Yiffy Age of Skyrim

[IGotBored]

58 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

TL;DR: too much work, not guaranteed to be worth it, so not gonna happen.

Oh no I didn't mean to try to it integrated or have patches or anything. I just wanted to bring attention to it since it seems like a nice mod. I just didn't really know where to post it since there doesn't seem like there many furry base topics around LL. All of the ones I've seen kinda just fade away which is really sad. 

[LegendOfJan]

Wait... so is Bad Dog pretty much finishing KK's Lykaios race as a sideproject too?

[Bad Dog]

Pretty much, yes. Plus making high-poly heads. 

 

I'm having to guess a bit at some stuff. Hair styles aren't too bad, but tints and face patterns are more problematic. She had specific ideas in mind with the face patterns (styles for fox, husky, etc.) and I'm not at all sure I'll be able to duplicate it, especially for females which are less complete.

 

Also, I have a bit of a conceptual problem with the right way to furrify. It's set up so there's some carryover from the vanilla NPC to the furry version. Find in concept, has problems in actuality:

 

I wanted the furry hair to be based on the vanilla hair, so everyone with the same vanilla hair should have the same furry hair. But Kodlak, Ulfric, Orgnar, and Erik all use the same hairstyle and I say Kodlak Whitemane obviously should have a white mane, Ulfric wants a fancy style suitable to a man (wolf) who would be king, while Orgnar and Erik are barkeeps who need a more common style. But again I don't really want to have to decide separately on a style for every named NPC.

 

I'm mapping face tints from NPC to furry. This I'm really not sure matters--a human with darker cheeks shouldn't necessarily map to a wolf with dark cheeks. Also the semi-random combination you get does not necessarily look good on a furry. I think the best solution would be to come up with, say, 20 combinations of face tints that make good-looking fur patterns. Probably each combination would use no more than 3 colors--the base plus two accent colors--for realism. Multiply that with, say 5 tint variations each and you've got a wide variety of patterns to assign to NPCs. BUT it's a bunch of work and I'm not sure I'm up for it. Also it mostly just applies to Lykaios... the other races don't have such a rich set of options.

 

For hair color I have to decide whether to use NPC hair color or do some kind of mapping to KK's. I want a mapping--Falk and Brynolf should be redheads, Balgruuf has to be blond, etc.  There's an argument that furries can use human hair color and it's just fine.

 

And then also there's the problem of KK's facial hair. It is generally set up to follow the fur color, hair color, or generically dark. One or the other might work better for particular face patterns. And it probably wants to be the same for all facial hair on a creature--dark brows, fur color mustache, and hair color beard is probably a bad idea. (And I'm not even thinking about the relationship between fur pattern and facial hair. A Scotty with mustache and chin beard is fine, but what about a doberman?)

 

Face shapes are based on the NPC face shape, except I have to look at the elves. If they are variants off a base elf shape, fine; if they are all exaggerated in one direction from the base I have to make sure that will look decent with the cats. But I like having the furry shape reflect the NPC's head shape.

 

I took a first cut at this and may have a photoshoot later. But it's taking fully 24 hours to facegen just all the Nords. 

 

While that was happening I was bored so I rebuilt Serana's hair for wolf ears so the hair doesn't just run through the ear like it's not there. I also gave the argonians a forked tongue. Don't tell me crocodilians don't have forked tongues, I don't want to know.

[MadMansGun]

21 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

I also gave the argonians a forked tongue. Don't tell me crocodilians don't have forked tongues, I don't want to know.

hey now, don't be turning Argonians into Tsaescis ?

[Bad Dog]

Damn, my method of increasing verts on lykaios heads shat the bed. Back to square one.

 

Problem is that any small variation in vert placement tends to stack up when you have multiple morphs happening. I might be able to fix it by walking all the morphs, but I more likely will go back to adapting the citrus head. I know those morphs work.

 

Photoshoot anyway:

 

Spoiler

Brill. Why random generation of patterns is bad.

 

 Idolaf doesn't look so bad. Texture error in the mohawk will be fixed.

 

 

Kodlak showing why randomly picking the "dark" facial hair option isn't so good. And I'm just not sure those eyebrows are ever a good idea. I think Kodlak needs a silver coat all over.

 

 Mikael looks decent, though that facial pattern is not found in nature. 

 

 

 

Another random Battle-Born asshole. Face looks good, but facial hair really wants to match the mane. Maybe I just shouldn't auto-assign the dark hair options. Mustache isn't applying chargen morphs properly.

 

 

Ulfberth looks good, no nonsense, right for the character. Not sure if that's dark hair or just his own dark hair. Probably should make sure he gets a beard, since vanilla has the best beard in Skyrim. I'm seeing that scar a lot tho, and it's distinctive. Maybe I need to make more options. Vanilla has 20, I think, and I only made 7.

