Yiffy Age of Skyrim

[Blaze69]

6 hours ago, Unknown Dragon said:

I'm having a similar problem, though rather than edit I'm trying to create a Beastess enemy faction with their own leveled lists and such using YA consolidated as the active file on CK. Problem is, CK keeps crashing every time I try to load it up with other master files despite the use of an "allowmutltipleesm" line in the program's ini settings. How would you suggest I proceed? Thank you in advance.

First and foremost, avoid using the CK for as much as you can. The only things you absolutely have to use it for are: creating/adding scripts, editing worldspaces and cells, and creating new NPC records and exporting FaceGen data for them. Pretty much everything else can be done in xEdit just fine. In fact, the way to make a proper YA patch is to create it in xEdit using the custom script and then loading the patch in the CK and exporting FaceGen without saving the plugin at all (so the CK doesn't screw up the plugin).

 

Now, as for the CK and master files: it can't work with standard plugins (ESPs) as masters, period. If you try to load a plugin that has other ESPs as masters, it will actually load just fine but whenever you save said plugin it will lose the dependency on anything that is not a ESM, leaving you with plenty of broken references that are tedious to fix in xEdit. Since YA is an ESP, trying to create a plugin with YA as a master won't work because the CK will delete YA from the master list as soon as you try to save it.

 

If you really need to edit your plugin in the CK because you have to do any of the stuff that requires the CK, the way around it is to temporarily add the "ESM" flag in the data of the master ESP so it tricks the CK into believing it's actually an ESM without having to change the plugin name/file type. That's what Bad Dog suggests:

1 hour ago, Bad Dog said:

I set the ESM flag in T5E but don't change the file name. Have you tried different compatibility settings for CK?

You have to open the plugin (in this case YA) in xEdit and select the "File Header" for the plugin. One of the fields in the "Record Header" section of the right pane should be "Record Flags". Right click it, select Edit, and tick the "ESM" box in the pop-up window. Save the plugin, and you should be good to go, but also remeber to load it again and uncheck the flag whenever you are finished working with the CK.

[Bl1nd_Eye]

So, I've been wondering, do you have any plans of porting this to SSE or is it already SSE-ready?

[WynnShay]

so quick question... (Maybe an easy one?) Ive installed yout mod aswell as the sexlab mod.. Im new to the sex thing in skyrim...the animations look a little... Robotic? And there isnt really physics for the beast shlongs.. They kinda just go through things if that makes sense not really any collisions and none of the furs really have assholes (Lol) Just wondering if that how its supposed to be or if I missed a install somewhere

[Blaze69]

50 minutes ago, DarkVoid1290 said:

So, I've been wondering, do you have any plans of porting this to SSE or is it already SSE-ready?

It's certainly NOT SE ready, the meshes and textures need to be converted to the new formats, the plugin has to be saved with the SE CK, and FaceGen has to be re-exported for all of the game's NPCs except for Khajiit and Argonians, so it will take a while to port the mod.

 

IIRC Bad Dog has stated he will probably look into porting the mod to SE after he's done with the bird race WIP as well as a handful of other things that are on the To-Do list. Can't give an ETA or anything like that because that would be up to him, but last I heard the bird thing was coming along and none of the other things should take much work either, so it may happen relatively soon (as opposed to years from now or never at all, I mean).

[Blaze69]

10 minutes ago, WynnShay said:

so quick question... (Maybe an easy one?) Ive installed yout mod aswell as the sexlab mod.. Im new to the sex thing in skyrim...

You should really browse the forums, test some mods and in general get familiar with SL mods and stuff before you jump straight into a full-on SL + Ya playthrough, but okay. I guess we all have to start somewhere.

10 minutes ago, WynnShay said:

the animations look a little... Robotic?

Many (but not all) of the animations included in the default SL download are old and/or generic, so their quality is a bit sub-par as per the current standards. Try downloading some extra SLAL packs like Nibbles', Leito's, Billy's or Anubis' as those have higher-quality animations. You should probably stay clear of FunnyBizness' stuff, though; he has a ton of anims that are okay-ish if you are interested in guro and hardcore rape and stuff, but those are the most robotic anims ever.

10 minutes ago, WynnShay said:

And there isnt really physics for the beast shlongs.. They kinda just go through things if that makes sense not really any collisions

You need a full HDT install alongside a proper XML collision data as well as the UUNP Special body if you want to have collision and detailed bits during sex. There's an optional download named "BD_EZ_HDT" or something similar that could get you started on setting it up, but you will have to read the tutorials and do the work yourself if you want it to work as inteded. Should also download the "Naturalistic HDT" set and read the information available there.

10 minutes ago, WynnShay said:

none of the furs really have assholes (Lol)

None of the current body mods have modeled/collision enabled anuses; at most you have them painted on the textures, but not much else (and whether or not they are actually visible depends on each specific texture, so there's that).

