Dwemer Milking machine WIP [Help Needed with collision]

[zax]

Honestly I wasn't planing to touch any animated things but maybe if I succeed with this part I see to that next as it is a good idea. The fact that it's animated may pose more problem though and I'm not sure I succeed with this non animated part already. ^^

Don't worry, original cage isnt animated either, its static object attached to actor as AnimObject (AnimObjects are defined in CK and linked to character via FNIS txt file), so they only appear during animation.

[Androol]

Honestly I'm not totally sure I will keep this design and the original Dwemer milking machine as a base since, after a few test I remembered that it has some flow and make it hard to get a follower cow to get in it ( not sure with a cow character). That make one more problem to fix and if I decide to modify my model to be based on the normal milking machine there will be no cage included. Not sure what I'll do in the end but it may not involve a cage at all.

 

To be honest I don't think it's a cage or maybe the English term don't translate well in French because it's not what I have in mind when I think of a cage. It's more some restrain handling imo. But that's just semantics I guess.

 

I m still fighting with my normal map that don't seems to show on the model. There is some post about solving this problem but they  say to put the "num uv set" to the right value in nifscope and mine are greyed. No way to change it and I don't know why.

 

I also have these normal going crazy on import that I didn't look into farther since I don't get the first clue why. For now I'm not really into improvement and adding things since I have to get what I already have working first. The modelling is the easy part for me as it was my first attempt at a mod the skyrim specific things are the hard, if I can figures there out the rest is easy so I'm not really over thinking it.

 

On the good side, I've made progress in understanding why my specular where not working. It still don't look very good but I get it working better on this side and know what button to push to change them.

[Androol]

I may or may not have understand the strange behaviour of the normal on the above arch and other parts. I think you need seams everywhere you want an hard edge.

 

As I have to redo my uv maping entirely to test this theory it may take some time to be sure if it's that or not.

[Androol]

Not sure why, but after remaking the UV map and the textures the problem of the messed angles on the first arch was solved but other spawned even worth than the one I fixed. Light seems to show through the texture at some place as you can see in this screen shot.

 

 

My normal map still has no effect too.

 

Edit: the .nif if somone want to look in it.

 

1ABaseFull.nif

[Androol]

I think I got it right. Mostly.

 

I entirely remade the texture changed the UV map slightly and its almost as I wanted. Far from perfect due to my limited skills but enough to my liking. There is still one thing behaving oddly the shadow in the lactacid container is a bit strange. I have no clue if it's because I still get something wrong or if it's just because skyrim shadows just sucks. I doubt my normal map work properly but well it look decent enough imo.

 

Any opinions or advice are welcome.

 

 

I may need some beta tester at some point but I want to try some more things on the texture before. Any volunteer will be welcome though.

 

 

[DixiePig]

Any opinions or advice are welcome.

 

Looking great!

 

If you want the textures to look even better, I have a couple of tips:

 

Ambient occlusion map - bake an AO map, invert, multiply with noise (not Perlin. Photos of snow work well), as use that as a mask to blend in a nice, dark dirt texture. Baked-in AO is great for improving how a model reads, and since Bethesda used a LOT of dirt in Skyrim's textures it will fit in better with the art style - just look at those barrels behind it in the screenshot.

 

Cavity map - bake a cavity map. You can keep it simple and use a "screen" blend over your texture, or (again) you can multiply it with noise and use the result as a mask for blending in a scratch texture. This will create the impression of wear on the exposed edges and again improve readability and fit in better.

 

Normals: roughen up that stone a bit with some normal detail. I like to use that same snow as a bump map, and use color curves to get it to look just right.

 

These tricks are real quick and produce some fairly nice results.

If you like you can send me your .blend and textures and I can show you how I set up my .blend files to do it.

 

[Androol]

 

Any opinions or advice are welcome.

 

Looking great!

 

If you want the textures to look even better, I have a couple of tips:

 

Ambient occlusion map - bake an AO map, invert, multiply with noise (not Perlin. Photos of snow work well), as use that as a mask to blend in a nice, dark dirt texture. Baked-in AO is great for improving how a model reads, and since Bethesda used a LOT of dirt in Skyrim's textures it will fit in better with the art style - just look at those barrels behind it in the screenshot.

