? The Selachii - Shark Race

[Blaze69]

18 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Made edits to some of the loading screen texts, and added three more.

Sounds good. I may add the history one in the meantime, but the others should probably wait until we have proper load screen meshes for them (if/when it ever happens, that is).

[MadMansGun]

9 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

but the others should probably wait until we have proper load screen meshes for them (if/when it ever happens, that is).

how are such meshes made anyways? is there a guide (3ds max) for that somewhere?

[Blaze69]

6 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

how are such meshes made anyways? is there a guide (3ds max) for that somewhere?

No idea. I assume they are built pretty much like standard static meshes are, considering most of the load screens don't include custom meshes and simply point to existing game records, i.e. statues, ground objects for armor, that kind of stuff.

 

Bad Dog edited the NPC load screens meshes to furryfy them, so you could ask him how he did it. I'm pretty sure he used Blender, but at least he should be able to tell you what kind of settings/workflow he used with those.

 

Otherwise, there may be a guide somewhere, but I don't recall seeing any.

[Kuroyami]

Well, whenever that is done, I've started on adding some links in the blog (in the Planned Writing entry, just under the Loading Screen tips link)to images which could be used in making them. Some will probably include more than just the links, meaning that for some of them, text would be included to explain what I'm thinking for each one, at least in respect to the chosen images and the idea overall, at this point.

 

Obviously would not want too many, just enough to have something for the texts which nothing in the vanilla game would fit.  

[Blaze69]

5 hours ago, Kuroyami said:

Obviously would not want too many, just enough to have something for the texts which nothing in the vanilla game would fit.  

After looking at your suggestions and the load screen texts, these are the first ones that come to mind:

• The three you mention for the Sexual category (BTW the "Foreskin/Uncut/Uncircumcised" one would have 2 uses instead of 1 if we also use it in the "malleability" text).
• Another one similar to the vanilla race-specific NPC load screens. Probably similar to the Female Imperial one, i.e. a Selachii armed and in a "ready for battle" stance; maybe baring the teeth too so it fits for the one about them using their teeth as weapons. Would also be used for any generic info that doesn't have more specific meshes like the Sexual ones would.
• Something like a banner or a flag that represents the Selachii empire (?). Could do it like the vanilla hold banners are and display it on a shield, in which case we would only need to make a texture for it and use the vanilla shield mesh for that (but we still need the design itself).
• Some kind of miscellaneous clutter or group of Akaviri-themed items (like one with the map and the nord pickaxe is for Solstheim, for example) for more generic culture stuff.

Don't know how feasible any of them are, just throwing some ideas around. Do post any other ideas/references you may have.

[Blaze69]

15 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

how are such meshes made anyways? is there a guide (3ds max) for that somewhere?

From some quick browsing and checking out the load screen meshes included in YA as vanilla replacers, seems like they are actually built like any other static meshes are (i.e. statues, rocks, that kind of stuff). So if there's a guide somewhere on how to create/export statics from Max, it should probably be enough. But again, may want to ask Bad Dog about it, just in case.

 

Also, now that I think about it: does Max allow you to export a mesh in a certain position after it has been moved via animation? I mean, if you import a character model (body, hands, head, tail, all that stuff) to any of your animation rigs, move it around by using the anim itself, and place it in a pose you like, can you actually export the meshes in that position? Because if so, it would make it easier to create load screen meshes including characters, as posing them via animation is probably much easier than manually altering the meshes to place them the way you want.

[MadMansGun]

4 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

From some quick browsing and checking out the load screen meshes included in YA as vanilla replacers, seems like they are actually built like any other static meshes are (i.e. statues, rocks, that kind of stuff). So if there's a guide somewhere on how to create/export statics from Max, it should probably be enough.

my luck has been mixed at exporting static meshes, sometimes they work (YiffyAge's statues), sometimes they just crash the game (i tried to turn trees into dicks once).

 

4 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Also, now that I think about it: does Max allow you to export a mesh in a certain position after it has been moved via animation? I mean, if you import a character model (body, hands, head, tail, all that stuff) to any of your animation rigs, move it around by using the anim itself, and place it in a pose you like, can you actually export the meshes in that position? Because if so, it would make it easier to create load screen meshes including characters, as posing them via animation is probably much easier than manually altering the meshes to place them the way you want.

i somehow did that accidentally once so i know it can be done, i just don't know HOW i did it. (and i don't use rigs)

6 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

maybe baring the teeth too so it fits for the one about them using their teeth as weapons.

i have no clue in hell how to do that, that head tri shape/file crap is far beyond me.

[Blaze69]

43 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

i have no clue in hell how to do that, that head tri shape/file crap is far beyond me.

