? The Selachii - Shark Race

[Blaze69]

13 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

Nope, snout length is as easy as one two three, for both high poly and low poly.

In that case, there are two ways to go around this:

• Create a few different locked-length morphs (short, long, and maybe "very short" and "very long" or something) and add them to the "X shape" slider.
• Replace one of the gradual sliders like "Nose Length" so you only have to build the "extreme" values (longest and shortest) and you can gradually go from the default to any of those two by moving the slider; that way there are more selectable length options (-1:0.1:0 for shorter and 0:0.1:1 for longer) without having to actually create the 20 different length morphs.

Whichever one your prefer should be fine.

[NightroModzz]

So high-poly for normal maps, somewhere in-between, or ideal. In other words, default. (1)

 

Low-poly; short version, default, and the long version. Slider; 0,50,100. (2-4)

 

Yeah, I can do that.

 

 

[Blaze69]

2 hours ago, Kuroyami said:

[...]

Okay, so these are my thoughts as they come when reading through it:

• Humans in Akavir are a thing. Mysterious Akavir says the Tsaesci "ate" them, but seems like the most common interpretation of that is that the Tsaesci empire conquered and assimilated the humans into it. So you would have the "bulk" of the empire made up of humans while the actual Tsaesci are in high-ranking positions and the ones in charge. Of course none of it has been specified so far and what few info there is seems to contradict itself, so I'd say even if we adhere to lore we have some leeway here.
• I had the impression the Ehlnofey were the spirits/entities that actually became the races of Tamriel (and plenty of other crazy stuff like the laws of physics and such) but my lore-fu is weak on that aspect so I'm probably wrong.
• I get the feeling their origin mimicks one of the Khajiit creation myths somewhat. In their case, Khajiits were shapeless entities until Azura tied them to the moons and locked them into their feline forms because she was into furries "those forms were perfect". So it has a similar precedent in lore, and thus fits well IMO.
• The act of creation seems to mean giving up your own vitality for powerful beings in the ES lore (hence the Divines being considered "practically dead" or "comatose"), so I see the point about the Spirit "feeling the echo of death".
• Lack of Selachii intervention in the Akaviri invasions of Tamriel is a good idea and explains a hole in the previous lore: Why did the locals accept or at least tolerate some Akaviri race if they were invaded by them several times before? Well, they weren't invaded by Selachii specifically, so while there would obviously be some lack of trust at first, there wouldn't be outright animosity or hostility.
• The alliance with the Argonians makes sense. Not the first time the ally themselves with a would-be foe during a time of need and/or because it provides them with some kind of advantage (see the Ebonheart Pact with the Dunmer, who used to raid and enslave them). Having some relatively capable force in Akavir itself to counter the threat of another Tsaesci/Kamal invasion would be clever.
• ("Rouge faction". Heh. As in "Red Faction". Step aside Ultor, there is a worse rival than you. Sharks on Mars anyone? )
• Desperate times call for desperate measures, indeed.

As I said, it sounds pretty good so far. Great work!

[Blaze69]

9 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

So high-poly for normal maps, somewhere in-between, or ideal. In other words, default. (1)

 

Low-poly; short version, default, and the long version. Slider; 0,50,100. (2-4)

 

Yeah, I can do that.

Yep. The "default" low poly would be the base head shape aka the one I wil port into the nif and the shape when all sliders are set to 0/default. The long and short versions would only be OBJ files to inject them into the TRI as morphs. But that's pretty much it.

 

Better to create the default low poly first so you can refine it as much as you want, and when it's finished you simply create two duplicates and edit the snout lenght on those (and use them as reference for the mouth placement, since chances are it will have to be morphed as well). But you probably know this already.

[SyntaxError73]

Why did you make the Selachii Feet Human feet?.... That just makes me sad..

 

I loved my beast feet.

[Blaze69]

13 minutes ago, SyntaxError73 said:

Why did you make the Selachii Feet Human feet?.... That just makes me sad..

 

I loved my beast feet.

They weren't so much "beast feet" as "human feet with 3 toes and long nails", but I see your point. I still thought it was better to remove them, though.

 

Better beast feet (probably digitigrade) are planned, but I've got no idea when they may happen, if at all. I would have to talk to Bad Dog about those WIP meshes he rigged some time ago, and maybe creating new ones. Also Nightro, but I don't know if he wants to work on new feet meshes. I'm afraid you will have to do with human feet for the time being, though .