[Unknown Dragon]

Right, I'll have to do some experimenting then. Give the xEdit thing a try. I always used CK since it is easier for me to -see- live changes I make on things, such as Actor appearance and whatnot. Maybe I'll try tweaking compatibility settings here and there before I go full on your advice, Blaze. Much thanks, so love, very modding mods, wow.

[Bad Dog]

Yeah, I use CK some when I'm working on presets and character appearance. But real NPC design is easiest in the game, with RaceMenu, and T5E has so many convenience features (copying attributes from one record to another, frex) that I do most of the work there. It's also way faster to bring up.

[Petsoftthings]

Do the females in this mod have CBBE Bodyslide support? :V

[Rockat]

1 hour ago, Petsoftthings said:

Do the females in this mod have CBBE Bodyslide support? :V

If you install the CBBE patch, yes. Though it has out of the box support for UNP Bodyslide.

[Sixer5000]

I'm pretty new at modding Skyrim and everytime I try to follow the instructions on how to intall the mods, it never ends up working and my game just crashes. It actually wont even start up at times. I was wondering if there is perhaps a video installation guide for the modding illiterate like me. Thanks!

[Bad Dog]

Go to the S.T.E.P guide and do everything they say. Once you understand it, you can choose what you really want.

[NightroModzz]

@Bad Dog

 

Is this pretty much what you do in Blender for textures?

 

Spotlight Polypaint/texturing

[Bad Dog]

No. Blender has similar functionality and I've played with it some, but I don't do the textures that way.

 

Everything I do uses UV textures, not painting on the vertices. Since it's ending up in Skyrim, I'll need a texture file anyway and that gives me complete control over the texture. Blender has a function to project an image, but I haven't been able to leverage it. When I'm doing the bird heads, for example, I thought I'd be able to take a photo and project it on the head and it would look okay since the changing angle of incidence of the projected image would match the distortion of the photo. But it looked lousy. I went back to my old technique of creating a UV map and then using photoshop to stretch the image over the map. Every time the guy in the vid repositions the model he's getting seams where the texture matches up and because I'm OCD I'd worry about that. It's a fine cloth texture and not really visible but I'd be sure that too many such seams would turn the texture to mush.

 

Blender also has a method of painting a flat texture onto a model with a brush. The texture goes on normal to the model surface so you don't have the distortion problems you get with projecting. In theory that should be really useful but in practice going through photoshop means I can stretch the texture over the whole model at once. 

 

(But now that I say that, it could be a great way to get rid of seams--just paint over them with a matching texture. Hmm. Gotta try that.)

[Bad Dog]

On 5/7/2018 at 12:47 PM, Blaze69 said:

I know there are CBBE textures for YA but I simply don't like how they turned out)

What's wrong with them?

[Blaze69]

27 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

What's wrong with them?

They are a bit rough in the areas where CBBE topology/UVs are more different from UNP ones, specially around the groin and the breasts. Plus, projecting the normal map is IMO a bad idea because normals should be generated from scratch for the body/UV they are meant to be used with.

 

The latter can be solved by either rebuilding the normal maps or simply using existing CBBE Khajiit normals (honestly even the ones from the default Khajiit texture set included in the main CBBE file should be good enough). As for the former, all I can think of to improve them would be to either manually tweak them further to get them to look better or rebuilding them using a CBBE as a base, though most of the current textures are probably salvageable for use there so it wouldn't need to be entirely from scratch.

 

Also in the case of Lykaios, the original mod has CBBE textures already, so we could simply use those textures for them (and the normals for all canine races) instead of having to port and tweak the UNP ones. Vaalsark have some CBBE textures from third parties (not WoTA) too, though I don't know if their permissions would allow for it and if they are good enough to be worth using.

 

EDIT: There's this for Vaalsark and Kygarra (true to the original textures) and this is another option for Vaalsark (different from the original style but IMO looks good).

[Blaze69]

40 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

Everything I do uses UV textures, not painting on the vertices. Since it's ending up in Skyrim, I'll need a texture file anyway and that gives me complete control over the texture.

From a quick search, seems like it's possible to save the ZBrush polypaint as an actual texture file; all you need to do is unwrap the lowest/base subdivision model in a different program like Max or I guess Blender, import that UV back into ZBrush, and then bake the texture.

40 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

Blender also has a method of painting a flat texture onto a model with a brush. The texture goes on normal to the model surface so you don't have the distortion problems you get with projecting. In theory that should be really useful but in practice going through photoshop means I can stretch the texture over the whole model at once. 

Actually that's how I tweaked the Snow Leopard face textures in my setup: I used a real image of a snow leopard I got from the web, placed the nose of the pic right over the nose of the mesh, and painted/projected it. It's true I did that in Mudbox which also has more painting tools, but I assume that process works more or less the same in Blender.