 

Cavity map - bake a cavity map. You can keep it simple and use a "screen" blend over your texture, or (again) you can multiply it with noise and use the result as a mask for blending in a scratch texture. This will create the impression of wear on the exposed edges and again improve readability and fit in better.

 

Normals: roughen up that stone a bit with some normal detail. I like to use that same snow as a bump map, and use color curves to get it to look just right.

 

These tricks are real quick and produce some fairly nice results.

If you like you can send me your .blend and textures and I can show you how I set up my .blend files to do it.

 

 

 

 

Well I used all this ain't I didn't finish the stone and the normal map wasn't working as stated in the last comment but you probably missed it.

 

I finally found why the normal map didn't work and it's affecting my model now. I think my normal maps aren't strong enough but I already have some on everything including the stone, I have to tweak it.

 

I don't set up my textures in blender since I did the texturing part it in another software but I'll be interested to see how you set them up in blender when they are finished. I'm not really used to set texture in blender internal since I stopped using internal years ago and apparently it's what is needed to use the nif export. For now I just use the 3ds export from blender without textures and set the texture directly in nifscope since I wasn't able to export directly to .nif.

 

I still don't have the light effect right and the colours get burned in strong sun light. The image below is not even in the worst sun setup but I was to lazy to try to find it for a screen shot.

 

 

Edit: if you're skilled with nifscop, I gladly send you the .nif file and the alpha mod so you can take a look and say me what I'm doing wrong.

[DixiePig]

if you're skilled with nifscop,

 

I'm afraid not, I only touch nifskope at the final stages of a project. Outside of those times my familiarity fades away. Two things that may be helpful though:

 

1. you mentioned the normals, which were correct in blender, would become inverted arbitrarily by nifskope. I had a similar problem on a project years ago, try looking into the nifskope functions "face normals" and "update tangent space". I think they perform a similar function to blender's "recalculate normals".

 

2. If the material reacts too strongly to sunlight, There are two causes that occur to me: 1, your specular map is too bright. That's in the alpha channel of the normal map. 2, I believe that somewhere in the nif's material data there's a value that controls specular power. I personally never bothered to figure that stuff out, and just copied the material properties' data block from something similar (in your case, perhaps something like an indoor dungeon floor tile) and overwriting the texture file paths.

[Androol]

 

if you're skilled with nifscop,

 

I'm afraid not, I only touch nifskope at the final stages of a project. Outside of those times my familiarity fades away. Two things that may be helpful though:

 

1. you mentioned the normals, which were correct in blender, would become inverted arbitrarily by nifskope. I had a similar problem on a project years ago, try looking into the nifskope functions "face normals" and "update tangent space". I think they perform a similar function to blender's "recalculate normals".

 

2. If the material reacts too strongly to sunlight, There are two causes that occur to me: 1, your specular map is too bright. That's in the alpha channel of the normal map. 2, I believe that somewhere in the nif's material data there's a value that controls specular power. I personally never bothered to figure that stuff out, and just copied the material properties' data block from something similar (in your case, perhaps something like an indoor dungeon floor tile) and overwriting the texture file paths.

 

 

The normal problem is fixed and some are pretty visible in my last screenshot.

 

I' already tried to lower the alpha channel of the normal for the light burning but without a lot of effect. It's almost black right now on the metal and totally black in the stone and it's still burned. I tried changing the specular and glossy value, specular color and other light effect in nifscop too, with little success. It may also be my specular map (the RGB_s.dds one not the one in the normal alpha channel) but my attempt at desaturate or darken it didn't do a lot either.

 

I had no idea you can copy past properties data block though I may have to try that one.

 

No idea how to do it though.

 

Thx.

[Androol]

I didn't figure out how to copy/past the BSLightShader propriety branch and have it as the children of the data block so I copied all setting one by one from the nif of a dwemer pipe to the metal part of the milk machine, removed my _s map and replaced it by the cube map the dwemer pipe use as it had a cube map and no _s map and it's worst now I think. At least I know my problem don't come from my light shader property or my _s map. I guess that's still a progress. ^^

 

It was a good suggestion to see how other material can work. I used those of the original milk machine before thinking well if they work why change them. I may have learned something in the process hopefully. I will try to compare my colour and normal map to make them look more like the Dwemer pipe texture and see if it solve the problem.