[NightroModzz]

9 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

They weren't so much "beast feet" as "human feet with 3 toes and long nails", but I see your point. I still thought it was better to remove them, though.

 

Better beast feet (probably digitigrade) are planned, but I've got no idea when they may happen, if at all. I would have to talk to Bad Dog about those WIP meshes he rigged some time ago, and maybe creating new ones. Also Nightro, but I don't know if he wants to work on new feet meshes. I'm afraid you will have to do with human feet for the time being, though .

I'll be making new ones at some point with a much better retopology. Even the current Khajiit digitigrade one or the one that is used in most races for Yiffy Age Of Skyrim had retopology made in only Zbrush (which isn't great for retopology), but tried my best. I should get good results since I now use Maya's Quad Draw. I also can't make full body normal maps without doing so. However, I might need to adjust it for Skyrim since there is a limit to the current digitigrade skeleton morph.

 

Also, I remembered while looking at my bearded dragon that it has both the Argonian style eyelids, and regular ones. So I will do both for the UE4 version. That way, it would be possible to have two different blinking animation, and the translucent one can remain closed during swimming animations. Not saying at all that I will animate it in the future, but might. Or maybe you might be interested in animating in the future at some point if I rig it.

[Kuroyami]

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

 

• Humans in Akavir are a thing. Mysterious Akavir says the Tsaesci "ate" them, but seems like the most common interpretation of that is that the Tsaesci empire conquered and assimilated the humans into it. So you would have the "bulk" of the empire made up of humans while the actual Tsaesci are in high-ranking positions and the ones in charge. Of course none of it has been specified so far and what few info there is seems to contradict itself, so I'd say even if we adhere to lore we have some leeway here.

Some places have suggested them as a rumor, others more definitively suggesting they existed. Still, yes, I do think they did. The odd part is how supposedly say the Akaviri Ghosts and Skeletons shown in Oblivion(Fort Pale Pass, mostly) are suggested to be Tsaesci - when they just look like the Blades at Cloud Ruler Temple, or other Skeletons in the game. Granted, I know portraying them like the "Men with Snake Tails instead of legs" might not translate well into a 3d model very well, and there is the fact that their portrayal in Oblivion was likely only in one or two side quests, and thus not something to devote that much time to. Though personally I would prefer the idea that they could have examples of the race that are as the suggested example, though perhaps rare, but most shown could be maybe more like Argonians with more snake influences, more slender, etc. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• I had the impression the Ehlnofey were the spirits/entities that actually became the races of Tamriel (and plenty of other crazy stuff like the laws of physics and such) but my lore-fu is weak on that aspect so I'm probably wrong.

I'd say in this case, it is more that this particular spirit was, like the Aedra creating Mundus, giving up pieces of itself to do it, rather than becoming this new species itself. In it's experiments, it was able to take back that given power, once the creation no longer existed - much like charging a spell in Skyrim, and gaining the magicka back if you don't actually cast the spell. But when it finally(in it's view) perfected the Selachii? It used up enough that it reached that point of "death", or something close to it, even if it was still very much alive. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• I get the feeling their origin mimicks one of the Khajiit creation myths somewhat. In their case, Khajiits were shapeless entities until Azura tied them to the moons and locked them into their feline forms because she was into furries "those forms were perfect". So it has a similar precedent in lore, and thus fits well IMO.

In the case of this Spirit? Yeah, it could be called a furry. Why? It had no interest in creating anything but something based on animals. Also, one of the reasons it disliked what the Selachii had become? They had reproduced with a race that was something it utterly disliked, and the race had become malleable enough to inherit traits from this other race. A Selachii with a Tsaesci? It could tolerate that. With the mentioned "human" race? Absolutely not. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• The act of creation seems to mean giving up your own vitality for powerful beings in the ES lore (hence the Divines being considered "practically dead" or "comatose"), so I see the point about the Spirit "feeling the echo of death".

Honestly, I knew the lore point about the Aedra being considered, in a sense, "dead", but was not thinking of that when I decided on that point. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• Lack of Selachii intervention in the Akaviri invasions of Tamriel is a good idea and explains a hole in the previous lore: Why did the locals accept or at least tolerate some Akaviri race if they were invaded by them several times before? Well, they weren't invaded by Selachii specifically, so while there would obviously be some lack of trust at first, there wouldn't be outright animosity or hostility.