There's a script for Blender that can import .tri files with all the different morphs as shapekeys of a single mesh. Basically you get a list of morphs and can set a slider to anything between 0 and 1 to apply each morph. AFAIK they are relative too, so they will still work after you move or edit the base mesh.

 

When he found out about it, Bad Dog said it would come in handy for NPC load screen creation, as he could simply import the face parts with the morphs included and use those to achieve facial expressions instead of having to manually edit the mesh to do it (which he actually did for a few loadscreen meshes before he found out).

 

Don't think there is anything like that for Max (not that I know of, at least), so if it was to be done in Max it would have to be done by hand, I guess .

[MadMansGun]

3 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Don't think there is anything like that for Max (not that I know of, at least), so if it was to be done in Max it would have to be done by hand, I guess .

i found some scripts for max but i can't get them to do anything, so that's a dead end.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72436/?tab=description

https://www.loverslab.com/files/file/509-skyrim-tri-files-importer-for-3d-max/

[Blaze69]

11 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i found some scripts for max but i can't get them to do anything, so that's a dead end.

Oh, well . In any case, if you still want to look into it, having actual load screen meshes but with non-expressive NPCs is much better than not having any load screen meshes at all, so there's that.

 

Plus, the thing with posing characters using animations and exporting them like that would really come in handy if you manage to figure it out. Speaking of which, have you ever tried to play around with the SOS bones in an anim? I know creating custom schlong anims to match the SL ones is probably not an option due to the use of the auxbones setup with no FNIS support (unlike tails) and stuff, but I assume they can actually be moved in the Max anim itself just fine. It would also help if we ever want to implement the load screen meshes Kuroyami suggested for the "Sexual" list of load screen texts.

[MadMansGun]

9 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

Speaking of which, have you ever tried to play around with the SOS bones in an anim?

a little bit, i was playing around with the YiffyAge dicks and made my own version:

slit_p1_0.nif

slit_p1_1.nif

(made for male argonians)

 

9 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

but I assume they can actually be moved in the Max anim itself just fine. It would also help if we ever want to implement the load screen meshes Kuroyami suggested for the "Sexual" list of load screen texts.

yes, but only if you can get the dicks to import. for some reason i could not import the male argonian dick, i had to delete it's penis mesh and copy the female version over before i was able to import it.

 

who knows what other meshes i could have import problems with.

[Blaze69]

9 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

a little bit, i was playing around with the YiffyAge dicks and made my own version:

slit_p1_0.nif

slit_p1_1.nif

(made for male argonians)

Huh. I meant in animations, but that's interesting too.

 

I think Bad Dog said one of the things we would look into after doing the bird race and a handful of other stuff on his to-do list would be to edit the slit schlong and give it more shape, kinda like what you have there (IIRC it was even suggested by Kuroyami?). You may want to let him know about it in case he's interested in your meshes. Would need at least some texure edits so it matches the other erection state meshes, though.

9 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

yes, but only if you can get the dicks to import. for some reason i could not import the male argonian dick, i had to delete it's penis mesh and copy the female version over before i was able to import it.

 

who knows what other meshes i could have import problems with.

Well, the one that would benefit from being able to animate/pose the schlong would be the one for the human uncut one (as per the reference pic linked in the blog), so if the standard SOS human schlongs can be imported (which IIRC they can? Your Max anim previews seemed to have a SOS schlong imported for male actors) then that shouldn't be a problem. Only difference between those and the uncut schlong is the extra foreskin mesh, but I don't see how it would have any problems and even if it does it can simply be skipped.

 

BTW, the Hoodie schlongs seem to be built a bit weird in some cases, with NifSkope bone transforms and stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is part of the reason for the import error. None of the shark meshes have those so in theory they should import fine (but I don't know for sure).

[MadMansGun]

9 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

Huh. I meant in animations, but that's interesting too.

weight painting* a mesh involves making a test animation to make sure it was weighted right, and all you need to do for a animation is turn "auto key" on and start moving nodes around.

 

* i just used "skin wrap", so there was no real weight painting involved here.

 

26 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

I think Bad Dog said one of the things we would look into after doing the bird race and a handful of other stuff on his to-do list would be to edit the slit schlong and give it more shape, kinda like what you have there (IIRC it was even suggested by Kuroyami?). You may want to let him know about it in case he's interested in your meshes. Would need at least some texure edits so it matches the other erection state meshes, though.

well it WAS just a test to see if i could work on SOS meshes, so it definitely needs more work to be truly game worthy,

Eg: i would need to straighten out the mesh first, it has a bit of a curve in it and SOS bends dicks on it own, so right now it's getting bent a bit more then it should be.