 

 

  

Vilkas isn't so bad and the eyebrows look good on him. But you can see the vert problem.

 

[LegendOfJan]

13 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Pretty much, yes. Plus making high-poly heads. 

 

I'm having to guess a bit at some stuff. Hair styles aren't too bad, but tints and face patterns are more problematic. She had specific ideas in mind with the face patterns (styles for fox, husky, etc.) and I'm not at all sure I'll be able to duplicate it, especially for females which are less complete.

 

Also, I have a bit of a conceptual problem with the right way to furrify. It's set up so there's some carryover from the vanilla NPC to the furry version. Find in concept, has problems in actuality:

 

I wanted the furry hair to be based on the vanilla hair, so everyone with the same vanilla hair should have the same furry hair. But Kodlak, Ulfric, Orgnar, and Erik all use the same hairstyle and I say Kodlak Whitemane obviously should have a white mane, Ulfric wants a fancy style suitable to a man (wolf) who would be king, while Orgnar and Erik are barkeeps who need a more common style. But again I don't really want to have to decide separately on a style for every named NPC.

 

I'm mapping face tints from NPC to furry. This I'm really not sure matters--a human with darker cheeks shouldn't necessarily map to a wolf with dark cheeks. Also the semi-random combination you get does not necessarily look good on a furry. I think the best solution would be to come up with, say, 20 combinations of face tints that make good-looking fur patterns. Probably each combination would use no more than 3 colors--the base plus two accent colors--for realism. Multiply that with, say 5 tint variations each and you've got a wide variety of patterns to assign to NPCs. BUT it's a bunch of work and I'm not sure I'm up for it. Also it mostly just applies to Lykaios... the other races don't have such a rich set of options.

 

For hair color I have to decide whether to use NPC hair color or do some kind of mapping to KK's. I want a mapping--Falk and Brynolf should be redheads, Balgruuf has to be blond, etc.  There's an argument that furries can use human hair color and it's just fine.

 

And then also there's the problem of KK's facial hair. It is generally set up to follow the fur color, hair color, or generically dark. One or the other might work better for particular face patterns. And it probably wants to be the same for all facial hair on a creature--dark brows, fur color mustache, and hair color beard is probably a bad idea. (And I'm not even thinking about the relationship between fur pattern and facial hair. A Scotty with mustache and chin beard is fine, but what about a doberman?)

 

Face shapes are based on the NPC face shape, except I have to look at the elves. If they are variants off a base elf shape, fine; if they are all exaggerated in one direction from the base I have to make sure that will look decent with the cats. But I like having the furry shape reflect the NPC's head shape.

 

I took a first cut at this and may have a photoshoot later. But it's taking fully 24 hours to facegen just all the Nords. 

 

While that was happening I was bored so I rebuilt Serana's hair for wolf ears so the hair doesn't just run through the ear like it's not there. I also gave the argonians a forked tongue. Don't tell me crocodilians don't have forked tongues, I don't want to know.

Quite the workaholic. Will you publish your continuation of KK's work seperately or only within YA?

[Blaze69]

19 minutes ago, LegendOfJan said:

Quite the workaholic. Will you publish your continuation of KK's work seperately or only within YA?

According to this post, he may do so:

On 9/2/2018 at 11:46 PM, Bad Dog said:

[...] I've thought about making the canine updates available separately and probably won't. The work is all original at this point but the concept isn't and I'd feel a bit queasy about it. I will release the Lykaios as an update if I'm happy enough with it. 

And if he doesn't feel like doing so, I'd be willing to give it a shot myself. So chances are the final Lykaios update will happen one way or another.

 

EDIT: speaking of updating the canines, @Bad Dog, any news on the new textures for Vaalsark and Kygarra (and the CITRUS heads for the former)?

[Bad Dog]

Yeah, after all this the Lykaios deserve their own update.

 

Vaalsark fur is pretty reasonable. I'm using same technique as for the khajiit, posted upthread. Hyenas will be similar.

 

Dunno what I'll do with the vaalsark heads. I did a bunch of work on high poly heads using the method of loading up morphs and subdividing. But I think that's what screwed me on the Lykaios heads--I think those added vertices are almost right and each morph looks fine on its own, but when you stack them up all the new verts are off in the same direction and it becomes a mess.  I think that's why I'm getting that zigzag look.

 

Also if I make them a citrus variant I can probably do a races tri file and then use the same scars on everybody, same as how vanilla works. But I'll make them high poly one way or another.