Yeah, I would imagine that there would have been either very few accounts of Selachii in Tamriel pre-Second Era, and any that were, may be considered apocryphal, unsubstantiated rumors, etc. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• The alliance with the Argonians makes sense. Not the first time the ally themselves with a would-be foe during a time of need and/or because it provides them with some kind of advantage (see the Ebonheart Pact with the Dunmer, who used to raid and enslave them). Having some relatively capable force in Akavir itself to counter the threat of another Tsaesci/Kamal invasion would be clever.

Basically just following up by what was suggested already, and adding more to it. Though it is true that the Selachii may have known about the impending invasion before they sent the ship to the Imperial City, and maybe some aboard the ship knew, though most of the sailors only knew it as rumors or the like, and not as something they definitely knew was going to happen. 

15 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

• ("Rouge faction". Heh. As in "Red Faction". Step aside Ultor, there is a worse rival than you. Sharks on Mars anyone? )

Aaaahh. The one error I don't catch. See, it is trying to avoid errors like that which is why I can take a while making a post. Plus making the post when I did. 

 

[Blaze69]

15 hours ago, NightroModzz said:

Also, I remembered while looking at my bearded dragon that it has both the Argonian style eyelids, and regular ones. So I will do both for the UE4 version. That way, it would be possible to have two different blinking animation, and the translucent one can remain closed during swimming animations. Not saying at all that I will animate it in the future, but might. Or maybe you might be interested in animating in the future at some point if I rig it.

Adding it to the ingame mesh would probably take too much work and wouldn't be worth it in the end; the game only has a single "blinking" morph that is triggered at random (pretty much hardcoded in the engine, though you need MFG console to re-enable it for the player after one of the official patches broke it).

 

There is no special morph or phoneme that gets applied while swimming, and manually triggering one via scripts would probably be too much of a performance impact to be worth it. Unless it was coded in C++ through a SKSE plugin, but there's no way I'll ever be able to do such a thing .

14 hours ago, Kuroyami said:

Some places have suggested them as a rumor, others more definitively suggesting they existed. Still, yes, I do think they did. The odd part is how supposedly say the Akaviri Ghosts and Skeletons shown in Oblivion(Fort Pale Pass, mostly) are suggested to be Tsaesci - when they just look like the Blades at Cloud Ruler Temple, or other Skeletons in the game. Granted, I know portraying them like the "Men with Snake Tails instead of legs" might not translate well into a 3d model very well, and there is the fact that their portrayal in Oblivion was likely only in one or two side quests, and thus not something to devote that much time to.

You answered your own question yourself. It was 100% because creating actual snake-like Tsaesci ingame would have taken too much work and time and the Tsaesci ghosts/skeletons only appear in a few dungeons anyway.

14 hours ago, Kuroyami said:

In the case of this Spirit? Yeah, it could be called a furry. Why? It had no interest in creating anything but something based on animals. Also, one of the reasons it disliked what the Selachii had become? They had reproduced with a race that was something it utterly disliked, and the race had become malleable enough to inherit traits from this other race. A Selachii with a Tsaesci? It could tolerate that. With the mentioned "human" race? Absolutely not. 

Lol, can't really blame it for that .

 

Akavir is home to a race of snake-like beings (Tsaesci), anthro Tigers (Ka Po' Tun) and "Snow Demons", whatever that is (Kamal). Also I think I read something about early lore mentioning yet another dog-like race from Akavir, but I'm not sure. Having all that available, and going for lame ol' hoomans instead... Like, what the hell, people?

 

But anyway, yeah, I'm fine with that lore and the other changes. As I said, great work!

[NightroModzz]

2 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Adding it to the ingame mesh would probably take too much work and wouldn't be worth it in the end; the game only has a single "blinking" morph that is triggered at random (pretty much hardcoded in the engine, though you need MFG console to re-enable it for the player after one of the official patches broke it).

 

There is no special morph or phoneme that gets applied while swimming, and manually triggering one via scripts would probably be too much of a performance impact to be worth it. Unless it was coded in C++ through a SKSE plugin, but there's no way I'll ever be able to do such a thing .

"for the UE4 version" Second sentence lol. You also don't need to code/script to animate for UE4, or maybe you would wanna bring it into Daz.

[Blaze69]

7 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

"for the UE4 version" Second sentence. You also don't need to code to animate for UE4, or maybe you would wanna bring it into Daz.