 

58 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

(which IIRC they can? Your Max anim previews seemed to have a SOS schlong imported for male actors)

no, that's not a SOS dick, it's from my corruption of champions based NPC (Katherine)

 

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

BTW, the Hoodie schlongs seem to be built a bit weird in some cases, with NifSkope bone transforms and stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is part of the reason for the import error. None of the shark meshes have those so in theory they should import fine (but I don't know for sure).

the dog ones seem to import fine, i have not tried the cats yet.

i have had this problem before with another mesh so i don't think that's the problem.

[Blaze69]

25 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

weight painting* a mesh involves making a test animation to make sure it was weighted right, and all you need to do for a animation is turn "auto key" on and start moving nodes around.

I do my weight painting in Outfit Studio, and I usually simply try to get it as close to the reference as possible and then try it out ingame. Never thought of acttually animating it in the program itself, but then again OS can't work with anims so it made sense, lol.

25 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

no, that's not a SOS dick, it's from my corruption of champions based NPC (Katherine)

I'd sworn I had seen a SOS schlong in one of your previews and/or Max source files (back when I still had Max). Huh.

25 minutes ago, MadMansGun said:

the dog ones seem to import fine, i have not tried the cats yet.

i have had this problem before with another mesh so i don't think that's the problem.

No idea about it, then .

[MadMansGun]

i have no clue if this is any good or not

sharkloadscreen test.nif

 

and i'm having problems with the neck seam, the head has twice the polygons that the body has so i can't line up the normals.

[Blaze69]

5 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i have no clue if this is any good or not

sharkloadscreen test.nif

 

and i'm having problems with the neck seam, the head has twice the polygons that the body has so i can't line up the normals.

Cool! I'll check it out as soon as I get the chance (not on my PC at the moment). Best way to do so is probably to create a static record for it and spawn it ingame, since making it into a load screen right away would take a while to get the game to show it.

 

Speaking of which, I think I'll look into how the other load screen replacers in here work, because both of the ones I've seen mention their screens having a higher chance of appearing than vanilla ones. Don't want to only spam the ones from this mod but incresing the probabilities a bit would make it easier to actually see any of them.

 

About the head, yes, the polycont is higher and the vertices at the seam don't match. But you shouldn't have any issues with that; it should be properly placed on import and the bone weights should take care of keeping the neck seam "closed" and seamless as they do ingame. Still, I'll get back to this once I've actually checked the file.

[Blaze69]

7 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

i have no clue if this is any good or not

sharkloadscreen test.nif

It works!

Spoiler

 

At first it caused both the game and the CK to crash whenever I tried to load the mesh, but then I tried pasting the NiTriShapeDatas over one of Bad Dog's load screen meshes and it loaded fine then. So yeah, something is wrong with the nif you posted but it's salvageable and ends up working, so I'd say it's a valid way to create the meshes.

 

As for the mesh itself, I have to say I would have liked a kneeling pose like the one in the reference pic, but standing is good too. Though could the back be straightened instead of it being hunched over? Oh, and the schlong feels... small; moreso the scrotum than the dick itself, but with Skyrim's huge hands it looks a bit small by comparison too. Would it be possible to upscale the base SOS bone a bit so they are both a bit larger?

 

(The mesh as it is works good enough, so it's fine if you want to leave it like that; I'm just sharing my thoughts).

 

I also managed to figure out how to force the load screens to always appear or to do so according to a fixed chance. I cranked it up to 100% to check out all the existing screens, but I'll tone it down again for release. Any suggestions on fitting values? I was thinking about something like 15-25% chance whenever no other specific load screen override is present (i.e. cities, Solstheim).

 

Anyway, here are some pics of the other load screens:

Spoiler

(Note that some of them may have been edited in the document but I haven't updated them yet; I'll get to it eventually. Also the YA screens will use the vanilla meshes instead if you don't have YA installed).

7 hours ago, MadMansGun said:

and i'm having problems with the neck seam, the head has twice the polygons that the body has so i can't line up the normals.

That's because you were working with tangent normals, which don't apply to character meshes (because they use object-space normals instead). If you disable the "Has_Normals" and "Has_Tangents" flags in NifSkope and set up the proper settings, it's as seamless as the actual bodies are ingame.

[Kuroyami]

26 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

As for the mesh itself, I have to say I would have liked a kneeling pose like the one in the reference pic, but standing is good too. Though could the back be straightened instead of it being hunched over? Oh, and the schlong feels... small; moreso the scrotum than the dick itself, but with Skyrim's huge hands it looks a bit small by comparison too. Would it be possible to upscale the base SOS bone a bit so they are both a bit larger?