 

Not sure how I'll handle the Lykaios heads. I could try to fix them by hand, but it's actually very tricky to get those verts where they belong. But going to citrus heads means either living with the citrus morphs or going through them all by hand and re-creating what KK did. She clearly was working on variants that would make different types of canine--wolf, fox, dog, etc. --as well as having some cool expressions. Easiest would be just to ship her low-poly heads and abandon trying to fix them up.

[Blaze69]

6 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Vaalsark fur is pretty reasonable. I'm using same technique as for the khajiit, posted upthread. Hyenas will be similar.

Does that mean you intend to keep the rough base design they currently have and simply add more/better detail? To be honest, I was hoping for a brand new skin for them, just like you did for the cats.

 

Not a big fan of the "pretty much the same skin as vanilla Khajiits but with the spots removed" look Vaalsark have right now. IMO something closely resembling a real jackal (either golden or side-striped  for a slightly more "generic canine" appearance or black-backed for full jackal-ness) would be nice. Kygarra are a bit more distinct and closer to real hyenas but they still have too much of the vanilla Khajiit texture on them for my taste, so the same treatment would be good too.

 

Just my two cents, though; and I understand creating a brand new texture set for them would take a lot of work, so there's that.

6 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Not sure how I'll handle the Lykaios heads. I could try to fix them by hand, but it's actually very tricky to get those verts where they belong. But going to citrus heads means either living with the citrus morphs or going through them all by hand and re-creating what KK did. She clearly was working on variants that would make different types of canine--wolf, fox, dog, etc. --as well as having some cool expressions. Easiest would be just to ship her low-poly heads and abandon trying to fix them up.

To be honest, I would simply go for Kritta's current heads as they are and leave it at that. She did an awesome job on them and the morphs even while keeping the low polycount, and unlike the other races, I don't see the point of making them high-poly unless you are willing to put a ridiculous amount of time into the morphs to really use those extra polys.

[MadMansGun]

yea skip the polys (at least for now), it's better to just have good textures & normals.

[Bad Dog]

New chapter in the drama:

 

Turns out you can run the shapekeys past 1. All they do is move the verts in a particular vector from the original location; moving them past 1 just keeps them going in the same direction. So I can get an exaggerated version of the shape by running it up to 5 or so. Then I can smooth it out there. In theory, if I do that for all the shapes that affect the same area they should stack okay.

 

Or just go back to the low poly heads. But I've sunk a bunch of work in these heads, I would like to see if I can rescue it.

[whitey1105]

On 10/1/2018 at 3:10 PM, Bad Dog said:

Damn, my method of increasing verts on lykaios heads shat the bed. Back to square one.

 

Problem is that any small variation in vert placement tends to stack up when you have multiple morphs happening. I might be able to fix it by walking all the morphs, but I more likely will go back to adapting the citrus head. I know those morphs work.

 

Photoshoot anyway:

 

  Hide contents

Brill. Why random generation of patterns is bad.

 

 Idolaf doesn't look so bad. Texture error in the mohawk will be fixed.

 

 

Kodlak showing why randomly picking the "dark" facial hair option isn't so good. And I'm just not sure those eyebrows are ever a good idea. I think Kodlak needs a silver coat all over.

 

 Mikael looks decent, though that facial pattern is not found in nature. 

 

 

 

Another random Battle-Born asshole. Face looks good, but facial hair really wants to match the mane. Maybe I just shouldn't auto-assign the dark hair options. Mustache isn't applying chargen morphs properly.

 

 

Ulfberth looks good, no nonsense, right for the character. Not sure if that's dark hair or just his own dark hair. Probably should make sure he gets a beard, since vanilla has the best beard in Skyrim. I'm seeing that scar a lot tho, and it's distinctive. Maybe I need to make more options. Vanilla has 20, I think, and I only made 7.

 

 

  

Vilkas isn't so bad and the eyebrows look good on him. But you can see the vert problem.

 

To be honest, I'm not a fan of these new Lykaios models. It would be great if you did these as just a separate release. I personally don't like extra hair on furries either. Just doesn't work in my mind.

[tigerfrenzy]

I'm have no doubt I'm going to get chewed up for this critique, but my main beef with this mod is the feet. Despite the feet being more appealing, it is highly incompatible with other custom body textures and custom armor. Put some human like boots on and the digi-grade feet are gone ((and vice versa for the immersiveness)) put on sandals and the feet texture is messed up. I am aware the plantigrade feet exists but it just doesn't look right ((to me at least)) I just can't help but think that Mr. Bad Dog should have the plantigrade feet as human-like feet. Maybe it is too late but maybe in the future he can save trouble on another mod.

[Voldearag]

6 hours ago, Leviathan1110 said:

... I personally don't like extra hair on furries either. Just doesn't work in my mind.

Same, I've always been planning to remove it all whenever I next install again.  Bad Dog once said they weren't sure about the males having hair, but I'll just remove it from everyone.