My bad. I'd sworn I read some reference to me implementing it in Skyrim or animating or something like that, and that's why I replied. Not at my best today, it seems, lol .

[Warnova]

On 3/12/2018 at 5:51 PM, Blaze69 said:

They weren't so much "beast feet" as "human feet with 3 toes and long nails", but I see your point. I still thought it was better to remove them, though.

 

Better beast feet (probably digitigrade) are planned, but I've got no idea when they may happen, if at all. I would have to talk to Bad Dog about those WIP meshes he rigged some time ago, and maybe creating new ones. Also Nightro, but I don't know if he wants to work on new feet meshes. I'm afraid you will have to do with human feet for the time being, though .

Digitigrade you say? Hmm. I lie in wait.

[Blaze69]

7 hours ago, Warnova said:

Digitigrade you say? Hmm. I lie in wait.

I mean, I can't guarantee it will happen, but at least that's the idea. And also plantigrade beast feet as well, so either digi feet that also work as plantigrade (like YA's paws) or separate planti and digi feet options.

[NightroModzz]

It's still gonna be some time, but at this point, I can just work on the mouth, make an alpha map for the gills, then get a retopo going with subdivision to get a cleaner surface on indented areas. Then finally, extra edits and more detail. I'll add skin alpha detail once I get started on the full body in a later project.

 

The latest edits adds upper jaw/snout lines, a cheek bone, nostrils, and it was a pain to get right for this design, but changed the eye position again so proper sphere shapes can be used as the eyes for rotation.

Spoiler

 

[lindazana]

19 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

I mean, I can't guarantee it will happen, but at least that's the idea. And also plantigrade beast feet as well, so either digi feet that also work as plantigrade (like YA's paws) or separate planti and digi feet options.

Good plan. The one single downside to digitigrade-style beast legs/feet is that it immediately makes a large majority of armor/outfit mods effectively incompatible.

[Kuroyami]

Some dialog for Corera, that I'm probably going to cut most of, and just use certain lines. For some of these lines, the reason should be obvious. 

 

Spoiler

[PC] – What do you think of Necromancy?
            |
          C – My opinion on it may be obvious. It is a form of magic like any other – any intentions are not inherent in it's existence, but how one chooses to use it. 
                 |
               C – Though I have not studied the art extensively, and know only little of the practice. But myself and my family have never been disparaging of it. 
                      |
                     C – My father stood openly against one of the former Mages Guild Archmages before and after the ban within the Guild, during the Third Era.
                            |
                           C – Rather than being run out of the Guild like others, he spoke against the ban, and Hannibal Traven, the Archmage who banned it, suggesting that enacting the ban would split the Guild, and bring to it, disaster. 
                                  |
                                 [PC] Why did the Mages Guild fail?
                                         |
                                        C – [Sneer] Politics. Misinformation. Distrust. Such things can bring down even the strongest of organizations and Empires. 
                                               |
                                               C – The ban on Necromancy did much to both cause fear and misunderstanding of the practice, along with splitting the Guild on the issue, even if few, or no one, contested against Traven and won. 
                                                      |
                                                     C – Misinformation made magic the cause of the Oblivion Crisis, and the way most talked of it, that was the sole cause. It was not. 
                                                            |
                                                           C – And, lastly, the distrust of magic, made people lose faith in the Guild. Both those within it, and without. 

 

                                 [PC] Seems your father was right. 
                                         |
                                        C – Indeed. He threw the letter into the fire when he received it.

 

                                 [PC] Oh, right. You're an Elf. 
                                         |
                                        C – True. My father even saw the beginning of the Third Era, you know. 
                                               |
                                             [PC] How old are you? 
                                                     |
                                                    C – I was born a few years before what you likely know as, the Oblivion Crisis. [Possible Global = CoreraOC=1?]
                                                          |
                                                         C – The youngest son, coming of age just in time to see the same Empire that my father saw born...die. 
                                                                |
                                                               [PC] The Septim Empire is not dead. 
                                                                       |
                                                                      C – Is it blind faith, or is it something else? Regardless, I ask you...is it not?

 

                                                               [PC] The Septim Empire deserves it's death. 
                                                                       |
                                                                      C – I would argue that dynasty did not entirely deserve it's end. But that of the Medes, however...

