed the normal map to tangent and removed the model space normals flag, as well as set the facegen RGB tint flag.

 

Only by using a tangent normal can you avoid shading errors.

 

 

Also for 3 <--- the nif exporter splits edges based on uv islands?? I'm going to have too test that for myself...

 

Though if it is true can't you just split them yourself, that way the vertex order would remain the same?

 

*edit*

It really does split the mesh to how its split in the UV.

 

[barjack]

Like i said before you can't mirror an object space normal, but you can mirror a tangent space one.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/k8ofvlljoiafe46/PBAT.2.7z

I changed the normal map to tangent and removed the model space normals flag, as well as set the facegen RGB tint flag.

 

Only by using a tangent normal can you avoid shading errors.

 

 

Also for 3 <--- the nif exporter splits edges based on uv islands?? I'm going to have too test that for myself...

 

Though if it is true can't you just split them yourself, that way the vertex order would remain the same?

 

the self-shadow is okay,,sorry,it's the ambient occlusion i baked too deep and caused an illusion of eyes,that's the mirrored UV should be avoided.

And yes,If you split it from seam-line yourself,,it won't affect your vertex index order or increasing of vertex count.Also,,another tool i used to build tri file will auto-weld closing vertices.it's old tool downloaded from facegen modeller's website,,it's dos command line tool,,the latest one from nexus i havn't tested yet.

As for mirrored face,,It will be ugly and easily cause lighting difference if you separate it yourself from center of the face,,so i will create another 1024x1024 map for face,,non-mirrored.combine with teeth,ear,tougue~I think this will be the better solution,,and It can further increase the pixel space of body

[dTd]

 

 

The Dream Girl is quite nicely optimized if you ask me, there's also so called "Pandora body" by mk1mk2; not that, say, CBBE is high-poly enough to affect the performance at all. Anyway, you can easily put those speculations of mine to the test and install UNP (20088 polys) and then said DG (8690 polys): no noticeable performance gain, even though 1139 polygons less on the second. What's eating out fps the most are the textures: oversized diffuse maps, uncompressed normal maps etc.

 

 

 

lots of reasons vanilla is been made badly,that's reasons good enough for making improvements

Is making a head mesh incompatible with the game assets really an improvement?

 

 

Actually I do notice a performance gain switching to Dream Girl from even CBBE. It's one of the major reasons I switched and stayed with Dream Girl. My game just runs smoother all the time.

 

Interesting that you notice a performance gain after switching to a body mod that has 1k polygons more than your previous one.

 

 

IKR, but it's true, using CBBE the animations seem slow and clunky, with almost perceptable pausing where as with DG everything flows. I use high res textures on both, for DG I run SG female texture renewals overwritten with Neovinci DG updates and a lot of face mods. With CBBE I either run Claiente default ultra res or those from Antiwomaggot and the same face mods. I run complete armor replacers for both using Exeters unp replkacements when using DG, but always run something specifically made for DG on my own character. I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the textures.

[ChipyChops]

State changes are the most time consuming, if the skyrim engine comes across states that it can't group then you will more than likely see a difference in fps.

[barjack]

ok,,now i know the reason why 4k texture exists ,here is the UV combined with hands,legs,it's very close to vanilla one,already maximized the pixel area of body as much as i can,,but 2k texture still a bit lack of pixel space for body area.

I also made some change in the arm's topology,,made it fit vanilla skeleton's joint location,it should have the minimum distortion when character rising arm over shoulder.

[barjack]

Like i said before you can't mirror an object space normal, but you can mirror a tangent space one.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/k8ofvlljoiafe46/PBAT.2.7z

I changed the normal map to tangent and removed the model space normals flag, as well as set the facegen RGB tint flag.

 

Only by using a tangent normal can you avoid shading errors.

 

 

Also for 3 <--- the nif exporter splits edges based on uv islands?? I'm going to have too test that for myself...

 

Though if it is true can't you just split them yourself, that way the vertex order would remain the same?

 

*edit*

It really does split the mesh to how its split in the UV.

 

hands,legs lighting difference problem solved with mirrored UV mesh ,it's shader error,the reason was i didn't apply the normal map correctly,,I'm going to test non-mirrored head UV combine with mirrored body.hope it will work.

femalefeet_0.7z

[ElectricSheep]

Like i said before you can't mirror an object space normal, but you can mirror a tangent space one.

Of course you can, you just need to invert the red channel afterwards.

[Vioxsis]

 

Like i said before you can't mirror an object space normal, but you can mirror a tangent space one.

Of course you can, you just need to invert the red channel afterwards.

 

 

How? When both the left and right side are occupying the same UV space?

And even if they wasn't and had there own UV space why would you not then just bake out a proper normal map?

 

Mirroring an object space normal requires specific shader support, and skyrim does not have it.

[barjack]

the result is very clear in the picture.(despite the color difference)

tested vanilla non-mirrored head mesh lighting with my mirrored body,the lighting is correct on both sides.And you don't need to flip red channel if you flip the UV in the x direction for the mirrored side of mesh.