 

Though is true you would need to do that with several different images and angles if you wanted to build most of the texture using that, in which case it wouldn't be practical. But maybe for specific details like those it may come in handy.

40 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

(But now that I say that, it could be a great way to get rid of seams--just paint over them with a matching texture. Hmm. Gotta try that.)

That's literaly what I do to fix seams, simply use the "Clone" brush to paint across the seam using the neighboring textures as the source and make the transition as seamless as possible.

[NightroModzz]

6 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

7 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Everything I do uses UV textures, not painting on the vertices. Since it's ending up in Skyrim, I'll need a texture file anyway and that gives me complete control over the texture.

From a quick search, seems like it's possible to save the ZBrush polypaint as an actual texture file; all you need to do is unwrap the lowest/base subdivision model in a different program like Max or I guess Blender, import that UV back into ZBrush, and then bake the texture.

Pretty much as long as you have that high poly textured recourse model from Zbrush, you can keep reapplying it to the same or multiple geometrically similar models with different UVs. Although it is best to use a mesh that already has UV maps (not yet cut up at the UV borders) and make multiple sub-divisions to start off with. Some other applicatins are indeed better at making UVs. Just bake the textures in Zbrush, then convert to DDS in Photoshop.

 

I do see issues with both. To wrap an image around the UV/mesh, it will always end up stretched and at a lower resolution than the image used. It would be best to use megapixel images and have multiple images at different angles with the same lighting of the same model. Kind of like a megascan, but for an anthro, it wouldn't exactly be a megascan. Although you can mirror the editing process, or side angle image if needed.

 

I would imagine fur seams being very difficult to fix in Photoshop without it looking blurry, but if you use something like leopard fur for image polypaint texturing, it would be easier to realign the texture to match the pattern if you need to change angles. You can also zoom-in like crazy in Zbrush to adjust it so it's unnoticeable.

[Bad Dog]

I'm always suspicious of blender's texture handling and expect to lose a little resolution when I use it. 

 

I've never (almost never? pretty much never) been able to use multiple photos for a model. Either the lighting or the natural color variation of the subject means it nearly always doesn't work. In theory photoshop's recoloring tools should be able to fix up one or both to make them match but in practice I haven't made it work. I'm more likely to use copies of the same texture multiple times, warping and scaling as necessary.

[Kestrix]

is it alright if I use the Argonian assets and make them into a standalone replacer? It's mostly just for my use.

[Blaze69]

10 hours ago, Kestrix said:

is it alright if I use the Argonian assets and make them into a standalone replacer? It's mostly just for my use.

As long as it's for personal use only, you don't need to ask for any kind of permissions for mods at all, lol. What happens on your computer stays in your computer. It's only when you do intend to release it publicly or use it in a mod that will be released that you actually have to ask for permissions unless the author explicitly mentions not needing to do so in their permissions info (if there is any).

 

In this case, to quote Bad Dog's signature:

Quote

Assets from my mods may be freely used in any other mod. Just make sure they're really mine--if I built on someone else's assets, check their restrictions. You don't get to restrict use of my assets by including them in your mod, even if your mod is restricted. Give me credit if you can, and inform me of what you did.

Pretty sure the Argonian assets are all either vanilla or Bad Dog's, so you could even release it if you wanted as long as you gave credit and let him know about it.

[Kestrix]

Guess I'm just in the habit of asking. I was already making new eyes for the hyenas using the Lykaios eyes as a base. As well as Dreamburrow's lion eyes for the sabrelion cats.

 

You wouldn't happen to have any tips for blending the Argonian feet textures with the Dragonic Argonian textures would you?

[Dragonsprite]

Curiously, Is there a Plantigrade feet edition YA yet?

 

I can always dream. >:3

[Bad Dog]

For plantigrade, remove the skeletons that come with YA, but then, hm. I guess that's not really enough anymore cuz you also need to get the NiOverride data out of the nif. It's easy--you just remove the StringExtraData node--but you have to understand nifskope. I'll see about a plantigrade patch.

 

Don't make new eyes for hyenas. Hyenas have their very own odd-shaped irises. I don't guarantee that my script assigns only those eyes to hyenas though.

 

Ya, I'm not going to get in a snit if my assets help you build your mod, even if you end up making money off it. I have in mind to do a Compleat Argonian, sometime after moving YA to SSE. There's already a Drachis Argonians texture, you can build on it. 

[Kestrix]

Thanks! I'm blending it with dragonic to get a more uh dragon-y lizard? skin. The feet have been giving me trouble though. It's always something. Yea I noticed the irises were unique - though they don't really look all that similar to the hyena eyes I was referencing. I was actually tempted to use the race to make a Gnoll npc. I love gnolls.

[RavenActual]

Has there been anything done to make the dark elves no longer look like feline-shaped black holes?