 

                                             [PC] What did he think of Talos, em...Tiber Septim?
                                                     |
                                                    C – My father had no wish to rule – as I do not. He was content in the study of magic, and if it would help those in power, he would render the assistance. 
                                                          |
                                                         C – His thoughts were, that the man from the North, wishes to come to Cyrodiil and become Emperor of a new Empire, so be it. 

 

                                 [PC] What was Traven like? 
                                         |
                                        C – Sensible, but stupid. I asked my father after his return home, why Traven banned the practice in the Guild. He did not have an answer. 
                                               |
                                              C – If he was keeping it from me, or did not know himself, I never learned. No where in his journals did he mention a reason. 

Probably the parts about Necromancy and generally referring to his base knowledge of the Mage's Guild's fall will say, but the rest likely will not. 

 

And something for Fume. I don't think I posted this yet, a very similar dialog to what is available for Mizuno, though in this case just highlighting the possibility, and the actual dialog for it will come later. Still have to finish a few lines on this one, though.

Spoiler

[PC] [ONCE] I notice you did not ask for payment...
        |
       F – You are right, I did not. 
              |
             [PC] Might I ask why?
                     |
                    F – I have done small jobs before, where I never asked for any currency. Usually when I have nothing else to do, or when it seems there are better rewards to be had otherwise. 
                          |
                        [PC] [PlayerIsASelachii] What do you mean?
                                |
                               F – [PCIsMale] Well, there are other things which easily have my interest. 
                                      |
                                    [PC] What exactly are you suggesting?

 

                               F – [PCIsFemale] For a few reasons, you could say I admire many things. 
                                      |
                                    [PC] What exactly are you suggesting?

 

                               F – [PCIsFuta] You are a great deal like me...and I can only hope you interest me in other ways, as well. 
                                      |
                                     [PC] What exactly are you suggesting?

 

                        [PC] [PlayerIsNotSelachii] What do you mean?
                                |
                               F – You think it might be the first time I have spent company with someone else? Far from it. 
                                     |
                                    F – I know what it eventually leads to, as sometimes the curiosity is to hard to ignore. 
                                          |
                                         [PC] I am...not sure. 
                                                  |
                                                 F – Well, I might not mean right now, but...give it time.

 

                                         [PC] Never thought about it before, but...
                                                  |
                                                 F – Now that you have, we will see where it goes. 

 

                                         [PC] I am not going there. 
                                                  |
                                                 F – Your choice. 

 

                        [PC] Look, I'll still offer you-
                                |
                               F – Save it. If I need gold, I will get it. 

 

             [PC] That is foolish – I could get you killed for nothing.
                     |
                    F – Then call us both fools. I am not worried about that.

 

             [PC] You want no compensation for helping me?
                     |
                    F – Gold or other currency is not the only rewards from what could be an interesting journey. 
                          |
                         F – I have no idea where you intend on going, but I have the hope that it is, well, you know. 

 

And...the beginnings of Hito's dialog...

Spoiler

H – Welcome to the family, Brother.
H – Welcome to the family, Sister. 
        |
      [PC] Thank you...who are you?
              |
             H – I am Hito, a Brotherhood assassin. More unusual than most, being a Selachii. 
                    |
                   H – [PlayerIsASelachii] Though it seems not the only one, due to you, and...well, I'm sure you will meet her at some point. 
                   H – Though I am not the only one in the Brotherhood, due to...well, I am sure you will meet her at some point. 
                          |
                         [PC] Do you have any contracts?
                                 |
                                H – Not at the moment, no. If you have spoken with Nazir, you know they are rather sparse. 
 

                         [PC] Who?
                                 |
                                H – A very good friend of mine. Like I said, I'm sure you will meet her soon enough. 

 

      [PC] Skip the pleasantries.
              |
             H – Of course. I am Hito, an assassin for the Dark Brotherhood, though perhaps I am just stating the obvious?
                    |
                   H – My preference is for slitting throats – hence the pair of daggers. 

 

      [PC] (Remain Silent)
              |
             H – Ah, yes. The classic response. 
                    |
                   H – Something I occasionally employ as well, as my preference is for slitting throats. Though any kind of refrain, would be disadvantageous. 

 

[Blaze69]

6 hours ago, NightroModzz said:

It's still gonna be some time, but at this point, I can just work on the mouth, make an alpha map for the gills, then get a retopo going with subdivision to get a cleaner surface on indented areas. Then finally, extra edits and more detail. I'll add skin alpha detail once I get started on the full body in a later project.