3 hours ago, tigerfrenzy said:

...I just can't help but think that Mr. Bad Dog should have the plantigrade feet as human-like feet. Maybe it is too late but maybe in the future he can save trouble on another mod.

But human feet on Skyrim furries looks super gross.  Just don't wear shoes.

[tigerfrenzy]

44 minutes ago, Voldearag said:

Same, I've always been planning to remove it all whenever I next install again.  Bad Dog once said they weren't sure about the males having hair, but I'll just remove it from everyone.

But human feet on Skyrim furries looks super gross.  Just don't wear shoes.

Your entitled to your opinion, and while I agree that I don't find them as appealing either I however find them less of an headache then actually trying to tweak my favorite body textures dds files ((Diffuse, S, Sk and everything in between)).

[Blaze69]

 

5 hours ago, tigerfrenzy said:

I'm have no doubt I'm going to get chewed up for this critique, but my main beef with this mod is the feet. Despite the feet being more appealing, it is highly incompatible with other custom body textures and custom armor. Put some human like boots on and the digi-grade feet are gone ((and vice versa for the immersiveness)) put on sandals and the feet texture is messed up. I am aware the plantigrade feet exists but it just doesn't look right ((to me at least)) I just can't help but think that Mr. Bad Dog should have the plantigrade feet as human-like feet. Maybe it is too late but maybe in the future he can save trouble on another mod.

I have some edited paw meshes and textures that allow for a "middle ground" solution: the paws show up when barefoot or when wearing YA-compatible shoes but there are also human feet textures (as in, meant to be used with human feet meshes, but still match the fur and stuff) for when you equip any item that is not YA-compliant.

 

It's only done for females so far (and some races are missing/have low quality human feet textures) and it only works with plantigrade skeletons, but it should be better than what the mod includes by default at the moment. I could look into doing the missing races and sending the files to Bad Dog if he's interested (but he would have to take care of males himself)

 

I have to say I'd like to have separate plantigrade paws that better matched human feet dimensions (but were still paws) so that boots hiding the paws wouldn't look as jarring and animations/poses involving feet would also look better. Something like Grimoa's Plantigrade Feet for Khajiit, but based on Bad Dog's paw designs. Couple that with the "human feet and paw textures on the same file" trick I used for my edited paws, and IMO that would be the best setup for plantigrade feet YA could have. Just my two cents, though.

[Bad Dog]

I'll probably concede to practicality and make plantigrade beast feet the default in the next rev with digi as an addon. Best case I'll do beast feet variants of sandals and foot wraps. Putting fur into the human feet location isn't hard, to cover other mods. 

 

As for the lykaios, tastes vary. I think Idolaf would look pretty good if his hair matched his mustache. 

[Blaze69]

22 minutes ago, Bad Dog said:

Putting fur into the human feet location isn't hard, to cover other mods. 

As I said, I've already done it for females. I've got human feet textures for cheetahs, foxes, Kygarra, sabrelions, snow leopards and tigers. I'm still missing Khajiit, panthers, Vaalsark and Lykaios, but they shouldn't be too hard to make if you are interested (plus Vaalsark and Kygarra would have to be redone for the new textures anyway).

[Bad Dog]

Yeah, kick them over to me and I'll put them in.

[tigerfrenzy]

11 hours ago, Bad Dog said:

Yeah, kick them over to me and I'll put them in.

Much appreciated, the khajiit and argonians caused the most trouble for me due to being a vanilla beast race. That said, Khajiit and argonian have their own fans in nexus supplying their textures. Some are quite nice tbh.

[Deadly Kitten]

Reinstalling Skyrim yet again (for stability, and also new PC). Is the STEP guide still good for a baseline Skyrim LE setup, both for quality and stability?

Assuming Yiffy age and a good assortment of lewd mods.

[PaulGreen]

I had re-created a cat head mesh using an old mod picked up long ago as a guide. I recently re-recreated it using the citrus head mesh from the khajiit overhaul mod.

 

Is there any interest in using this for anything? I'm frankly not very good at texturing. It probably needs a fixed normal map and maybe fix up the nose.

 

The expressions are not quite right either, primarily around the ears. It's not unacceptable, I believe, though is somewhat distorted.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Blaze69]

33 minutes ago, PaulGreen said:

[...]

Did you base it on the Bobcat head from Catlike Khajiit? Sure does look like it.

 

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't think it would be of any use, at least for YA. There are no more races to replace, and all the current feline races have their own CITRUS-based custom heads, so those are covered already. Whether they could be used for anything else (like a custom race or whatever), I don't know.

[TheLastKhajiit]

I don't know,  I kinda like it maybe it could be a standalone mod

[machgaogamon119agosto]

help, some npc have grey face, Will it be for the loading order?