[Androol]

Ok got it. It was the base colour map ( the main without  _(x))

 

More than a week that I look in the wrong direction. ^^

 

Apparently the lightness of the base colour influence the reaction to light too.

 

No idea why I didn't think to extract a dwemer thing from the start. First skyrim mod may serve as an excuse. lol

 

Got to fix the collision now as its hard as hell to get a follower to actually use it. That's the case with the original mod but I want to improve it a bit. Or at least try.

[DixiePig]

Hey, just came across this, could be useful:

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/

[Androol]

Hey, just came across this, could be useful:

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1188259-bslightingshaderproperty-basics/

 

 

Well that's what get me in the wrong direction actually.

 

If you get to the end of the post you may see I tried to ask a question 2 days ago.

 

As you can see it didn't say base colour affect reflection. He list everything else so I learned a lot but not on what was causing my issue.

 

Thx, for the good intention.

 

Plus you already solved my problem in saying you weren't doing all this and just copied existing nif so I studied a dwemer item nif and found what was different from mine it wasen't the nif but the colour texture mainly. ^^

[Androol]

I think I got it better in full light, sadly in counter light it's too dark now.

 

I repainted most of it since the last screen shot.

 

Don't know If I will try to get it better since it's better that what I hoped to achieve already just one or two tweak are needed as the milk is still burned. I guess I have to go for the collision problem soon and them maybe the animated model, or not depending on my laziness.

 

Edit: I found a spot with a lot of light and a dwemer pipe to make easier comparison. It's far better now, ain't in backlight situation.

 

 

 

[Androol]

I have to say I don't have the first clue how to fix the collision problem. I'm not even sure it's the collision part that is the problem, maybe it's the animation or the place where you activate the machine. As it's my first mod in skyrim I have no experience in any of these area so it's a real puzzle for me. its the same problem with the original dwarven milk machine from Zaz I started from, maybe someone has a clue?

[Androol]

I searched a lot already but I don't have the first clue how to fix the "can't do that sorry" problem when trying to use it with a follower. I already tryed all that come to my mind. My skill with nifscope being mostly inexistant I m not even sure it is a collision problem so I'm open to any suggestion.

[solitudos66]

Good idea i hope for 1 uploaded version soon

 

[Androol]

Well the idea is mainly that it will be part of milk mod economy but I can hardly  submit it without fixing the collision problem first ( if it's the collision that is the issue).

 

It work pretty well with the PC but ain't you use a trick ( using a positioner mod to push your follower inside the collision area before asking them to use the machine) its hard as hell to get them to use the machine in its actual state.

[Androol]

Well I'm still blocked by the collision problem preventing follower to actually use the machine. ( most of the time)

 

Here is what I got so far. It's not really polished like I wanted but work fine with the PC. I put it there in case someone can see into it and tell me from what the collision problem is from and how to fix it. its an alpha it replace the dwarven milking machine from zaz with this one. you need zaz stuff for it to work obviously. Maybe milk mod economy too not sure, I don't think so but never actualy tested it without milk mod economy installed. To place the machine you need to enter help milk in console mod found the ID of the dwarven milk machine and type Player.PlaceAtMe [iD of the machine here]

 

MoMDWReturn.7z

 

I'll continue working it if someone know how to pass that problem. If not I probably will have to restart from the base milk machine that don't have this collision issue ( well it has it less to be honest but is playable)

[solitudos66]

maybe the creator of original milk machine will help with machine

 

[Androol]

Well If he knew he will not have left it flowed I guess.

[xaz]

This looks really good! I'll have a look at the mod and see if I can figure out why followers don't want to use it properly.

[xaz]

I think the problem is with the collision geometry. It uses the old model's collision geometry where you (obviously) can't walk up on the sides. I think that can and should be fixed on the original mode. I'll see what I can do. Haven't worked much with collision geometry, so.....