 

The latest edits adds upper jaw/snout lines, a cheek bone, nostrils, and it was a pain to get right for this design, but changed the eye position again so proper sphere shapes can be used as the eyes for rotation.

Sounds good to me.

 

The new detail looks good, but for some reason those eyes bug me a bit. There's just something... uncanny about them,though I can't say what. Maybe it's because the eyeballs don't have any texture and look blank and lifeless (previous pics didn't give out that vibe but had textured pupil/iris, so that may be it).

 

Incidentally, do you plan to keep them in the hi-poly mesh for normal baking? With the actual ingame eyes being separate, having eyes in the hi-poly could create some weird normal detail that could clash with the eye meshes or look bad altogether. So I'd say it would be better to remove it beforehand, but I'm not completely sure about it.

5 hours ago, lindazana said:

Good plan. The one single downside to digitigrade-style beast legs/feet is that it immediately makes a large majority of armor/outfit mods effectively incompatible.

Agreed. Bad Dog's digi setup worked pretty well all things considered, but the lack of compatibility with any mod-added boots or shoes alongside the quirks with animations or poses due to the modified bone placement are what kept me from using it. But I'd like the option to be there for those that do want to use it for the race.

[NightroModzz]

7 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

The new detail looks good, but for some reason those eyes bug me a bit. There's just something... uncanny about them,though I can't say what. Maybe it's because the eyeballs don't have any texture and look blank and lifeless (previous pics didn't give out that vibe but had textured pupil/iris, so that may be it).

Well they do bug me a bit too, and yeah, for the most part that is one of the reasons (no textures on the eyes). After experimenting with the eye balls, it gave me different mixed feelings fairly easily. The eye area is an area that I will continue to tweak, but would be easier to do so on the upper part after the retopo. The lower part will get blended more too.

7 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Incidentally, do you plan to keep them in the hi-poly mesh for normal baking? With the actual ingame eyes being separate, having eyes in the hi-poly could create some weird normal detail that could clash with the eye meshes or look bad altogether. So I'd say it would be better to remove it beforehand, but I'm not completely sure about it.

When you see black on a mesh, that is a mask on an active pink mesh locking the masked area in place so it doesn't get edited. When a mesh is pink (color or shader can be changed), that is the active mesh or subtool that is being edited. When a mesh has a brownish grey color, that mesh or subtool is not active for editing, but set to visible.

 

So as you can see from previous pics, The head, eyelids, and eyeballs are already separate meshes. I'm only using the spheres as a guide for proper eye sockets. However, I do plan to merge down and dynamesh the head and eyelids together at some point. Making the head and eyeballs the same mesh isn't something I would even suggest doing, unless it's for 3D printing.

[lindazana]

A very minor detail I'd like see with the update, would be some sound effect added to the "bite" racial power? Unless it's already been added in patch since last I played this. The uncanny silence as the character does the shout animation for the bite just doesnt' seem to fit, and it's hard to know if you've used the ability or not sometimes in a heated combat. Would be even neater if there was some way to have the sound change depending on if it hit an enemy or not, though I'm unsure if that's possible for the power.

[Blaze69]

11 hours ago, lindazana said:

A very minor detail I'd like see with the update, would be some sound effect added to the "bite" racial power? Unless it's already been added in patch since last I played this. The uncanny silence as the character does the shout animation for the bite just doesnt' seem to fit, and it's hard to know if you've used the ability or not sometimes in a heated combat. Would be even neater if there was some way to have the sound change depending on if it hit an enemy or not, though I'm unsure if that's possible for the power.

If you land the bite, you should get both an "impact" sound and the "drain health" spell visual applied on the target. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen; it's been a while since I last checked the bite so I'll take a look at it.

 

EDIT: yup, that's it. The one-time/main damage effect uses the "Giant Club hit on flesh" sound when hitting the target, and then the health drain/bleeding effect applies the "Drain Health" spell shader.

 

As for a sound for the biting itself, I guess it's possible. As far as the game knows, the "bite" is actually a one-word shout that appiles a Touch spell; that's why the "biting" (actually shouting) anim is played when you use the power. It should be possible to add some kind of sound to the word as the voice file for it (like vanilla Fus is, for example), but I don't know how voices for shouts work yet so I'm not sure. Also, what kind of sound would be fitting for that situation?