I'd also suggest using the uncut mesh too, given what the text directly suggests...

 

Also, I have the reference images linked in the blog post here - Planned Writing.

 

Though honestly, I...well, I guess for the pregnant one, you could just build a body mesh in Bodyslide that looks right, and use that. Might see if I can't get something that looks good.

Quote

I also managed to figure out how to force the load screens to always appear (or to do so according to a fixed chance). I cranked it up to 100% to check out all the existing screens, but I'll tone it down again for release. Any suggestions on fitting values? I was thinking about something like 15-25% chance whenever no other specific load screen override is present (i.e. cities, Solstheim).

Not sure exactly if it can work like this, but perhaps the mentioned values normally, but if playing the race it goes to say 30-40%?

Quote

(Note that some of them may have been edited in the document but I haven't updated them yet; I'll get to it eventually. Also the YA screens will use the vanilla meshes instead if you don't have YA installed).

Yeah, I've definitely edited that last one, and I'm likely going to make a slight edit to the one in the shot with the Talos statue(mainly fixing the flow in the first sentence). 

 

[Blaze69]

10 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

I'd also suggest using the uncut mesh too, given what the text directly suggests...

Oh, right. That too.

10 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Though honestly, I...well, I guess for the pregnant one, you could just build a body mesh in Bodyslide that looks right, and use that. Might see if I can't get something that looks good.

That's what I thought of, no need to create the belly in Max when you can simply generate a pregnant body with the PregnancyBelly slider in Bodyslide. It may need some tweaks in Max afterwards to look good depending on the chosen pose, though.

10 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Not sure exactly if it can work like this, but perhaps the mentioned values normally, but if playing the race it goes to say 30-40%?

I guess I could do it like: "(15% chance) OR (PlayerIsSelachii AND 30% chance)". The problem is I don't remember what was the flow of Papyrus when checking conditions, so it may end up being "(15% chance OR PlayerIsSelachii) AND (30% chance)" instead. I'll look into it.

10 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Yeah, I've definitely edited that last one, and I'm likely going to make a slight edit to the one in the shot with the Talos statue(mainly fixing the flow in the first sentence). 

I'll update them once you are done, then.

[Kuroyami]

20 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

I'll update them once you are done, then.

That should be good. Also...

 

History

Spoiler

The Selachii's reactions to the Argonian invasion of Morrowind were mixed. The Selachii found it difficult to sympathize with the Dunmer, yet they could still agree that the Argonians had perhaps, gone too far. 

 

Sexual

Spoiler

As it seems, based on the Selachii's intimate relationship with the Akaviri, pregnant mothers do breastfeed their children, though the weaning process is more innate, and the child no longer requires or wants their mother's milk after about two or three years. This is usually about when the mother stops producing, unless she once again gets pregnant. 

Not really to sure about this one. Nice visual, obviously(even meant to be something mentioned as part of Enkai's backstory), but it may be something that takes it a bit too far, at least for the idea of them being Sharks. Thoughts?

[Blaze69]

9 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

History

  Hide contents

The Selachii's reactions to the Argonian invasion of Morrowind were mixed. The Selachii found it difficult to sympathize with the Dunmer, yet they could still agree that the Argonians had perhaps, gone too far. 

 

I'll probably use the vanilla Argonian load screen mesh (the one with hide armor and a sword, not the innkeeper one) for that, I think.

9 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Sexual

  Reveal hidden contents

As it seems, based on the Selachii's intimate relationship with the Akaviri, pregnant mothers do breastfeed their children, though the weaning process is more innate, and the child no longer requires or wants their mother's milk after about two or three years. This is usually about when the mother stops producing, unless she once again gets pregnant. 

Not really to sure about this one. Nice visual, obviously(even meant to be something mentioned as part of Enkai's backstory), but it may be something that takes it a bit too far, at least for the idea of them being Sharks. Thoughts?

To be honest, I'm not sure what your point is here. Selachii have breasts so we can conclude they are mammals or at least breastfeed, unless you want to go down the Argonian route and say "they are reptiles(ish) but they have breasts because we didn't want to work on different bodies for them the Hist wanted it that way". Replacing "Hist" with their creator, that is. Otherwise, what do you mean?

 

In any case, I'm okay with that.

[Kuroyami]

2 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

I'll probably use the vanilla Argonian load screen mesh (the one with hide armor and a sword, not the innkeeper one) for that, I think.

To be honest, I'm not sure what your point is here. Selachii have breasts so we can conclude they are mammals or at least breastfeed, unless you want to go down the Argonian route and say "they are reptiles(ish) but they have breasts because we didn't want to work on different bodies for them the Hist wanted it that way". Replacing "Hist" with their creator, that is. Otherwise, what do you mean?

 

In any case, I'm okay with that.

Well, I'm perfectly fine with it too, but there is that slight concern for those waiting to go "Sharks don't do that!", even if they are based on sharks, and have had a lot of influence from at least the Akaviri. Though I'm not really thinking someone will have a serious problem with it, especially since it is mostly a background detail, and perhaps only something you can actually do in the game with the addition of other mods, though I'm not sure if there is anything specific for that - other than animation mods that have sucking or licking nipples as part of the animation, where the milk itself(or the pregnant-looking belly) may not be present. 

 

Plus there are at least a few images on e621 of sharks breastfeeding, so...

[Blaze69]

6 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Well, I'm perfectly fine with it too, but there is that slight concern for those waiting to go "Sharks don't do that!", even if they are based on sharks, and have had a lot of influence from at least the Akaviri. Though I'm not really thinking someone will have a serious problem with it, especially since it is mostly a background detail, and perhaps only something you can actually do in the game with the addition of other mods, though I'm not sure if there is anything specific for that - other than animation mods that have sucking or licking nipples as part of the animation, where the milk itself(or the pregnant-looking belly) may not be present. 

Pretty sure the chances of someone thinking that are slim, because as I said they have breasts already and AFAIK that's kinda the point of breasts and the reason they came to exist in the first place (unless my evolutionary biology is rusty). But even then, they can simply ignore that fact and that's it.

 

We've already stated while Selachii may be heavily "based" on sharks, they didn't actually evolve the natural way but rather were created, just like pretty much all sentient races in Elder Scrolls (Argonians could be the exception if you consider what the Hist did to them as a "forced/boosted evolution", though), so I don't see it as a problem. Also convergent evolution is a thing too.

6 minutes ago, Kuroyami said:

Plus there are at least a few images on e621 of sharks breastfeeding, so...

You have a source for that fact? For, huh, purely scientific reasons, of course .

[Kuroyami]

14 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

You have a source for that fact? For, huh, purely scientific reasons, of course .

Mostly just use the fairly obvious tags shark and breastfeeding. Though this one...pig. Others for those tags are mostly tame, but...

 

Also, if Selachii Mage clothes are ever a thing for this mod...firetally.

[MadMansGun]

2 hours ago, Blaze69 said:

About the head, yes, the polycont is higher and the vertices at the seam don't match. But you shouldn't have any issues with that; it should be properly placed on import and the bone weights should take care of keeping the neck seam "closed" and seamless as they do ingame. Still, I'll get back to this once I've actually checked the file.

yea...the problem is i lost the the normals when i made that pose, and later on the nodes get striped out as well, but i've probably over complicated the process.

42 minutes ago, Blaze69 said:

It works!

 

At first it caused both the game and the CK to crash whenever I tried to load the mesh, but then I tried pasting the NiTriShapeDatas over one of Bad Dog's load screen meshes and it loaded fine then. So yeah, something is wrong with the nif you posted but it's salvageable and ends up working, so I'd say it's a valid way to create the meshes.

well i was bound to forget something, i had to do a lot of shit to make that mesh:

1. import EVERYTHING, including things i normally don't import (and this is where i first lose some of the normals, i don't know why)

2. make a pose.

3. export nif.

4. open it with niftools.

5. export all meshes one at a time as obj files with niftools.

6. delete all meshes.

7. import all the obj files back in with niftools (the mesh will now keep the pose without using a skeleton, in other words it's a static mesh now).

8. save and then re-import the nif into max.

9. fix the normals and export.

10. open it again with niftools and add the textures.

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

As for the mesh itself, I have to say I would have liked a kneeling pose like the one in the reference pic, but standing is good too. Though could the back be straightened instead of it being hunched over? Oh, and the schlong feels... small; moreso the scrotum than the dick itself, but with Skyrim's huge hands it looks a bit small by comparison too. Would it be possible to upscale the base SOS bone a bit so they are both a bit larger?

which reference pic? there are pictures all over the place.

you can blame SOS for that one, it has such a stupidly small default size, in fact that IS a scaled up dick (scale was set to 150%)

 

now would be a good time to tell me what accessories/options you may want (hair, armor, earrings, toys, extra actors & sex, dick styles, digitigrade)

 

1 hour ago, Blaze69 said:

That's because you were working with tangent normals, which don't apply to character meshes (because they use object-space normals instead). If you disable the "Has_Normals" and "Has_Tangents" flags in NifSkope and set up the proper settings, it's as seamless as the actual bodies are ingame.

well....technically it's not a character mesh anymore, but ok.