[Blaze69]

As a side note, I've been tinkering with the tails a bit. I wanted to see how the race would look with no tail but with the back fin still on; since the current tail meshes include the tail and the fin as the same NiTriShape, it couldn't be deleted in NifSkope and had to be done in Outfit Studio, but it wasn't hard.

 

Upsides:

--- No more blatant clipping through armors and clothes. Fin still clips but for some reason it's not as unpleasing as tails were.

 

Spoiler

 

--- Posterior is more... visible and feels much "organic" than with the tail. If a smooth transition between body and tail was possible, this wouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately the "pin the tail on the donkey" look is as good as it gets due to the way tails are coded in the game.

Spoiler

 

--- No more clipping through the ground and/or objects during poses or anims anymore. Pic shows a SL anim but this also applies to most poses, which makes it a bit harder to take proper photoshoots of sharky waifus .

Spoiler

Tail:

No Tail:

 

--- No more Tail Impalement Syndrome! This is the only real problem I have with tails in Skyrim: all SL anims (Humanoid only ones anyway; MNC does have some tail anims for its Humanoid/Creature anims) and paired poses are built for humans only without even taking the existence of tails into account, so most of the time the tail is either clipping through the ground/bed/*insert surface or furniture here* (see above point) or is impaling the poor mate of the Selachii in question, as per the aforementioned syndrome. Ouch.

Spoiler

Tail:

No Tail:

 

Downsides:

--- No tail . What's a shark without a tail, anyway?

 

So, after seeing this, while tails are here to stay no matter what and I hope we can improve their look and shape as much as possible once Nightro gets down to it, I'm thinking about adding some kind of way to hide it for specific situations; namely poses and SL anims as outlined above.

 

I'll probably add some kind of dummy equippable item that replaces the Tail + Back Fin mesh with only the back fin (so effectively an equippable back fin, but it wouldn't make sense to use it on anything that's not a Selachii). Don't think it would be worthy of any actual ingame reference or further work, so I'll probably just leave it in the plugin so it can be obtained and equipped through the console in case you want to use it.

 

(Well, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to make some comment or reference to the tails and their... convenience or lack thereof during certain activites. I bet being hit by an involuntary tail-slap by your mate in the rush of the moment wouldn't be that uncommon, moreso in positions like doggystyle or reverse cowgirl. But certainly no ingame reference to tail-removing at all, no thanks).

 

Any thoughts on this?

 

Note to self: I really have to take a proper NSFW photoshoot sometime after the update is done.

[fleverich]

Has anybody ever tried to do working tail physics that isn't an equipable item?

[Blaze69]

4 minutes ago, fleverich said:

Has anybody ever tried to do working tail physics that isn't an equipable item?

HDT tails can be used to replace "base" tails instead of being equippable items just fine, all you need to do is replace the vanilla tail meshes with the HDT ones.

 

The problem is that since all NPCs of the race get HDT tails as well, you have increased load on your system, and there's always the chance of HDT spazzing out and causing the affected NPC(s) to become invisble right after they are loaded by the engine (which doesn't happen with the player and thus is not a problem with equippable items as those are mostly used by the PC only).

 

Anyway, HDT tails would require special rigging, coding and meshwork with the Havok Tools plugin for Max and thus is completely out of the question. Unless some HDT wizard comes along and wants to work on it for us, but A) that is extremely unlikely to happen and B) I still wouldn't be very happy with HDT tails due to the aforementioned issues anyway.

[NightroModzz]

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

I'll probably add some kind of dummy equippable item that replaces the Tail + Back Fin mesh with only the back fin

How about replacing the tail with an HDT/SMP tail during sex animations? If someone can do that, that is.

[Blaze69]

38 minutes ago, NightroModzz said:

How about replacing the tail with an HDT/SMP tail during sex animations? If someone can do that, that is.

I can think of a few ways to equip a specific item during SL scenes, yes. But even then, HDT only adds gravity pull, which would make the tail behave like a lifeless piece of rope; this may work for other kinds of tails that are shorter/not as mobile, but for a shark tail (or a Lizard/Argonian one, for that matter) it would look bad. And again, that's assuming someone that knows HDT would be willing to rig a tail for us.

 

Nah, I think I'll just stick to having a "regular" tail with an optional tail-hiding item included in the plugin data and that's it.